Warp 30

Say what you will about the Dirty Digger (and you will), Sky+ is a work of genius. Caught between the contradictory impulses to maintain this blog as some kind of semi-serious record of Waterford’s progress and the desire to forget about a sorry result yesterday in sodden Dungarvan, Rupert’s little box of tricks offered a get-out-of-jail-free card – simply rattle through the match at 30x speed. Isn’t everything brilliant?

Actually, it’s surprising what you can glean from such an exercise, especially set against the regular match reports that  consist of umming and aahing between the goals because it’s impossible to create a coherent narrative when you’re wrapped up in the excitement. For a start, the quality was surprisingly good given the monsoon-like conditions. Watching it in fast-forward, there was little enough pulling-and-dragging and the game see-sawed with admirable regularity – perhaps a sign that it was a bit bloodless?

The game was also an advert for those who say that goals decide games. Galway’s goal, coming as it was when the sides were evenly matched, would prove significant. Point-for-point up until then, Waterford began to panic a wee bit when points couldn’t get them any closer to their opponents meaning each subsequent Galway score serving to tighten that logical noose. It was like a basketball match where the losers start going for three pointers allowing the winners to nonchalantly take two-points scores with their precious possession.

That was the impression anyway. Another one though was that Galway would have run away with it but for two very jammy goals. Has a player ever looked more sheepish than Eoin Kelly when the first one went in. Had that been the Championship, or even a League game with much at stake, he probably would have chopped down the posts in an effort to stay psyched up.

So once again we see the League’s capacity to be all things to all men. Win, great. Lose, meh. With relegation only marginally more likely than qualifying for the final, the last two games are going to be even more bloodless. Good luck to Davy Fitz trying to read anything into them. He might be better off watching them on Sky.

I lost my heart to a Galw . . . Berkshire girl

The splitting in recent years of National Hurling League Division 1 into what was effectively two regional groupings has meant we’ve not often had the pleasure of playing Galway recently, so I’ve never had much opportunity to waffle on about my relationship with this most singular of counties. But hey, no time like the present.

Throughout my formative GAA years, no county inspired as much fear and loathing as Galway did. Mostly it was to do with their privileged position in the hurling pecking order. No doubt that team of the late 1980’s was one of the greats of my lifetime. Names like Conor Hayes, Sylvie Linnane, Gerry McInerney, Michael Coleman, Noel Lane and the the peerless Joe Cooney still effortlessly trip off the fingertips. There’s equally no doubt that the system of getting straight through to the All-Ireland semi-final favoured them. Publicly they would proclaim that they’d rather have more matches and were taking on the Leinster / Munster champions without any preparation, but one only had to observe the manner in which Noel Lane felt capable of dropping out of inter-county hurling entirely for the League only to resurface in August to know that they could afford to be complacent. Cyril Farrell would admit many years later (when the system really did militate against them, but more on that shortly) that the public face was a crock, that they knew that success would come eventually when you only had to put together two wins back-to-back, and back-to-back All-Irelands duly followed.

And boy, was I bitter. If only Waterford could have an opening like Galway had, a guaranteed ticket to Croke Park every year – remember the days when playing in Croke Park was a thrill? You can see a relatively (1999) contemporaneous expression of said bitterness here.

Looking back, the anger was quite extraordinary, because a curious thing happened between then and 2000 when we next played Galway in a big knockout match. Here the anger was entirely reserved for Waterford, who had dumped on a splendid run through the  group stages of the League with a performance of breathtaking ineptitude. With Waterford now relatively competitive and Galway a full three hard matches away from Liam McCarthy – any team from Munster or Leinster that used play Antrim in the semi-final in the pre-back door days were ususally no further from the ultimate prize than that – their advantage was being eroded. When further changes to the system meant that eveyone in Munster and Leinster was guaranteed two tough championship matches and could prepare  accordingly, that advantage crumbled completely. Now it was possible to feel almost sorry for them.

Almost, but not quite. A stubborn resistance to entering the provincial championships, seemingly out of some arcane desire of Phelim Murphy (‘Phelim’ is the Galwegian for ‘Frank’) to maintain the status quo, meant they were architects of their own misfortune. Now that they are finally in the mix with the rest of us, it should be finally possible to view them as just another county. Here’s to hoping we give them a standard beating today rather than a stick-that-in-your-pipe-and-smoke-it one.

