A trophy and two points won. Guess which is more important

In the never-ending quest to interprete early season results, Waterford’s win today over UCC in the Waterford Crystal Cup deserves a doctrinal thesis all of its own. Limerick IT, having won the trophy in 2005 and 2007, are no mugs but to see the great powerhouse of the competition and defending champions being battered in the first round is a shock. Beating them by a point isn’t anything to shout from the rooftops. Add in a red card for Eoin Kelly and you’d wonder whether it’s worth it. Still better than losing by a point though.

More noteworthy is the footballer’s win over Leitrim. They finished ahead of Waterford last year so to beat them away from home is a tremendous start. One to watch.

Update: giveitfong’s match report anseo.

The way we were

This week, a prehistory lesson for all the kids. Before hurling began in 1998, there was a competition that was analagous to the National League that we won in 2007. This competition ran for a couple of rounds in November before a break and resumption in the spring. So when the GAA adjusted this competition for the new recorded era, there was a gap in the market for a little competitive inter-county hurling in the winter.

Thus was born the South East League, a two group round robin competition with a Grand Final in, uh, Walsh Park. Certainly the trophy was very grand, and it’s fair to say that when Waterford won it in 1998 it seemed a big deal. The myths and sagas of prehistory suggest that Waterford were not very good  at winning anything (this being prehistory, there are no records of such a state of affairs) so to win something was a marvellous thing.

Twelve years on it doesn’t seem to matter as much, partly because the notion of a ‘Waterford Crystal Cup’ is so poignant, but mostly because we’ve got bigger fish to fry. You’d rather win than not win, so last Sunday’s result against Clare was nice. But when even the winning manager is scoffing at the outcome, you know something isn’t right. Roll on the final against UCC, and may the best B team win.

The worst segue ever

Back at the tail end of 2009, Mick McCarthy was roundly condemned for fielding a scratch Wolverhampton Wanderers side against Manchester United. 3,000 Wolves fans travelled a long way in the middle of the week with little change out of a hundred notes to see a reserve team whipped by the Mancs. McCarthy defended his selection on the basis of needing to protect his better players from the possibility of picking up an injury in a game they were likely to lose anyway.

However, Come on the Déise is excited to able to exclusively reveal the real reason behind his reticence. Mick is a son of Tallow and he was channeling the spirit that saw Waterford take to the field in Ballyduff Upper yesterday with a less-than-summer-strength lineup. We don’t need no steenking full strength teams when we’re more than five hundred metres west of the Colligan, right?

Okay, that really is the lamest link ever. Still, you have to wonder what we are meant to read into yesterday’s win over Cork IT in the poignantly titled Waterford Crystal Cup, giveitfong’s typically thorough match report notwithstanding. The chances of Tony Browne, Ken McGrath, Eoin Murphy, Seamus Prendergast and John Mullane not being first choice selections come the summer should they be available are slim to none – Big Dan won’t be a certainty, but that reflects the status quo. Players occupying their positions until March won’t have much incentive, and even if they are sensational how are the management meant to tell in such low octane contests like against Cork IT? Getting the right answers to these all-too-obvious questions is what separates the management men from the boys. Perhaps someone should ask Mick McCarthy.

3 (All-Ireland’s) is a magic number

Viz  – or it may have been Zit; not that I ever read either a friend told me about it honestlywhatareyousuggesting – once had a ‘letter’ from J Howard Marshall of Texas where he asked what you would do if you were a octogenarian with $900 million in the bank: put it in the Post Office savings bank or the thong of a plump-breasted hussey? Robert Finnegan is clearly channeling the spirit of the bould J Howard as he splashes 3 Ireland’s cash on all things Waterford, first sponsoring the Blues and now Waterford GAA. The hurlers are surely a decent investment for any advertiser, attracting a lot of attention over the years.

As for the shirt, modelled above by Dan Shanahan and Michael Walsh (so that’s what he looks like without a helmet) . . . meh. One Waterford jersey is much the same as another.

When the manner of defeat matters

This post will contain no consolation for Ballygunner. In fact, it might make them feel worse. To come from ten points down two-thirds of the way through a match to draw level only to have it slip away from you right at the end is utterly heartbreaking, especially when you factor in how close Newtownshandrum were to playing for over fifty minutes with only fourteen men after Philip Noonan’s (ahem) wild pull on Andy Maloney was only judged to be worthy of a yellow card.

