Say It Ain’t So!

The club scene. It’s great, innit? Salt of the earth, real GAA, bedrock of the association, all that jazz. I was all set to go to the double header in Walsh Park last Sunday to run the rule over the talent in advance of the Munster championship, and to pay homage at the altar of all of the above. But a few too many real ales the night before and a nice warm bed led me to, well, stay in bed. Part timer? You bet.

It would not be correct to say I don’t care about club hurling. But it would be fair to say that during any club match my priority – and remember, you can only have one priority – would be that no one in or around the inter county panel gets injured or sent off. And lo and behold, what should happen last Sunday but Tony Browne gets sent off within thirty seconds of appearing on the pitch. Any pleasure to be had in Abbeyside’s bearding of the Evil Empire was soon extinguished by this news.

The facts of the case seem clear. A straight red card for striking. The County Board now have the unenviable task of either upholding the integrity of the disciplinary process and giving him a ban which would ensure he’d miss at least the Clare match, or giving him the figurative tickle on the wrist of a month ban and handing ammunition to those outside the association who accuse the GAA of being soft on terror (so to speak) and those within the association who think Waterford is a repository of culchie muck savages and townie headaballs.

Do the right thing, County Board. Take him out.

Fulham to Fulham

Picture it: Norway, c. 1990. A young John Arne Riise is bulldozing his way through teams on his own and lashing shots in from thirty to forty metres away, generally being the type of all-action type so beloved of a rugged Scandinavian people. His mentor, Lars Hardaxe (NB name may be made up) takes John Arne aside. “John Arne,” he says solicitously, “you’re going to a star. But take some advice. Work on your right foot. A time will come when you might need to use it in an emergency, maybe to clear the ball in the last minute of a big match. Trust me, you need it for more than just standing on”.

Suffice to say after Tuesday night, it seems John Arne did not take Lars’ advice.

It could have been worse. The consensus when discussing the own goal was that it wasn’t as damaging as it might have been. Swap Riise slashing Malouda’s cross into his own net for Jerzy Dudek or Jamie Carragher making contact with Eidur Gudjohnsen’s shot in the 2005 semi-final . . . now that would have been calamitous. As it is, we still have the second leg to come, and while the goal does give Chelsea the advantage – there’s no point in pretending otherwise, you’d rather be ahead at the start of a game than behind – away goals can lull teams into a false sense of confidence. Liverpool’s advantage against Arsenal lasted all of twelve minutes, and we were lucky that it lasted that long. Score one goal at Stamford Bridge and watch the temperatures rise to sauna-like levels as Chelsea suddenly see that they need to score just to take it to the lottery of penalties, a ‘lottery’ where teams mystifyingly choose their best players to take the early penalties rather than picking them from a Scrabble bag.

So it’s not all bad, the biggest irritation being the manner in which our serene progress at Anfield since the debacle against Barnsley was so abruptly knocked off course. In fact we’d been doing rather well overall since then, dropping only five points and those to the heavy hitters of Man Utd and Arsenal (more on that later). So much so that my opinion, unimportant as it is, has changed back to where it was before the Fulham game.

The first Fulham game at Anfield, that is. Never has my attitude to a Liverpool manager undergone such an epiphany as it did at half time that day. Faced with a team of assorted dross, most of them purchased because the manager had seen a bit of them in his previous gig as manager of crack Premier League standard outfit Northern Ireland, the Reds were inept to an unreal degree. With the scores level at half time, and no sign that Liverpool were going to change it, I snapped. Honestly, had I been the owner of the club, I would have frogmarched Rafa into the boardroom at the final whistle and demanded to know how such a woeful performance was part of the plan. Even the salvation on the day that came in the form of bringing Fernando Torres off the bench only served to emphasis Rafa’s cluelessness. You don’t need to be a European Cup and La Liga winning manager to be able to conjure up results with him in your team. Pausing only for Rafa to either come up with some corporate bull about long term vision and synergies or tell me not to worry my little head about such matters, I would have told him the same thing whatever he said: either win the European Cup and / or the League title in 2007/8, or he would be fired. After four years and countless players passing through the Shankly Gates, the only thing that could represent progress would be winning those trophies. Take it or leave it.

Nothing happened in the subsequent few months to suggest that progress was being made. Okay, Torres would start to flex his not inconsiderable muscles, and Rafa deserved praise for a) taking a chance on him, and b) nurturing his development. But the other strikers weren’t so much being outshone as having their feathers fall off from the heat. Kuyt was ruthlessly exposed as a one trick pony, easily sussed out in the medium term by Premier League defences; Voronin turned out very quickly to be, well, a free transfer; and no partnership was being forged with Crouch, the one player other than Torres who seemed to know where the goal was. The other parts of the field looked okay, but ‘okay’ isn’t good enough. Liverpool could not field B players like Darren Fletcher and Mikael Silvestre and still thrive, and there can be no greater indictment of Rafa’s squad than that.