Back to the future

Tony Browne is back. We’ve managed to cope thus far with the departure of supposedly indispensable players, but you’d want to have a heart of stone not to wobble at the prospect of the retirement of the last member of the Holy Trinity of ‘92. Enjoy every moment of what will surely be his last year; we will never see his like again.

Smells like team spirit

Team spirit is an illusion only glimpsed in victory

Steve Archibald

Davy Fitzgerald’s confession that Waterford may have been sufficiently distracted by the events in the Point (or whatever it’s called these days) to the point that they couldn’t concentrate on the thing that they had gone to Dublin for, i.e. playing Dublin, must rank as one of the great cop-outs of our time. Had Waterford scored a late goal or managed a mere two points extra over the course of 70 minutes then he would have been crowing about the success of their morale-building exercise.

The truth is that Waterford had a bad day at the office, one they could have had whether they consumed a few too many scoops the night before or had retired to bed with a mug of cocoa after the news. Davy’s implication that, all other things being equal, we’d have beaten the Dubs if only the team had not gone to the boxing is a slap in the face to the Dubs and one that will be used for motivation should we meet them in the Championship this year. Then, if we beat them, Dublin will be accused of being too fired up and not focussed on simply playing hurling. And so on and so forth, ad nauseam . . .

And we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those pesky Dubs

Just about every assumption re the League has changed this weekend. Dublin were never going to be a pushover but it’s not unreasonable to expect a team with Waterford’s lofty aspirations to, uh, push them over. 1-11 is a puny total, and with most of it coming from Eoin Kelly you’ve got to wonder what the rest of them were up to. John Mullane’s return can’t come soon enough. There’s  consolation in the performance (or at least what I heard from the few snippets I nervously tuned in to on WLR) of Adrian Power. Oh, and we can keep telling ourselves that Dublin are a genuinely decent outfit. Really.

The bigger problem seems to be that Kilkenny and Tipperary might stride away as everyone else takes points off each other. With the top two going straight into the League final, it’s already out of our hands. Then there’s the wild card that is Cork. Objectively speaking Cork weren’t that great against Clare today. Subjectively (and I say this as someone who was hoping Clare would smack them upside the head; oh, how times change) they were awesome. Not only was any win today impressive in the context of coming at it cold after their self-imposed exile but once again they gave a team a decent lead then reeled them in (see: Galway and Clare in last year’s Championship). With Clare looking adrift at the bottom, it looks like there’s going to be a lot of phony skirmishes in the peleton.

Still, the footballers bounced back well after last week’s shock, and today was never entirely about Waterford. Not a bad weekend overall.

Luck of the Déise

The reason rugby is my second-favourite sport to watch is the sheer intensity of a big match. There’s no hiding place on a rugby pitch, and the manner in which Wales and Ireland collided yesterday would take your breath away.

The match demonstrated just how much sport turns on luck. Daniel Finkelstein does a column for The Times called ‘The Fink Tank’ where some statistics eggheads calculate probability of an outcome in English soccer by seeing what would happen if the match(es) were played millions of times. It’s an idea that really appeals because of my repeated declarations that for minnows to succeed they have got to have one of those days where everything goes right, that one time in a million that you are going to win coming to fruition in reality rather than in a database.

One of Finkelstein’s main themes is that there are not enough matches played in the English Premier League for the eventual winners to be definitively declared the best. Six pointers like matches between Chelsea and Manchester United have a disproportionate weight. And in turn, crazy bounces or borderline refereeing decisions can be decisive.

So it was with Ireland yesterday. Having leapt into a dramatic lead at the start of the second half, the Irish team slowly crumbled under the weight of what they might achieve. The iron discipline they had shown in the first four hundred minutes of the 2009 Six Nations fell apart, and Wales clawed their way back into the lead on the back of some truly farcical penalties, not just the ones that ended up in points but in gifting the ball back to the Taffs when they were under pressure.

Then their luck changed. Stephen Jones, metronomic with his penalties all day, kicked the ball out of play on the full. Can you imagine if Ronan O’Gara had done that? The cries of ‘choker!’ would have been deafening. Yet here was a twice Grand Slam winner committing the most bone-headed error imaginable. It can’t be labelled a choke from someone who has been-there-done-that, so what do you call it?

