Summertime blues

Kicking people when they are down is never nice, but it’s doubtful that anyone is kicking themselves harder at the moment than the Waterford footballers. For years in both League and Championship we were grateful to Kilkenny for keeping us from the very bottom of the pile. Then something curious happened in 2008. Waterford put together a few wins in the League. All other things being equal, Waterford would have been promoted from Division 4 but for a last minute Tipperary goal. Now, all other thing are not equal and it is unlikely Waterford would have played with the same amount of joie de vivre that saw them beat Antrim in the last round had promotion been at stake. But it was clearly an improvement, and it’s been matched by some excellent performances this year in the League.

To recap: in the League we can compete with Tipperary, now a Division 2 side, and Antrim, this year’s Ulster finalists. So why do things go so badly wrong in the Championship? In 2008 we lost to Clare who had finished way down Division 4 and beaten in the 2007 Munster championship. This year saw a limp performance against Cork followed by a massacre from a Meath team who haven’t being pulling up trees recently. Why do things go wrong? Buggered if I know, but something clearly ain’t right.

Not my province

The 2009 All-Ireland hurling championship starts this weekend, and the marquee game is unquestionably the one in Thurles between Tipperary and Cork. The more interesting one though for those of us who obsess about how the GAA is run is in Portlaoise between Laois and Galway. Taking place at the time of writing, you don’t need to be Nostradamus – or even someone could really predict the future – to see this one is going to end badly for my wee nephew’s county. Still, the prospect of seeing Galway in the mainstream of the championship as opposed to standing outside demanding the mainstream divert itself into their path is a positive development.

This isn’t a cut at the Leinster championship. It is self-evident that the Leinster title lacks the allure of its Munser counterpart, but this isn’t because of an inherent lack of competitiveness – indeed, if lack of competition were a reason to denigrate a tournament, we wouldn’t be bothering with the Liam McCarthy Cup itself. It’s that for those of us willing to defend the centrality of the provincial championships in the All-Ireland series, the absence of Antrim and Galway was a glaring anomaly that needed to be addressed.

I’m unconvinced that any open draw system will make the hurling championship ‘work’. People talk of Champions League-style group stages, but we had that a few years ago in the qualifiers and it was not a success. Waterford whipped the mid-ranking teams then had their fate decided by their efforts against Clare (an away defeat) and Galway (a home win). However devalued the provincial championships might have become by the back door, and there is no point in pretending that there has been no devaluation, there is still a frission of tension generated by competing for trophies with a century-old pedigree. It would be hard to retain any of that in a round-robin format, and the amount of dead rubbers will reach Ireland-Davis-Cup-match proportions.

Of course, that’s not to say the provincial championships are inviolate. If they are so damaged that they can’t be fixed, it would be time to replace them. Even the Railway Cups had to put out of their misery. Hopefully the fix getting its first run today will prove sufficiently robust to keep these venerable old competitions on the road.

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.

Confidence stroke arrogance

After pausing to give oneself a quiet bualadh bos for parsing the De La Salle – Cushendall match correctly – it’d be tough, but a Waterford team is not going to lose its nerve against an Antrim team – let’s dig a bit deeper into that analysis. Post match, there were two interviews on TG4 which reflect this dispensation. Brian Phelan isn’t known as the Bull for nothing, and he let the cat out of the bag by effectively saying that Cushendall were a tougher challenge than he expected. When the interviewer playfully suggested that DLS may have underestimated their opponents, the look of panic that swept across his face was priceless. Rule No 1 of engaging with the media (known as the Babs rule): never admit to thinking your opponents are anything less than equals. No, he replied, we didn’t underestimate them, and the set of his jaw told us that this line of questioning was at an end.

A slightly more sophisticated point of view came from John Mullane. After the obligatory knew it would be tough etc (see Babs rule), he was asked whether he felt sorry for a club enduring a seventh fall at the penultimate All-Ireland hurdle. Having endured five All-Ireland semi-final defeats with Waterford (I’m sure he was present  in Croke Park in ‘98 – shure didn’t we all feel it like we had played that day), he was not going to muster any faux-sympathy for Cushendall. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles”, sayeth John Almighty.

