Waterford’s mighty effort to dethrone Kilkenny last Sunday should not be allowed to divert attention from the inadequacies, both on and off the pitch, which made it virtually impossible for them to win this game.

The fact that they finished just five points behind the Cats is attributable, in large part, to their great spirit and work rate. However, other factors in the final margin of defeat included their fortuitous late goal, several goal chances squandered by their opponents in the second half, and good work by Waterford’s last line of defence once Declan Prendergast was moved to the edge of the square midway through the first half.

In a penetratingly insightful article inThe Sunday Times, Denis Walsh identified three things Waterford needed to do if they were to have any chance of winning this game. The first of these was to play Eoin Kelly out the field; the second was to be able to get the ball past Kilkenny’s ‘cordon of half-backs, deep-lying midfielders and deep-lying wing-forwards’ in a way that would give their inside line a chance; and the third was to play without the nervousness and anxiety which undermined them last September.

Waterford took the field last Sunday with three scoring forwards, all placed in the full forward line. Apart from his early goal, Shane Walsh played the ball just once in the first half. Eoin Kelly never played it at all. Amazingly, the first time Kelly played the ball, apart from frees, was in the 58th minute, when he scored a smashing point from out on the left touchline. Since coming into the intercounty scene seven years ago, Kelly has probably been the best long-distance point scorer in the country. Placing him in the corner from the start made little sense; leaving him there when there was no decent ball coming in made none at all. His contribution when he did move out late in the game highlights all the more the craziness of this piece of decision-making on the part of the Waterford mentors.

The main reason for Waterford’s inability to get good ball into their full forward line was the absence of any kind of midfield platform. This has been a problem all season which was highlighted in this column’s analysis of Waterford’s previous game against Galway, but which was never addressed by the team management. Last Sunday, the Waterford midfield played just seven good balls between them, whereas Michael Rice and Cha Fitzpatrick managed sixteen. While Stephen Molumphy at least worked hard to make an impact, Shane O’Sullivan was a passenger from start to finish. Yet, amazingly, when Waterford made a change in this area late in the game, it was Molumphy rather than O’Sullivan who was withdrawn.

While Brick Walsh is now the best centre back in the game, his move from midfield has cost Waterford dearly. Last year, with Walsh winning good possession or generally breaking up play, Jamie Nagle found the space to play good ball into the Waterford full forward line (all of whom got All Star nominations). This year, with Walsh elsewhere, Nagle was lost and disappeared without trace. The best midfield performance by Waterford in many years was given by Walsh and Eoin Kelly in the replayed quarter final against Cork in 2007, yet this combination has never been tried again since.

Meanwhile, the best centre back in Waterford club hurling last year, and a key figure in De La Salle’s march to the All-Ireland final, was playing at wing forward last Sunday and played the ball just twice in the second half. At this stage, Kevin Moran has played in nearly every position on the Waterford team except where he plays his club hurling.

Without a midfield platform, and with their half forwards predictably making little headway against the Kilkenny defensive phalanx, the Waterford defenders, who were doing well against their opponents, were reduced in the second half to launching long-distance missiles in the general direction of the Kilkenny goal in the hope that something might come of them. However, these were generally poorly directed (straight down the middle) and more often than not fell too short to pose a real threat to the Cats’ last line of defence. In the circumstances, Waterford’s decision to bring in three substitutes in the full forward line made no sense at all, as it ignored the fact that there was little decent ball coming into that line in the first place. In particular, one wonders why Dan or Maurice Shanahan were not tried out at wing forward in an attempt to curb John Tennyson’s complete dominance on the left side of the Kilkenny defence.

The third ingredient which Denis Walsh considered essential for Waterford to win was an absence of nervousness and anxiety. The Waterford team which took the field last Sunday was a bundle of nerves and angst, as reflected in their high error count. They fumbled the ball twice as much as Kilkenny. Much more important was their tendency to give away the ball cheaply, through losing possession, misplaced passes and knockdowns, and simply hitting the ball needlessly to unmarked Kilkenny players. We counted no less than twenty three such instances on Waterford’s part compared with just six for Kilkenny. Eight of Kilkenny’s scores followed directly from Waterford errors, including the crucial second goal after Shane O’Sullivan sent the ball straight to the unmarked Tommy Walsh who had all the time in the world to send the perfect ball into Henry Shefflin.

One should not expect such a high error count from such an experienced team, most of whom were playing in at least their third All-Ireland semi-final and some of whom were playing in their seventh. Nor is it any credit to the team management that they took to the field in such a poor mental state.

On the Kilkenny side, most of the media focus has centred on Henry Shefflin’s display, with John Tennyson and Jackie Tyrrell also coming in for much praise. However, the real star of the show – not for the first time this year – was Michael Rice. Those professional pundits who expressed surprise at Rice being preferred to Derek Lyng when the team for last Sunday was announced showed how little they know about the game. In all of Kilkenny’s three championship games this year, Michael Rice played the ball more often than any of his team mates – 22 against Galway, 21 against Dublin and 22 again last Sunday. Furthermore, most of his plays have a telling effect, as reflected in a quality points total of 53 against Galway and 48 last Sunday, nine ahead of the next highest total of 39 (earned by the excellent John Tennyson who certainly exposed those pundits who doubted the wisdom of playing him on the wing).

Rice is now playing a role for Kilkenny very similar to that played by Jerry O’Connor for Cork over recent years. During Cork’s glory years of 2004-05, this column repeatedly made the point that O’Connor was the most important player in the Rebels’ set-up because of the way he linked defence with attack. However, he rarely got the credit he deserved from pundits more interested in the spectacular than the effective. Rice similarly has an amazing capacity to hoover up ball and process it without fuss into the forward line, thereby setting up the likes of Henry Shefflin and Eddie Brennan to do their stuff.

Apart from Rice and Tennyson, three other Kilkenny players broke the 30 quality points barrier (based on rating plays on a scale of 1-5): Henry Shefflin (33 points from 12 plays), Jackie Tyrrell and Cha Fitzpatrick (both 31/12). Of course, this does not do full justice to Shefflin, whose additional contribution as a phenomenally reliable free taker is immense. While Tyrrell did have a marvellous game, the idea that he obliterated John Mullane does not stand up to scrutiny. In fact, Mullane got a lot of possession in the first half, but generally used it poorly, trying for scores from impossible positions (something you rarely see Kilkenny doing) rather than loo