But for those of us for whom the fate of Waterford hurling is the primary concern, there was some solace in the way Ballygunner stood tall when it looked like they were about to be massacred. The constant drip-drip about how Waterford constantly bottle it when it matters does begin to wear everyone in the county down, burrowing its way under the collective skin and resurfacing when, well, it matters. Newtownshandrum’s greater experience probably proved telling in the end, but no one can accuse Ballygunner, and by extension Waterford, of lacking courage.

Don’t Come Home Too Soon

Hard to know what to make of Ballygunner’s laboured win over Cratloe in the Munster semi-final yesterday in Walsh Park. It’s one of the truisms of the GAA that clubs that win the county title for the first time in years / ever are vulnerable when they head into the provincial championships, what with having to wade their way through oceans of celebratory beer and chunder from the previous week. This would certainly cast Ballygunner’s floundering in a bad light, unless you wonder whether it’s a truism that is supported by evidence. De La Salle were in the same boat last year and went down and bearded Sarsfields in their own den, so it’s certainly not an iron rule.

For all of that, you’d really hope Ballygunner’s experience at this level and home advantage would have stood for more. Five points clear with two minutes of normal time left, closing it out shouldn’t have been as fraught as it was. It was unconvincing and you fear that yet again we have a Waterford team who don’t really believe they can go all the way, an attitude that Newtownshandrum will drive a coach-and-four through. At least Ballygunner will get the chance to prove me wrong.

Back in the old routine

Shankly Gates has risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes. For anyone who chooses to pop over there based on my recommendation, apologies in advance for 4squares.

Further into the vortex

Come on Tipperary hurlers, play the game. Waterford and Cork’s hurling panels have both staged heaves against their manager, and now Clare and Limerick are doing the same. That Sheedy fella must have some skeletons in his closet that demand a principled response. Won’t someone please think of the children?

Turning the dial away from Silliness FM, the week’s events on Shannonside represent an escalation in a process that manages to be both inevitable and impossible to predict. It would be tempting to dismiss either spat as unrelated incidents, that the respective County Boards should simply back their managers to the hilt and that’ll be the end of the matter. Indeed, Clare already seem to be going down that road with chairman Michael O’Neill being rather bright and breezy about it all.

Tempting, and entirely misguided. International rugby squads once famously assembled the night before a match without much in the way of anything as shallow as training or preparation, and this was probably true back in the day for inter-county squads. This meant that camaraderie was purely based on internal county loyalties. Nowadays though, GAA panels spend months on end in each other’s pockets. No doubt Justin McCarthy would be of the opinion that there is no ‘panel’ once the season ends and he can start from scratch the following year. Strictly speaking he’d be correct but you can’t expect players, especially ones from a county who were lambasted by all and sundry like Limerick’s were after losing to Tipp last season, to so casually walk away from each other.

It’s a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. When the back door was introduced, the GAA didn’t foresee that county panels would become so much more militant as a result. And it’s only going to get worse.

Remember the Fraher 15!

An early chance for revenge in the Munster Under-21 final as Waterford draw Clare in the 2010 senior Munster championship. Bring it on! On a less flippant note (after all, you wouldn’t have to look far to find something needing ‘avenging’ with the other three counties) for the second year running the draw has been sweet to Waterford as Cork and Tipperary are paired in the other half of the draw. Clare will be quite pleased too. As if that wasn’t enough, we’re in the soft half of the draw in the football too with the All-Ireland champions, the Munster champions and the Division Three champions all on the other side of things.  Well done Jimmy O’Gorman on a draw well rigged done.

Ballygunner 1-17 (20) Lismore 0-19 (19)

Donal O’Grady said after the recent All-Ireland final that the best team always wins, that the scoreboard never lies. Well that’s grand, Donal, we can dispense with pundits altogether. Why bother with all that post-match waffle when any comment withers in the face of the irrefutable logic of the final score?