It does make sense to cover your ass by following the Babs rule. John Mullane probably knows that better than anyone when a casual comment about a potential September meeting with Kilkenny was pounced upon by Richie Bennis. But surely there’s got to be a point where privately Waterford teams have got to start believing that they can whip anyone and everyone we play. Otherwise, defeatist thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Feeling relief that DLS won’t be meeting the best that Kilkenny has to offer, like I did when I heard Portumna had beaten Ballyhale Shamrocks, is deranged. Portumna, by dint of hammering Ballyhale and being the defending champions, are clearly a far more formidable outfit. Yet even after breaking it down like that, I still feel happier to be facing them than any Cat. With an attitude like that, we’re never going to beat Kilkenny at anything. Hopefully the public spirit of Brian Phelan exists in private too.

You learn a new thing every day

During the week I received an all-too-rare comment, a post from HURLER saying that “Ruairi Og will hurl you’s off the park on sunday…” After getting over the initial sarky amusement that someone had homed in on a Googled reference to De La Salle (the school) being the All-Ireland champions (last year), I wondered who ‘Ruairi Og’ was, clearly the latest great white dope of Antrim hurling.

Which (and I’m thinking of making this the motto for this website) shows you what I know. Ruairí Óg is the name of Cushendall GAA. There’s a doctrinal thesis out there waiting to be written on the historiography of GAA club names, and a whole chapter could be devoted to why people come up with names that are never used. I’d heard of Cushendall yet I don’t feel one bit embarrassed that I didn’t know their real name (any more than HURLER should feel embarrassed by not knowing the distinction between the two DLS’s, it should be noted). One of the great clubs of recent times, St Mary’s, are known to absolutely no one as that. And my own club trade under the mouthful that is Michael Mac Craith, a name that I’ve only ever seen unaccompanied by the pregnant explanation that it’s Tramore on the clunky old scoreboard that they used to have in Walsh Park.

So will it be Ruairí Óg (Cushendall) or De La Salle (club) winning through on Sunday? Waterford clubs hold no fear for Antrim clubs, as Dunloy demonstrated in beating Mount Sion in 2003. But De La Salle have shown that they are not hamstrung by the demons that have held back Waterford clubs over the years. I’ll stick my neck out – based on the aforementioned lack of nerves and their gradual ascent towards the top meaning their presence here is no fluke, De La Salle to win. Either way, thanks to HURLER for his / her interest, and best of wishes to the good folk of Cushendall.

Lower the blades, lads

Image: Lower The Blades Lads, Paul Downey

It’s been a quiet month here at Come On The Déise, testament to a busy schedule in a new job and a resolute determination to not write about matters unrelated to Waterford GAA during the dog days of December In truth it’s more the former than the latter as I haven’t been following matters in Waterford GAA, which meant I missed Dave Bennett’s excoriating attack on the tactics adopted by Waterford during the All-Ireland final.

What to make of it all? It’s possible that it represents the embittered ramblings of a retired player frustrated that the new regime did not start with the new slate that he might have thought would elevate him past the players plying on their reputation. And certainly Bennett would have reason to be bitter, having been outstanding against Clare only to be dropped after what amounted to a training session against Antrim.

That would only account for why he said it, not what he said. And it isn’t hard to believe that it’s the truth. Davy Fitz would have predicated his attempts to bring Waterford over the All-Ireland finishing line on the basis of trying something different to previous regime – the old line about the definition of stupidity being trying the same thing and expecting a different result. Hence Ken McGrath at full back or the helter skelter handpassing / pivots that dominated the games against Antrim and Offaly. So how were we to manage what no one had done in three years, i.e. beat Kilkenny in the Championship? Well, meeting fire with fire probably seemed like a good idea at the time – at least, it might have done before Waterford players were to be seen bouncing off Kilkenny players like rag dolls.

So it’s entirely believable that Waterford were told to go out and give Kilkenny a bit of timber. But was it really such a big deal that “it was like 12 years of goodwill was wiped out in ten seconds”? At the time, I only noted one example of roughhouse behaviour on the part of a Waterford player, when Kevin Moran could (and probably should) have been given his marching orders. I wonder whether Dave Bennett is confusing the direction of the conversations that took place. A few months on it may seem like everyone who phoned raised the issue with him when it’s more likely that he raised the issue with everyone who phoned him.