It goes without saying that the nadir was reached against Barnsley. Rafa would have been forgiven for thinking things couldn’t get any worse, and he would have been quite wrong. Defeat against Inter would surely have been the end, if not immediately then in the summer. Given that was the last chance saloon, the manner in which the Reds flung them head first through the swing doors into the water trough outside was most impressive. Not a game went by when it didn’t feel like Liverpool had to win to keep the manager in a job, and they were usually up to the task. The Man Utd game was the obvious exception, and despite the excellent result the shadow team produced at the Emirates – led once again, frustratingly, by Crouch – it is the performances against the top teams that have been the difference between Liverpool and the very top of the table. It is habitually said that Liverpool can beat anyone on their day but they struggle against the likes of Wigan and Birmingham. While those teams have caused us some bother, minnows have sprung surprises on Man Utd too (Bolton and Middlesbrough spring to mind) but they have been able to turn up things a notch against Liverpool, Arsenal and, until last weekend, Chelsea. Four points out of eighteen represents the difference between Liverpool and the top three, the extraordinary inability to score against Man Utd threatening to consume everyone at the club in its fearsome intensity. Apart from that though, as the season has worn on we’ve shown the rest of the league – not least the Kirkbyites – a clean pair of heels. We’re at the point where Fulham could be eased aside, something we couldn’t do last season. We’re at the point where I can remove my fatwa on Rafa.

No doubt Rafa is going weak at the knees with excitement. It isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement though. Part of the problem, or the opportunity in Rafa’s case, is the absence of a credible replacement. The mutterings that have attended every hiccup from Avram Grant shows how you need a big beast to stalk the big club jungle, and the only character with sufficient stature knocking around at the moment is Jose Mourinho. And the last thing a club tearing itself apart over its ownership needs is the Special One offering his considered opinion on anything and everything. He hasn’t always maintained his cool on the face of the storm howling around him, but Rafa has been more dignified than anyone else involved and more dignified than anyone has a right to expect. Then there’s the wee matter of results. They have gotten better, typified by the contrast between those two Fulham games. Against a team fighting for its top flight survival, the Reds sailed serenely past them in a manner befitting their status. Even without Torres. The Champions League is still on at the time of writing, something that would have seemed fanciful a few months back had we been told that Inter and Arsenal were the first and second hurdles to be overcome. Should Big Ears have the other Big Ears for company next year, all will be forgiven. Even if that doesn’t happen, Rafa has earned another shot at redemption.

The Root of All Evil

When it emerged there was a shortfall – not that €140,000 could ever be described as ‘short’, expect perhaps to the HSE – in the funds of the Waterford County Board, I decided not to comment until I had something original to contribute. This was always going to be difficult as, oddly enough, I felt no urge to come up ever more tiresome variations on Waterford laying down non-refundable deposits on tickets / hotels / t-shirts / Animal dolls for an appearance in the All-Ireland final. Ho ho, very satirical.

Then news broke of Denis Hanrahan’s death, and such discretion seemed particularly (if fortuitously) valorous.

Still, there are implications over what has happened to the money in Waterford GAA which could have a profound impact on the GAA as a whole, implications that can be addressed independently of any ghoulish voyeurism over Mr Hanrahan’s heartbreaking fate and any involvement he may have had in the whole affair. For it is surely a fact that the money is missing, even if it is currently only ‘resting in an account’ somewhere.

The implications were rammed home by a tale relayed to me by a person of no standing in the GAA but quite a bit of standing in our community as a whole, a tale about someone who is of standing in both. It is not necessary to demonstrate the truth of the story as the fact that such a scenario is both possible and plausible is enough to send a shiver down the spine of anyone involved in the GAA.

The scenario involves the Déise Draw, a scheme set up with some success in the early 90’s to boost County Board coffers. For a tenner a month you were entered into a mega draw and knew that a fiver of the money would go to the running of Waterford GAA in general and a fiver to the club in whom you invested your ticket. In this tale, the person of some standing simply pocketed the money due to the club, reasoning that while someone in the County Board might question why the amount offered to them didn’t match the amount of tickets being entered into the draw, no one in the club was likely to.

