Waterford’s victory over Clare in last Monday’s Munster championship game went very much along expected lines. Clare made a mighty fight of it and kept going right to the end, but by the 60th minute they had become a blunt instrument, depending on a lucky break for the goal they needed but which didn’t come. Waterford, by contrast, and as has become the norm under Davy Fitzgerald’s management, finished strongly, with their cutting edge given extra sharpness by the reinforcements called off the bench.

Strictly speaking, Waterford won this game in the closing 15 minutes when they notched four points while holding Clare scoreless. However, ultimately the match was won in the first half. Both teams amassed a total of 13 points when playing with the strong wind. The key difference, then, was that Waterford scored nine points when playing against the wind whereas Clare could only manage five.

In the first half, playing into the wind, Waterford converted nine of 13 shots at goal, a conversion rate of 69%. In the second half, Clare converted just five of 11 shots, a conversion rate of only 46%. This was the key difference between the sides in the end. Indeed, Waterford could afford to be more profligate playing with the wind than Clare were while still ending up reasonably comfortable winners. Playing with the wind in the second half, Waterford had significantly more shots at goal than Clare managed in the first half (23-17) but a less efficient conversion rate (57% to 65%) meant that the Déise men’s victory was less clear-cut than it might have been. Overall, Waterford obtained 22 scores from 36 shots (61%) while Clare got 16 scores from 28 shots (57%).

The fact that Waterford had 29% more shots and 38% more scores than Clare points to a feature of this game which might not have been obvious from a first viewing. This is that, despite Clare’s entire work rate, this game was dominated territorially by Waterford. Even in the first half, when Clare clearly had the upper hand on the score board, Waterford were actually getting through more work on the pitch.

What allowed Clare to go in at half time with a lead of four points was the strength of the wind, which made it much easier to score from out the field. Even then, were it not for Darach Honan’s superb piece of opportunism, there would have been very little between the sides at the short whistle.

The play count for both sides was remarkably consistent on both sides of the interval. In fact, Waterford’s play count was exactly the same in both halves at 104, while Clare played the ball once more in the first half than in the second (80-79). This means that, overall, Waterford had 31% more plays than Clare, a level of superiority very much in line with the difference in the number of shots between the teams.

While Waterford dominated the play count in all sectors of the pitch, the main difference between the sides was at midfield – or, to put it more accurately, between the midfielders, as Clare did tend to crowd the midfield area in the first half in particular. Brian O’Connell was rather invisible for the 50 or so minutes he was on the pitch, managing just eight innocuous plays in this period. His replacement, Domhnall O’Donovan, added a further two to this total in the remaining 23 minutes of play.

Nicky O’Connell produced some spectacular stuff in the first half, during which he had ten plays, but he only added five more after the change of ends. In total, therefore, the three Clare midfielders had 25 plays between them. This contrasts sharply with the 44 plays produced by the Déise midfield pairing of Richie Foley (27) and Shane O’Sullivan (17). Furthermore, whereas the play count for the Clare midfielders fell from 16 in the first half to nine in the second, their Waterford counterparts divided their plays exactly equally between the halves. Therein lies, perhaps more than anywhere else, the key to Waterford’s victory.

This column has, since its inception, been using play counts to champion the key roles played by unspectacular work horses in All-Ireland winning teams over the last few years. We highlighted Jerry O’Connor’s crucial role in the Cork team of 2004-2005, and last year we identified Michael Rice as Kilkenny’s most valuable player in their march to championship victory.

On Monday night, the Monday Game panel, as is their wont, gave the Man of the Match award to the player who made the most spectacular contribution to Waterford’s victory, half-time substitute Declan Prendergast. And, indeed, the Ardmore man’s 11 plays and 27 quality points (based on a play rating ranging from 1-4) was an admirable achievement in itself.

However, over the entire game, far and away the most effective player on the pitch was Waterford midfielder Richie Foley, who had 27 plays for a mammoth 53 quality points. Next after him was Shane O’Sullivan with 42 quality points from 17 plays. Two other Waterford players made the 40 points mark, the amazing Tony Browne (19 plays) and Eoin Kelly (18 plays) who also rowed in with some excellent scores from frees which are not included in the regular play count. Mention should also be made of Brick Walsh – not his usual dominant self but still getting through an enormous amount of work – who got 38 points from 19 plays and Noel Connors (30/15).

Clare’s top contributor was Diarmuid McMahon (34/15), with just three other players making the 30 mark, Pat Donnellan, Jonathan Clancy and Conor Cooney, who had a marvellous second half.

There has been an amount of public attention to Brian Gavin’s refereeing performance, and in particular to the notion that Gavin’s errors were distinctly favourable to Waterford. We kept an eye on this aspect of the game and found that, of nine clear errors committed by Gavin, five favoured Waterford and four favoured Clare. The former include the 12 steps taken by John Mullane before shooting a point in the 4th minute, a free incorrectly given against Pat Vaughan for a foul on Mullane in the 13th minute, Mullane’s six steps before being awarded a free in the 28th minute, Tony Browne’s leap into the tackle in the 42nd minute, and the free awarded against Conor Cooney for supposedly picking the ball from the ground in the 69th minute.

The latter included a free awarded against Liam Lawlor in the 11th minute when in fact it was Darach Honan who was doing the fouling by taking a grip of Lawlor’s helmet, a push in the back on Eoin Kelly by John Conlon in the 36th minute and a similar push on John Mullane by Conor Cooney in the 41st minute, both of which went unpunished, and the frontal charge on Tony Browne in the 63rd minute which should have earned Cormac O’Donovan a yellow card but didn’t. We might also add that we counted six occasions when Donal Tuohy appeared to step outside the small square when pucking out the ball. No similar incidents were recorded for Clinton Hennessy (these refer obviously only to those puckouts which were shown clearly on television).

Waterford therefore move on to what will presumably be another Munster final joust against Cork, while Clare regroup in preparation for the qualifiers. The quality of the Clare challenge last Sunday may have surprised some, but the fact is that, while their recent form has been poor, all of their players have shown in the past that they are capable of top-class hurling, and Ger O’Loughlin deserves credit for getting this out of most of them last Monday. The Banner men found some excellent new defenders in the last couple of years in Pat Vaughan, Brendan Bugler and Pat Donnellan, and the forward talent revealed by last year’s under-21 outfit is showing that it is now capable of stepping up to the plate. If they can get Gerry O’Grady and Gerry Quinn back into action they could still be a formidable force this year and most certainly will in the coming years.
Teams and Play Counts (Quality Points in brackets):

Waterford