You can surely observe the sarcasm dripping from that last paragraph, so it’s important to add the caveat that the scoreboard does have its uses in determining who deserved to win. In a close game where there is never more than a couple of scores between teams, there are few controversial incidents and moments of genius / horrific clangers are evenly shared, it can clear the mind of the detritus generated by the ebb and flow of the match and your own hopes and fears. It would have been lovely had such a tight game ended in a draw, but there is a ruthless logic to the final score – Ballygunner just about shaded it.

While Lismore opened the scoring and should had a goal after ten minutes when Padraig Prendergast batted the ball wide when Maurice Shanahan’s mazy run had left the goal at Lismore’s mercy, Ballygunner made all the early running and could have been out of sight midway through the half. Three frees from Paul Flynn, one after a rather wild swing from Eoin Bennett that might have ended up in worse than the yellow card it got, and a point apiece from Andy Maloney and Shane O’Sullivan left Ballygunner well on top when their goal arrived. Pauric Mahony was put into the clear and it looked like an ideal situation for him to bat the ball across goal. This may have been in Brendan Landers’ mind which would explain how easily he was beaten at his near post by Mahony.

Goals supposedly win games, and the shock explained why Maurice Shanahan felt the need to go for goal with a free which was saved and cleared. It was almost curtains moments later when Paul Flynn capitalised on a stumble from Joxer O’Connor to get clear though on goal. Less money was lost by Anglo Irish Bank than by those of us mentally putting the house on this ending in a goal, but Landers made up for the earlier slip by blocking the shot and mopping up the rebound.

This gave Lismore a huge lift and they began chipping away at the lead. Dave Bennett provided his obligatory couple of points from play and Maurice Shanahan stayed unerring in the free-taking department, even serving up a cracking solo score from play. They were aided when Shane Bennett was in the right place to clear after Paul Flynn had managed to get the ball past the advancing Landers. That’s the charitable interpretation of what happened. For me, the Lismore defence played the man and not the ball and only their sheer numbers confused the ref into thinking it was good defending. Maybe it was good defending, but whatever way you cut it it was a lucky break for Lismore and when Dan Shanahan pulled first time on a loose ball in the 27th minute, it  flashed over the bar and the six point lead had been trimmed to one point. It was two frees to one for the remainder of the half and they went in level at half time.

Lismore kept the pressure up at the start of the second half, Maurice Shanahan keeping the frees ticking over including one monster from his own half. Stephen O’Keeffe – the Lismore version – also got a great point, a splendid hit on the turn from way out. At the other end Brian O’Sullivan put the ball wide when it seemed impossible to miss the target, and Gearóid O’Connor tried to repeat the trick of scoring a goal at the near post but Brendan Landers was wise to it this time. Ballygunner were beginning to wobble, typified by a loose pull from Fergal Hartley – Fergal Hartley! – which ended in a free where the ball landed and a soft score for Lismore. So it was just as well that Dan Shanahan was being his usual mercurial self, barreling through the defence then hitting air when he tried to kick the ball to the net, and finding himself caught in two minds having earned another goal scoring opportunity, hitting a soft wide.

At this stage, it looked like the game would be won by a show-stopping cameo, a storming goal from a Shanahan or, er, a Flynn. But the hero would appear in the unlikely guise of Andy Maloney. Points from Flynn and Stephen Power – “Ballygunner forward” – steadied the ship but Shane Kearney felt sufficiently confident after a great point with five minutes to go to punch the air with delight. Any delight Lismore felt would have oozed away in a matter of minutes as Maloney fired over two quick points from difficult positions, the second after a flubbed clearance by the Lismore defence. Five points from play, each one sent over the black spot on the crossbar and with total economy of effort. It was a hammer blow to Lismore and you could see the heads drop. Ballygunner went for the jugular with Mahony and Flynn points left them two points clear going in to injury time. James Shanahan tried to tee up a goalmouth scramble but the ball went over the bar off the post and Lismore had run out of time.

It was hard on Lismore. The final whistle was greeted with an errie lack of delight in the ground, confirmation that the vast majority of the crowd were rooting for them. The feeling of having missed the boat after last weekend’s missing of the boat will have been confounded having found themselves in a strong position heading in to the last quarter. But you couldn’t begrudge the Gunners. They only hit four wides in the entire game and had the outstanding performer of the day in Andy Maloney. His coolness under pressure was the difference between the teams. Let’s hope they can show that level of calm in the Munster championship.