As it happened, someone obviously did question this particular piece of larceny because it came to court in the end to retrieve the monies, so no harm done in the short term. But even if one could discount it as a one-off incident with a straight face, it shows how unprepared the structure of the GAA is for the large swathes of cash that have flooded into the game in recent years. No doubt Croke Park (the bods who run the GAA) has scrupulously audited accounts for the revenue from Croke Park (the ground) and television, so that’s not the problem. The problem is that the costs of running a county team and demands for decent facilities have increased way ahead of the rate of inflation, leading to increasingly elaborate (and lucrative) revenue sources, such as the Déise Draw. People once used to picking the washers and the pesetas out of church gate collections are now receiving €50 notes by the bundle. The amateur structure of the GAA isn’t designed to cope with the massive audit system that is required for people to have faith in the system as a whole. A new level of bureaucracy could be shoehorned in, something that a) no one likes and b) would need some degree of professional accreditation, which is going to cost money which will need an additional revenue stream which will lead to more questions about quis custodiet ipsos custodes and so on and so forth . . .

With all of that in mind, the suggestion was made over at AFR that incidents like these might make it trickier to deny the demands of players – certain players – for a slice of the pie. And when you think of it in terms of enriching accountants to keep the oft-referenced amateur GAA official honest, it’s increasingly difficult to see how they can be denied. Perhaps it’s an extrapolation too far to see this as the tipping point in the semi-professionalism of the GAA, but it shows the corrosive effect money has on the coherence of any organisation. Speaking to a rugger bugger recently, he acknowledged that clubs were selling international tickets to the corporate sector reasoning that “everyone has to be paid these days”. Money is not the root of all evil, the love of money is. There’s so much more of it to love in sport nowadays though.

The Tipperary Post

Quite a weekend for Tipperary, winning the National Hurling League title to bring to an end a famine (ahem) that has lingered since Waterford beat their supposedly all-conquering team in the 2002 Munster final (just how gratuitous was that link?) “Skill, Honour And Tradition you just cant beat it” thundered a Tipp poster on AFR, which leads one to ask which of those three they were missing for the last seven years. Answers on a postcard. Tipp looked rather tasty, especially in the way they coped with Galway’s late onslaught, so it’s probably for the best for Waterford that they are on the opposite site of the Munster championship draw. Hopefully Cork and Tipperary knock lumps out of each other.

More sensational was Tipperary’s promotion to Division Three of the National Football League, aided and abetted by Waterford’s victory in Antrim. Apropos a previous missive, it was hardly that much of a shock that Waterford won as the team have been extremely competitive, but it’s still noteworthy and a great boost for counties like Waterford that can seriously dream about being divisionally mobile in football. While it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Waterford were a kick of the ball against Tipperary from securing promotion themselves – one wonders whether Waterford would have been so freewheeling against Antrim had promotion been at stake – it’s certainly been a tremendous year for Waterford football, and great credit is due to all concerned. When the Cork strike debacle was at its hottest, many a Cork person was scoffing that the system of having the County Board selecting a manager’s mentors only applied in Waterford football, to which it can now be said “and your point is?”

It wasn’t all parades and rose petals for Tipperary this weekend but hey, you can’t win ‘em all.

De La Salle Waterford, All-Ireland Champions 2008

Another game, another title for De La Salle. Remember when winning the Harty Cup was a scarcely conceivable target for Waterford hurling? Going forward, you cling to the truth that a) 13 of the 15 players are from Waterford, and b) all the evidence suggests they fear no one, twice coming out on the right side of one point games in the All-Ireland final against our betters in Kilkenny and Tipperary respectively.

And yet, it is important to celebrate it for what it is now: a Waterford team of any stripe winning a senior hurling All-Ireland. Even if none of this team graduate to the inter-county senior ranks, they have done us all proud and should be able to enjoy the plaudits without being pressurised into being the next Great White Hope of Waterford hurling.

Fire AN RTÉ-Hack

One of the most amusing places on the web is Fire Joe Morgan, a site dedicated to skewering lazy hackery in the world of sports journalism. The site is motivated by the tiresome windbag-ery of retired baseball legend Joe Morgan, a pundit who thinks that ‘heart’ and ‘guts’ are more important attributes than, I don’t know, hitting a baseball really well or regularly striking hitters out. The site generally sticks to baseball but occasionally casts its net wider, and it came to mind when reading RTÉ’s potted match report on Waterford’s heartbreaking loss to Tipperary in the National Football League today:

TIPPERARY 2-08 WATERFORD 1-10, Dungarvan

Barry Grogan saved Tipperary’s blushes as the Premier county stole a late victory at Dungarvan.

Grogan’s injury-time goal ensured the visitors finished as one-point winners.

A wind assisted Waterford made the best use of possession in the early stages and led by 0-06 to 0-03 at the interval.

