It was around page nine or ten of Just-In McCarthy’s excellent hurling autobiography - ‘Hooked’ – that we realised Waterford were going to win Munster in hurling this year and challenge for All Ireland honours, writes An Fear Rua …

McCarthy’s book is more than the usual ‘ghosted’ recitation of debuts, match reports, medals won, rows, grudges and disagreements that sometimes passes for GAA writing by retired players or managers. It is all that, of course, but much more as well. McCarthy has a ‘go’ at a few big names in the world of hurling, but the book doesn’t get bogged down in this. He is justifiably proud of his own achievements, both as player and manager, without being excessive.

What’s more important in the book – especially to players and followers of Waterford hurling – is McCarthy’s holistic approach to the game of hurling. Other managers may score on fitness levels. Others on application to skills. Some may be good organisers. Still others shine in the backroom or in making good sideline decisions. But it seems to AFR that Just-In McCarthy is the first manager in many’s the long year to excel under allthe relevant headings of hurling management. He is committed to achieving excellence in everything – skills, fitness, mental preparation, determination, organisation, strategy and tactics, team selection and sideline decisions. McCarthy is the first to study the game properly, to think deeply about it and so to comprehensively manage all aspects of a team, raising hurling from art to a science.

His track record speaks for itself – Clare in the Seventies, Antrim, Cork in the Centenary final of ’84, plus the many sow’s ears of ailing club sides he turned into silk purses. His attitude is summed up in the apt phrase ‘Spreading the Gospel’, picked up from a Kilkenny-born priest, Father Roch, re-located to Cork, who first underlined the basic skills of the game to a willing-to-learn young McCarthy.

Clearly, the parched soil of Waterford has been receptive to the seed being spread by McCarthy. In fairness, the groundwork done by his predecessor – the other Cork McCarthy – has to be acknowledged: in terms of improvements in skills, style and organisation. But, under Gerald, there always remained a brittleness at the heart and soul of Waterford hurling, that failed them on the two most important occasions of ’98 and haunted them on and off since then. Just-In McCarthy has banished all that. It is clear that he has wrought a profound beneficial change in temperament of the likes of Paul Flynn, Brian Greene and Tony Browne and this is shown in the quality and commitment of their recent displays. They – and the rest of the Déise team – now play like men with the smell of the McCarthy Cup in their nostrils … if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor. In the recent Munster final, it was a joy to watch Waterford’s sureness of skill and their determination: answering three rasping Tipp goals immediately with a brace of points each time.

Waterford’s path to the All Ireland series this year couldn’t have been more suitable for them. That doesn't mean that it easy. Quite the opposite, in fact. They faced Cork, their traditional ‘bogey’ team first. If McCarthy’s book first presaged Waterford’s imminent greatness, then the manner of their defeat of Cork confirmed it. Not the defeat itself. But the manner of it. A cool move, executed in the dying seconds of the game, in a way that no Waterford team of the previous thirty years would have even dreamed of. Tipp, on the other hand, their Munster final opponents, have never been a ‘bogey’ team for Waterford and so it proved. Indeed, a footnote to hurling history records that, over the years, Waterford have made something of a speciality of defeating Tipp as incumbent All Ireland and Munster champions.

Ballygunner’s winning of the Munster club championship – disposing of Toomevara along the way – was a pointer to things to come. Some Déise fans might even argue that last Sunday’s defeat of Tipp was well on the cards two years ago, until Ken McGrath had to hobble around with an injured ankle, following an early injury.

It seems to AFR that the onward progress of Waterford this year is irreversible. It will take some team and some performance to stop them. The new wider and longer Croke Park will suit their play admirably. In an echo of the words of the incomparable Padraig Ó Fainín, they have tasted the heady wine of victory for the first time in thirty-nine years and their thirst is not yet slaked. There is every chance they will emulate the Clare breakthrough of ’95 and take a couple of All Ireland titles, while they are at it.

By the way, if you look hard enough - especially if you're managing a team still left in the hurling championship - there might be a few spare copies of McCarthy's book in a good bookshop near you. It would be well worth your while persuading the County Treasurer to fork out for a few copies. Or maybe you should wait until Christmas, for the edition with the added chapters about how Waterford won the All Ireland ...

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