It was an event. Fate. Stuff happens. Luck. Luck that had deserted Ireland spectacularly in recent times. The most notable occasion was in 2007. A few bizarre applications of the advantage law and a late fumble cost Ireland dear against France. Then Ireland had to wallop Italy to be sure of winning the title. But not knowing how many points were needed as France were playing Scotland much later in the day, they engaged in some kamikaze attacks to eke out one more try and ended up conceding one at the death. Duly France got the points they needed with the last move of the match against the Jocks, in itself a controversial award of a try. A fair minded observer would have said that Ireland were just plum unlucky, but it’s more entertaining in these days where everything is a mind game to put it down to some character flaw. Yes, pressure does make people crack, but a simple twist the other way could have given Ireland the Grand Slam in 2007 and no one would be labelling them chokers. It happened to them yesterday, and that penalty count suddenly seems like everything being under control.

There are lessons for Waterford here (sez he, lamely trying to link a straightforward rugby commentary with a hurling blog). We have been unlucky in recent times. No one can say that we’ve been worse than Cork over the last decade, routinely locking horns with them as equals. Yet their players have got the Celtic crosses and we don’t. We’ve had lucky days too though, like squeezing past a probably superior Tipperary team last year or any number of  ridiculously close wins you could care to recall. We’re going to need to be lucky to win the All-Ireland. The only thing we can do is make sure we’re there when our number comes up.

Blood and belonging

St Patrick’s Day – it’s a bit rubbish, innit? With that de rigeur sneer out of the way, we can dispense with the stuff about rivers of green vomit and admit that sometimes, like with any holiday, St Patrick’s Day can be great. The massacre of De La Salle in Croke Park notwithstanding, last Tuesday was one such great day. The parade in Tramore was a cheerful affair, surprising in a town without much in the way of community spirit and a country mired in the depths of an economic crisis that we thought would never hit us again. It was probably more the sunshine than anything else, but it was nice to see so many smiling faces.

The biggest grin of the day was from my four month old nephew, if you discount the fact that you can hardly grin if you haven’t got any teeth. A few days after the game an image winged its way into my inbox of him catching some rays and generally enjoying the festivities in Port Laoise. Most notable from the perspective of those in chez deiseach was his head gear – a Liverpool woolly hat. Plenty to smile about in the aftermath of last weekend, eh?

After a few flippant thoughts about the life of torment that is ahead of him following the Reds, it struck me that this was nothing compared to the horrors that are likely to be visited upon him if he were to take up the banner of Laois hurling. A life of torture and misfortune if ever there was one, and one that surely could be best avoided by nailing his colours to the mast of Waterford.

Now, a lot can change in two decades. By the time he reaches his majority the roles could be reversed. Anyone born in 1960 would have considered it a no-brainer if they had been given a choice between following Waterford or Offaly. Still, while the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong that’s the way to bet, and the odds are that Waterford will be competitive for a while yet while Laois people will not be piling in with the bookies for their championship prospects.

There may have been a time when everyone supported the county of their birth, but geographical mobility has meant that those times are long gone, if they ever existed in the first place. Growing up in the dormitory town of Tramore where blow-ins were everywhere, it was perfectly normal for your peers to support the county of their forefathers. Indeed I was a Cork supporter of sorts back in the 1980’s, effortlessly switching my interest to the county of my forefathers once Waterford’s participation in the Championship had been terminated. It’s difficult to criticise those who chose to invest full-time in other more successful counties, like the friend who, having been told in 1986 that he could ‘go next year’, admitted to crying on the Croke Park pitch when he finally (ahem) got to share a Sam Maguire success with his fanatical Kerry father in 1997.

It doesn’t stop me though. There’s an overwhelming temptation to scoff at those who don’t match up to a perceived standard of fandom. Supporting Waterford is not easy but you can genuinely draw comfort from that difficulty by congratulating yourself on sticking with it through think and thin – never forget that these days, whatever happens in All-Ireland finals, are firmly on the thick side. On the other side of the coin, reading the recent comment from the proprietor of FootballPress frowning at my concern over the fate of English club Liverpool while not even acknowledging the existence of the team ten kilometres down the road, my gut response was one of immediate defensiveness, a plaintive plea that I can’t invest time in every team in the locality.

The problem for any localism zealot is that any person who supports a team from outside their hinterland can coolly rationalise their choice. Anyone who gives me gyp about following Liverpool will be slapped with the fact that I wouldn’t have met Mrs d were it not for following the Reds. It’s an ex post facto rationalisation – lots of Latin and italics today! – but seeing as it’s only the most important thing in my life, it’s one that does not brook argument. Other people always seem to have a relative or a significant event in their life that makes following an English team not only important but essential.