A goal from Eddie Rockett on the restart ensured a home win looked likely but Tipp responded well to this pressure in defence and attack.

Now, I admit I’m no expert on the machinations of Division 4 of the NFL. But did Tipperary really go into this match thinking that they’d easily roll over a home team coming off the back of a great win over Carlow last week? I doubt it, which means this lazy report based on a clear pre-conception that Waterford are the division’s bunnies is exactly the kind of thing that FJM loves to dissect. No promotion for Waterford this year, but the answer to the question posed last week is a definite ‘yes’.

Ridiculous in its sublimity

There must have been quite a debate in the boardroom of TG4 as to what to call their flagship Gaelic games programme. This discussion was clearly won by those who felt calling it CLG Beo might have confused people – very, very confused – flicking past who are unaware of what the Irish is for ‘GAA’. And if only one person stuck with TG4 today because of this, then it was worth it as they saw De La Salle and Thurles CBS serve up a tremendously entertaining clash in Nowlan Park, the game finishing level after extra time. Having thoroughly enjoyed last weekend’s camogie match as well, it shows that even the lowest hurling match is more pulsating to my sensibilities than just about anything any other sport can provide. Let’s hope DLS make it a bit less entertaining next time round by just walking all over Thurles.

Why Are We Waiting?

As a follow up to the issue of what to make of the shenanigans between Waterford and Clare in 1998, the question arose on AFR as to why a talented group of hurlers like Waterford have failed to even reach an All-Ireland final, let alone win one.

As usual in these situations, it’s a combination of things. The issue that needs to be addressed first, as it invariably leads to accusations of sour grapes from the supporters of other counties (ahem), is the strength of the opposition. Waterford seem to be cursed to have at least two of the Big Three at the peak of their powers at the point when Waterford are at their most fecund. Perhaps the greatest Tipperary team ever were plying their trade when the Waterford team of the late 50’s and early 60’s were wowing the hurling world with the sparkling brand of first time stickwork. While Waterford would have the small satisfaction of preventing Tipp winning five All-Irelands on the bounce (Waterford’s win in the 1963 Munster final was the only match they’d lose between 1960 and 1964), they limited Waterford to only three Munster titles, and Waterford were fortunate not to lose all three All-Ireland appearances against Kilkenny, winning in 1959 only after a last-minute goal secured a replay. The current Waterford team have had to endure multiple All-Ireland winning outfits from Kilkenny and Cork, something that stands in stark contrast to Clare’s successes in the 1990’s (as I said, potential for sour grapes). Between 1995 and 1998 Kilkenny were probably the third best county in Leinster. Meanwhile Cork, going through a period of the internecine warfare that occasionally seems to bedevil a county that has it too easy, were being beaten out the gate by Limerick in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, a venue where they hadn’t lost a single Championship match since its opening in 1977. Bear that in mind should you come across quotes from Ger Loughnane bragging about beating Cork, Tipp and Kilkenny all in the same year.

With the weasel-minded cribbing out of the way, let’s look at the things which are less comforting from a Waterford point of view. We’ve been blessed with a surfeit of resources in many areas of the field, regularly producing half back combinations to strike fear into opposition hearts – how fortunate were we to be able to replace a legend like Fergal Hartley with a legend like Ken McGrath – and free scoring forwards have not been a problem either. We could even afford to do without Ken McGrath up front. But while the spine of the team has been broadly robust, the base of the spine has not. It pains me to single out individuals. Those who have tried to fill the goalkeeper and full back positions are the best in the positions at that time, and no one could (or should) accuse them of not giving it their all. You can’t get away though from the fact that opposition teams consistently consider Waterford to be vulnerable around the square, and this has proved fatal at various junctures in recent times. It’s hard to know what is to be done – it’s not as if you can whistle down the nearest coal mine and up pops a full (half) back – but it’s impossible to ignore how much, but for all-too-brief Indian summer from Seán Cullinane, of a problem position this has been for us.