Alas poor Antrim, I knew them

You know a critical head of steam has built up behind your point of view when you can talk patent nonsense and get away with it. So it was with Terence ‘Sambo’ McNaughton, the Antrim hurling manager, as he was uncritically quoted in the Star this week saying how the GAA was 125 years old and yet only seven counties have won the All-Ireland.

Perhaps Sambo was misquoted. More likely he was a bit overwrought after a second successive twenty-plus points shellacking, which would be understandable. Either way, it’s simply not true. Twelve counties (thirteen if you include London) have won the All-Ireland senior hurling championship. You might argue that wins for counties like Kerry, Laois and, uh, Waterford are so far back in the dim and distant as to be irrelevant, but the furthest back you have to go to encompass seven different All-Ireland winners is 1988, not 1888. That’s more different winners than have won the English soccer championship in that time. Using this measure, hurling is in rude good health.

The essence of the argument about Antrim’s misfortunes is that the system is uniquely loaded against them. Taken in isolation, this doesn’t stack up. While satisfying the provincial championships makes for a convoluted system, the bottom line is that everyone is guaranteed two championship matches. Antrim might have been able to claim in previous years that they weren’t getting a match against a top team and were completely unprepared when they did face one of them. That excuse is gone now. Having had a good hard match (to put it mildly) against Galway, they couldn’t have been any more ready for last Saturday’s match. Some times you’ve got to accept that you’re just not good enough.

If this all sounds a little mean spirited, you have to look at this rant in the context of the attitude to any shortcomings on Waterford’s part over the years. During the 1980’s the gap between Waterford and Antrim wasn’t that great. Antrim defeated us a few times during that decade and watched as Waterford zoomed past them into Division Three. Yet no one ever pointed out the breathtaking disparity between putting Waterford in at the Munster semi-final stage – semi-final, if the draw was kind to us – while Antrim got straight into the All-Ireland semi-final, of which the only material benefit to humanity was seeing Donal O’Grady deadpanningly predict that Antrim would win the Ulster championship. A single all-the-stars-in-the-heavens-aligned win over Cork in 1989 got Waterford a trip to the Munster final. A single win over Offaly in 1989 got Antrim a trip to the All-Ireland final, a result which earned Sambo an All Star. No disrespect to Sambo, but hurlers like Pat McGrath or Pat Curran never earned All Star awards simply because they were never able to strut their stuff on the telly. Yet no one ever expressed sympathy with Waterford’s station in life.

What is it that Sambo and co want? Before this latest complaint, I would have assumed the solution proposed by Niall Patterson in the interview with him in last Saturday’s programme, to wit the entry of Antrim and Galway into the Leinster championship, would have been acceptable to everyone. It would give them a competitive knockout match in a competition that would only require Galway to pull off one of their occasional thunderous victories over Kilkenny to suddenly become meaningful. If they lost in that they’d get a second chance, just like everyone else. It wouldn’t be very different to what happened this year but at least it would be neater. Reading Sambo’s latest lament though, it seems nothing other than a mulligan until Antrim sink the putt will do.

Waterford 6-18 (36) Antrim 0-15 (15)

“Rugby with sticks”. So sayeth the young disciples of the Calvary Chapel of Tucson, AZ, about the game of hurling that they were doubtless witnessing for the first time (and no, I didn’t in true culchie fashion ask them where they were from and say they were a long way from home and what’s the weather like in Arizona shure it’s a grand soft summer we’re having here . . . I culled their point of origin from a label attached to one of their backpacks. Ignorant but subtle). It’s some trick to stay silent when you hear something as nonsensical as that. The only logic to such a description is the manner in which players cluster around a loose ball is vaguely reminiscent of a scrum. Other than that, hurling bears no resemblance to rugby, but it seems to be obligatory when faced with an unfamiliar sport to stick the rugby label on it.

Having said all that, hurling does share one other thing with rugby, and that is the demands placed on the full back. It’s probably less true than it were back in the day in rugby union as greater mobility among all players means team mates can more effectively get back to assist their last line of defence. But mistakes on the part of the full back routinely have calamitous consequences, and there have routinely been calamitous consequences for Waterford over the years as a result. So maybe the words that uttered from between the pearly white teeth of this particular soldier of Jesus had some resonance after all.

