Waterford Lack Guile to Play Catch Up with Crafty Cats
Kilkenny both outfought and outthought Waterford and were deserving winners of Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final...
However, a repeat of the profligacy they demonstrated against Clare and the great fighting spirit of this current Déise side meant that the game was up for grabs right down to the final whistle. What makes this Kilkenny team so awesome is their combination of intensity, skill and craft. Waterford have plenty of skill and displayed great passion on Sunday, but the lack of focus to their play was their ultimate undoing.
Kilkenny’s early brace of goals meant that the Déise hurlers were always chasing the game. There have been two key ingredients to Waterford’s success this year: the dominance of their halfback line and the ability of their half forwards to win ball. When neither of these materialised, there was no plan B, except for the lazy and clueless expedient of lashing high balls in the general direction of the Kilkenny goal. This is the sign of a team under psychological pressure, and the longer they went without being able to haul in the Kilkenny lead, the greater the sense of panic and lack of direction in their play.
Much has been said this year about the shrewdness of the Waterford management. This was not in evidence on Sunday. As long as Dan Shanahan was left lurking around the Kilkenny goal, the temptation was there to play in long ball, despite the fact that Shanahan was a spent force after the first ten minutes. Taking him off might have encouraged the outfield players to take a different tack. There was no point in bringing on a light player like Paul O’Brien who was of little use under the aerial bombardment which was meat and drink to the massed ranks of high-catching Kilkenny defenders. The decision to take off Eoin McGrath also made little sense, as apart from Jack Kennedy he was the only Waterford forward to cause the Kilkenny defence problems in the second half.
The crucial period in this game was a 7½ minute spell from the 50th minute on when, with Kilkenny just three points ahead, neither side managed to score. It was during this period that Seamus Prendergast had a point disallowed for the basic error of handling the ball three times. Waterford had taken the previous two scores and were playing their most lucid hurling at this time, and it is quite possible that a third point would have provided them with the momentum to go on to victory. As it happened, the scoring hiatus was finally broken by Cha Fitzpatrick and immediately afterwards Kilkenny got a second crucial point from a free following Ken McGrath’s reckless pull on a dropping ball. These two silly mistakes cost Waterford two points, and a third point was also needlessly conceded when Eoin Murphy again handled the ball three times while trying the clear his lines a little earlier. Justin McCarthy has always preached that winning at this level is all about minimising errors, and never was this more true than last Sunday.
It is noteworthy that, in an interview in the Sunday Indo, Ken McGrath acknowledged that the two sendings off which he has experienced in his career were both for wild pulls. McGrath is inclined to do things like this when he is getting frustrated, and no doubt he was frustrated last Sunday by his inability to get into the game. To a considerable extent this was a tribute to the hard work of John Hoyne, but it was noticeable that at an early stage of the game McGrath was holding his side, and one presumes that he was troubled by an old rib injury which apparently was aggravated in a recent challenge game against Wexford.
The match statistics indicate that Kilkenny had the superior work rate for most of the game. It was the type of game where a lot of bunching and schemozzles made it difficult to tally an accurate count of individual plays, as there was a lot of kicking and flicking of the ball, much of which was aimless but some of which was done to effect (a key ingredient in An Moltóir’s definition of a “play”).
Despite playing against the wind, Kilkenny dominated the game territorially in the first half, with 74 plays to Waterford’s 57. Kilkenny actually increased their strike rate to 79 after the change of ends, but Waterford managed to reduce the gap with 70 plays of their own. The Cats’ busiest player (as in the drawn game against Clare) was the unsung Ken Coogan with 19 plays (11 in the first half) followed by the amazing Henry Sheflin (17) and another unsung hero, John Hoyne (16). Hoyne’s immediate opponent, Ken McGrath, only played the ball eight times, and two of these were after he moved into the forwards late in the second half. By negativing McGrath, Hoyne probably made a bigger contribution than any of his teammates (bar Sheflin) to this Kilkenny victory.
Other Kilkenny players to reach double figures were Martin Comerford with 14 (12 of which came in the second period), JJ Delaney (13), Derek Lyng and Tommy Walsh (11) and Michael Kavanagh (10). It will undoubtedly surprise some that Waterford’s chief playmakers were Dave Bennett (14) and Eoin Murphy (13). The only others to reach double figures were Eoin Kelly and Michael Walsh (12 each) and Tony Browne (11). Of course, the quantity of plays is not an indicator of quality: four of Paul Flynn’s eight plays produced points, as did Martin Comerford’s first three plays.
A number of other points about the game struck An Moltóir as being worthy of comment. Both teams took the field rather later than usual, which An Moltóir took to be due to the heavy rain. However, in Waterford’s case an additional factor appears to have been their late arrival at the ground due to their air flight fiasco. This meant that not only did they miss out on their normal prematch warm-up puckaround in a nearby playing field, but they also foresook the ball control drills which are part of their usual preparations. Such drills would have been particularly important on a wet day. One wonders what impact all these disruptions to their planned match day routine had on the players’ focus and sharpness. From what An Moltóir has heard, there appears to have been some extraordinary bungling in relation to the travel arrangements on the day.
One also wonders about the wisdom of playing Iggy O’Regan on the day. His vulnerability under the high ball was never more in evidence, and for the first goal he failed in the standard goalkeeping imperative of guarding the near post. Would Stephen Brenner, with his greater girth and height, have conceded these goals? Something which both O’Regan and Brenner have in common is long puckouts which lack variation. This wasn’t a problem up to now given the ability of the Déise half forwards to win ball on their own puckout. But when this wasn’t working last Sunday there was no attempt to vary the puckout; instead, O’Regan continued on playing literally into Kilkenny’s hands.
Finally, last Sunday demonstrated once again how unedifying and dangerous the throw-in is as a means of restarting hurling games. Should the GAA not introduce something akin to the bully-off in hockey? In other words, place the ball on the ground between two players facing each other, each of whom has to have their hurley on the ground also. Then, on the sound of the whistle, each player may attempt to play the ball as they see fit. This would avoid the pulling across feet and legs which is a dangerous and frequently wrath-inducing feature of the current hurling throw-in.
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