Then there’s the question of how far localism can go. Surely the primary claim on my soccer affections should be Tramore AFC or Tramore Rangers. Then there’s people in Kilkenny who supported the Blues ahead of the late and unlamented Kilkenny City. Should they be switching their allegiances to their local team when they had the opportunity? Trying to construct a coherent narrative out of team loyalties is an exercise in futility.

So where does all this self-serving rhetoric leave the nephew? It would seem self-evident that he will follow whatever path his father sets out for him, and with my brother being a man of strong passions this should be the case. But there is the caveat of our father’s experiences. A man of a much cooler temperament, he has always eschewed knee-jerk tribalism, regularly haranguing us for our collective lack of sportsmanship. This always moves us to respond that we want our team to win first last and always, and sportsmanship can go to hell – if winning is not important, why keep score? The perverse outcome of these attitudes is that our father now supports Waterford ahead of Cork because he wants to see us happy and sane. I can even see this in my own life. Previously I would have revelled in each and every defeat inflicted on England in all sports. I reject out of hand the idea that this reflects some kind of anti-English bloodlust. It is natural in sport to want to see Goliath brought down, and England are the Goliath in this part of the world. These days though, the memory of Mrs d racing from the room in floods of tears after yet another penalty shoot-out defeat is too much to bear. Sporting loyalties can be transmitted up and across generations as well as down, and it’s not inconceivable that in years to come father will be cheering for Laois against Waterford.

And it would feel perfectly normal.

Got to stop doing this . . .

. . . but I can’t help myself.

Hat tip once again to AnfieldReds.

Change for change’s sake, thankfully

Having recently expressed concern that the Waterford team might become calcified in the quest for League success, it would be remiss not to express approval at the changes to the Waterford team for the match against Dublin this Sunday.

Of Jerome Maher, I know nothing so I will refrain from commenting except to say it is good that someone, anyone, is getting a chance (although Noel Connors may wonder what he has done wrong). Of more interest are the selections right at the heart of the defence. Adrian Power has been earning rave reviews in the Ballyduff Upper goal so it’s about time he made an appearance. Goalkeepers are the stuff of mythology in soccer, which makes sense given the highly specialised role they occupy. This is much less true in Gaelic games where the goalie is a souped-up full back. Despite this, the cult of the goalie seems to have crossed over. Cork have effectively had only two goalies since Ger Cunningham made his debut back in 1981, while the Dublin football netminders are similarly monolithic.  Clinton Hennessy still has first claim on the first shirt, but it’s no harm to keep him guessing.

Then there’s the full back. The relative failure of Tom Feeney to make that position his own shows that being a good hurler does not make you a good full back and one presumes that is the logic underlying playing Kearney there. And it would be entirely correct to note that the selectors collective hand has been forced by the absence of Declan Prendergast. Still, we won’t know if Kearney will make the grade unless we try. The logic of picking him is surely impeccable.

And with that kiss of death, it’s off to Parnell Park we go.

Any Port in a storm

Typical. No sooner than I express an interest in an up-and-coming side than they turn into a down-and-going side. So it is with some trepidation that I approach the prospect of De La Salle becoming the first Waterford team to win the All-Ireland club championship. The consensus is that De La Salle are going to be walloped, and you would be worried that they are overdosing on the awesome while the defending champions have the been-there-done-that mentality so beloved of the likes of Kilkenny.

The assumption that Portumna are invincible is based on their drubbing of Ballyhale. Ballyhale were supposedly similarly unstoppable, ipso facto Kilkenny > Waterford => Ballyhale > De La Salle => Portumna >> De La Salle. QED.

The thing is, this overwhelming superiority of Portumna is based on nothing other than that one game. They didn’t even have opposition in Connacht this year. De La Salle have come through three hard tussles this year and shown admirable nerve in each one. Surely that counts for something?

Okay, that wasn’t too convincing. Think of today’s match this way. If this match were played 100 times, Portumna would win it eighty times. De La Salle have to be convinced that today is one of the twenty. Now let’s do it to them before they do it to us!

Update:

Unfortunately that was all too convincing. The parallels with the All-Ireland final are chilling, and the usual suspects will be all over it like a rash (note to self: avoid Up the Déise like the plague). This post was predicated on the assumption that it was impossible to tell too much from one game. The pundits will doubtless stroke their beards and say that it might be an idea to watch the match first, and they’d be right. Well done to Portumna, and commiserations to De La Salle. It’s been a brilliant year, and ye done yourselves and Waterford proud.