We were told before the game that Davy Fitz was going to gut the team to the point of it being unrecognisable. Having written in the past on the inscrutable nature of Justin McCarthy’s team sheets, it looks like the new era is exactly the same as the old in that regard as a team emerged which any person with no familiarity with events in training would chose. There was one exception – the selection of Ken McGrath at full back (thus explaining that stream of consciousness in the previous couple of paragraphs). The parallels with Seamus Moynihan’s selection in that position for Kerry a number of years back are obvious. Plug the gap in that tricky specialist roll with your best player. Usually the top man goes in at centre back in hurling but with Tony Browne providing able backup in that area of the field and Waterford enjoying a surfeit of talent in the half back line anyway, putting Ken at full back seems in retrospect to be blindingly obvious.

The problem is that on this evidence, Ken McGrath is no full back. The first two balls that came into the full back line were hopelessly overshot, or undershot if you prefer, by Ken. One only has to imagine Henry Shefflin playing opposite to send a shiver down your spinal timbers. Perhaps it’s the different nature of a high ball into the square as opposed to one into the half back line, the former coming in at a lower trajectory than the latter, but whatever it is such balls have got to be meat and drink to a proper full back. Ken’s distribution once he got the ball was typically peerless, rarely doing anything other than picking out his own man at whatever distance. But you wonder whether it was the splendid contribution of Eoin Murphy in the corner that spared Ken’s blushes.

So the one great novelty in team selection could be a bust – it’s impossible to know for certain, and given Waterford’s need to gamble if we are going to win the All-Ireland it’s likely we’ll see it for the next round. There were signs though that a Davy Fitz tactical innovation might reap rewards, and that’s the innovation of actually having a tactic. What has made Waterford so spectacular to watch in recent years has been the freewheeling nature of their hurling. Set against the rigid manner in which, for example, Cork operate, it’s presented quite a fire-and-ice contrast from which the neutral has been the main winner. The evidence of the first game under the new regime suggested that there is to be no off-the-cuff hurling. Get the ball and drive it low and hard into the corners. The first half saw Antrim enjoy oceans of possession as the elements greatly favoured them (playing with the wind in the first half is surely a policy all teams should adopt; the wind definitely died down a bit in the second half) and their shooting was a model of economy. But whenever Waterford got the ball in dangerous positions it went in to the corners, thus pulling the Antrim back line all over the shop and creating the gaps that produced the goal chances. Perhaps I’m reading too much into a weak Antrim back division, and there would be evidence later on for just how weak it was, but the manner of the first two goals – working the ball along the line to Eoin Kelly in space to rattle it home; John Mullane cutting in from the corner before rattling the ball home – said something was at work.

It was just as well that goals were on the menu because the frees were most definitely off. Having championed Dave Bennett’s talents with the dead ball throughout the spring and been psychologically rewarded with a ten point haul against Clare that prevented the defeat being a complete rout, it was disconcerting to watch him miss two easy frees in the opening minutes. It was doubly disconcerting to see Eoin Kelly resume the duties as if Bennett had only been a stop gap. It was triply disconcerting to see Kelly have as little joy. I’m not saying it should be easy to have a recognised free taker . . . actually I am saying it should be easy to have a recognised free taker. No one is expecting players to get all the tough ones but you should be able to routinely knock over the easy frees. It’s regularly stated in rugby – wow, another parallel – that none of them are easy, which is complete rubbish. Straight in front of the posts or slightly to the right of it if you are a right handed hurler, and anything within sixty metres should go straight over the bar. You might argue that it’s simple for someone sitting on their fat arse in the stands to say that, but the reality is that every other county in the country has someone in the team who can do it. Pick one player – and there’s no doubt in my mind that to leave no doubt in his mind about his pre-eminence that it should be Dave Bennett – and get him to practice frees metronomically. And if you say that this is happening anyway and we still can’t make it stick then I truly despair for our chances.