Then there’s the issue that is routinely flung at us in an ad hominem fashion like so much dung, that of lacking ‘bottle’. Steve Archibald is attributed the classic quote that “team spirit is an illusion only seen in victory”. He could just as easily be talking about confidence, a boast used by sportsmen and women just after they have won. It would be foolish to be dismissive of the travails that have blighted Waterford’s recent progress. The difficulty presented by a lack of confidence in Waterford was best illustrated in and 2003 when we were mugged by Wexford in Nowlan Park, leading to scornful comments from one of the Larrys (can’t remember if it was Murphy or O’Gorman) to the effect that “you always feel you have a chance with Waterford”. Just because you can’t quantify it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

And it is the likely pickle that we would face were we to meet the might of Wexford that illustrates perfectly why Waterford have not won the All-Ireland. The fig leaf of the back door has made it look easier to win the All-Ireland, and it was frustrating to watch Kilkenny and Cork clash in September while their provincial championship conquerors were left kicking their heels. I wouldn’t go back to the old system though as the promise of at least a couple of matches in the summer makes minnows like Waterford try that little bit harder in preparation knowing all those training sessions won’t be so much wasted effort come the end of June. And despite the back door, you still need to plan on winning four matches on the bounce against top counties if you are going to win the All-Ireland. It can be done in less, as Offaly (1998) and Cork (2002) illustrated, but they were teams that had already demonstrated a capacity to win four championship matches in a row. Some might argue that Kilkenny’s wins over Offaly, Wexford and Wexford again last year don’t represent wins over ‘top’ counties. But could you see Waterford rolling those teams over in the manner that the Cats do? As long as Waterford can’t anticipate doing this, we can’t claim to be great team who are underachieving, more a decent side whose three Munster titles and one National League thus far is as good as it gets, or even a bit more than we deserve.

Roy Evans was great in his time as Liverpool manager for saying that all the team needed was consistency. The thing is, consistency is not a cause of greatness in a sports team, it’s a symptom. A symptom of their relative superiority over their opponents, a symptom of their strength in all areas of the pitch, a symptom of their mental robustness, a symptom of their physical fitness to do it over a long season. It is not something you can train (“right lads, we’re going to work on your consistency”). It is the product of talent and preparation. And the harsh reality is that Waterford over the last decade have been lacking in one or both of those things.

Not that I mind that much. For the previous twenty years of my life they were lacking in just about everything. Should this generation of Waterford players have passsed their zenith, and the signs last Sunday against Liam Sheedy’s young Turks were not encouraging, then it will have been a point higher than I ever dreamed they could reach. It will be a pity if we don’t reach the ultimate destination, but the journey has been a thrill a minute.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good: allow me to say I told you so. Dave Bennett started today’s match against Tipperary – was Eoin Kelly injured or was this the reverse of the referenced jiggery-pokery with team selections so beloved of Justin McCarthy – and put in a flawless performance with the dead ball, one point from way out the field being particularly special. Surely he has to start in the Championship after this. Right?

The Bad: ruminating over what to say about the camogie match yesterday, I decided to keep it simple rather than commenting on events – again, you don’t want to be seen as pervy. So I have spared myself the embarrassment of pompously observing that I knew St Mary’s had it in the bag once scores were level at half time with the benefit of the strong wind to come in the second half. Waterford were only four points down at the break having conceded a slightly unlucky goal just before half time, but I was sure that this was a good place to be in with a huge wind advantage in the second half. I was, of course, wrong as Tipperary managed to win the second half too, with only some heroic goal keeping from Clinton Hennessy right at the end kept Eoin Kelly from making it embarrassing. I remember Ger Henderson, commenting in his capacity as a Kilkenny selector, on his team’s inability to make much of a first half gale in an All-Ireland semi final (I think it was 1999) and not really being bothered, reasoning that the wind can be a hindrance as well as a help, especially when it’s so blustery. This is fair enough, but Waterford barely made Tipp work for it today, and once they got four points up again having had the gap reduced to one midway trough the half thanks to Bennett, you could sense it was curtains for a team that didn’t threaten Brendan Cummins’ goal once during the game

The Ugly: Ken McGrath’s bashed-in pumpkin face. Only joking, Ken. Against Dublin, Dan Shanahan’s form was the source of a furrowed brow, but I reasoned that he’d come good for the summer. Against Cork, headaches ensued as he put in an anonymous performance. Today saw the onset of a full-blown migraine as he huffed and puffed to no effect whatsoever, yet still managed to stay on the pitch for 70 minutes, thus teaching us nothing about the forwards languishing on the bench. Dan still might turn it on for the Championship, but it’s hard to believe his form is like a tap. We’re going to need him to do Clare again if we’re to progress.

St Mary’s New Ross, All-Ireland Champions 2008

Yesterday I got to see a camogie match for the first time ever as my wife’s school, St Mary’s (or ‘the Mercy’ as they universally refer to it) took on St MacNissi’s College, Garron Tower, from Antrim in the All-Ireland Junior Colleges C final at Naomh Peregrines in Blanchardstown. The Mercy emerged victorious on a scoreline of 3-4 (13) to 2-2 (8). No photos of this event are available on this site for fear of being accused of being a paediatrician. Well done to all concerned.