The good news (halleluia!) was that just when Antrim would look like being able to keep up with Waterford, aided in no small part by reliability from frees, they’d ship another goal. Another Mullane foray in from the corner saw the ball fizz across the Antrim goal only for Eoin Kelly to once again fire the ball in from a ridiculously narrow angle, then Antrim failed to deal adequately with a high ball allowing Mullane to pounce and leave Ryan McGarry pounding the ground with frustration in the Antrim goal. At this point I was beginning to wonder about his efficacy between the sticks. Four goals from four goal chances, even four which were effectively one-on-ones, is not a great return for any goalie, and it was only going to get worse . . .

Any chance there might have been of a shock was well gone as the second half began, Antrim’s cause not helped by a point being chalked off the electronic scoreboard at half time having been erroneously added before the end of the first half. Paul Shiels demonstrated early in the second half how it was done even against the wind, but shorn of the extra help that being able to launch an attack with every clearance provided, Antrim were completely pinned back into their own territory. While the wind had died down, the elements played doubly in Waterford’s favour as the wind was still a help and the sodden surface ensured that the diagonal balls were held up to the advantage of the forwards. John Mullane was giving his marker an absolute roasting, scoring two ridiculously precocious points back to back, the first one involving juggling the ball on his hurley while running around the Antrim corner back then smacking the ball on the run over the bar from an acute angle. It was such speed of movement that yielded the fifth goal, a quick exchange of passes between Mullane and Eoin McGrath sent Stephen Molumphy clear and he batted the ball past the Antrim keeper. His misery was completed soon afterwards when Gary Hurney brushed off a few challenges and bore down on goal. His shot wasn’t particularly strong and was straight at the goalie but it still ended up in the back of the net. There was an interview with Niall Patterson in the match programme. How they could have used his (ahem) presence in the goal.

The match petered out to a close with more people have left than were left behind at the end. Kudos, incidentally, to the County Board for having the wit to allow Under 16’s in for free. The remainder of the game was only noteworthy for a few wild pulls from both sides, Eoin Kelly trying to set a record for different jerseys in a match – donning 10, 32 and 33 due to a blood injury – and a bewildering array of late substitutions that had no material impact on the shape of the game. People in Antrim, or at least people who profess to care deeply about hurling in Antrim, will crib about the system being loaded against them and there’s no doubt it was a bit crass to have them travel all the way to the south-east for this fixture. But it would have been crass to have sent Waterford the same distance in the opposite direction – the error was in not having it in a neutral venue – and Antrim have now had two knockout fixtures against top opposition this summer (not that we’ve had a summer). No manner of system can overcome their shortage of top hurlers, any more than any system can make or break Waterford’s All-Ireland chances. At least the new broom gives us hope that there is a grand strategy that can overcome the obstacles. But assuming Cork and Limerick overcome their Leinster opponents in ‘Phase 4′ of the qualifiers, it’s hard to see either quaking in their boots after this showing.

Waterford: Clinton Hennessy, Eoin Murphy, Ken McGrath, Declan Prendergast, (Tom Feeney) Shane O’Sullivan, Tony Browne (Brian Phelan), Jack Kennedy, Michael Walsh (capt.; Richie Foley), Dave Bennett (0-1; Jamie Nagle, 0-2) , Eoin Kelly (2-3, 0-3f), Gary Hurney (1-0; Paul Flynn, 0-1), Stephen Molumphy (1-0), Eoin McGrath (0-5), Dan Shanahan (0-4), John Mullane (2-2)

Antrim – Ryan McGarry, Aaron Graffin, Cormac Donnelly, James McKeague, Ciarán Herron (0-1), Karl McKeegan, Johnny Campbell, Eddie McCloskey, PJ O’Connell (0-2), Shane McNaughton (0-1), Karl Stewart (0-2), Brendan Quinn (0-1), Michael Herron (0-1), Paddy Richmond (capt.), Paul Shiels (0-7, 5f)

HT: Waterford 4-6 ( 18 ) Antrim 0-10 (10)

Referee: Michael Haverty (Galway)

Waterford v Antrim, 5 July 2008

Six of the best

It’s good to see that Waterford do not pay any attention to the dumbasses who think they are incapable to scoring six goals against the likes of Antrim, as David Fitzgerald’s reign got off to a satisfactory start in Walsh Park today. Match report to follow.