National Hurling League fixtures 2010

Another year, another NHL. Waterford’s fixtures:

Division 1

21.02.10 (Sun)
2.30pm Waterford v Dublin

28.02.10 (Sun)
2.30pm Galway v Waterford

14.03.10 (Sun)
2.30pm Waterford v Limerick

21.03.10 (Sun)
2.30pm Waterford v Cork

28.03.10 (Sun)
2.30pm Tipperary v Waterford

04.04.10 (Sun)
2.30pm Waterford v Offaly

18.04.10 (Sun)
2.30pm Kilkenny v Waterford

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.

Move over, Giles and Dunphy

Given this blog’s utterly cack record in the predictions department, a little bit of forgiveness will need to be sought for bigging up the one observation that looks sound. Paul Flynn’s flat townie drawl and borderline stoner gaze makes him an unlikely candidate to be a successful TV panellist. So credit to RTÉ for giving him a chance, because his penchant for incisive analysis commented upon here shone through last night on Sunday Sport. It was clear he actually watched the game, picking up on important switches and personnel changes. This may sound obvious, but it stood in stark contrast to Michael Duignan’s the-boy-done-good patter. His reference to the 1988 League and how Kilkenny and Tipperary experienced different results in the final from the group stages spoke of either a geek’s love of facts or a willingness to do some research, either (or both) of which will stand him in good stead. With Babs Keating on the radio being his usual garrulous self, it was a good day for hurling comment.

And what of the match? It didn’t seem to matter until it looked like we we were about to dish out a Kilkenny-style beatdown. Then, when Cork began another one of those ridiculous comebacks that have characterised their recent efforts, it suddenly mattered. Of the last five inter-county matches involving the 2008 panel, they gave the opposition a big start on each occasion. Only once – against Kilkenny – did they fail to overhaul said lead. Were we going to be like Galway, Clare (twice) and Limerick before us and succumb to their indomitable spirit (however much you might loathe  the clowns, you have to doff the cap to their never-say-die attitude), or were we going to be like Kilkenny and pile on the pain?

In the end, almost predictably, we were neither. It was good that we leapt out into a 13 point lead, it was bad that we let them back into it, it was good that we held on when the match approached Championship intensity in the last quarter – another thing Paul Flynn had the wit to pick up on. Two steps forward, one step back.

Mine’s a half

As the defeats began to accumulate in recent weeks, it was comforting that the spectre of relegation was well distant. Clare were pointless, Cork were both pointless and toothless, and surely we were not likely to go through each of the matches against the mid-table teams without picking up a single point. We’d be fine.

Such thoughts seemed like so much hubris midway through the first half yesterday. With Cork having rebounded back into contention after their ‘issues’ with two fine wins, Clare’s lead over Dublin  and Limerick’s over Waterford, things suddenly looked ominous.

First port of call was double-checking how many teams would be relegated. Just the one, according to that bastion of The Truth In The News, Wikipedia. Subsequent checks in more reputable sources like the GAA’s official website (shome mishtake shurely) confirmed this. This didn’t completely eradicate fears of playing the likes of . . . better not name any names in case it returns to haunt us . . . in Division Two next season. So it was a relief to check the table and see that Clare’s points difference was -32 and Waterford’s was zero. They’d have to win each of their remainng two games by eight points and we’d have to lose ours by the same amount just for them to draw.

All that became irrelevant when Dublin secured a draw with the Banner, but it’s awful that a League campaign that should have been engergised by the win over Kilkenny petered out so badly that I was reduced to getting out the abacus to be confident of top flight matches next season. At least the match against Cork should prove to be more competitive as they try to demonstrate that massacre at Kilkenny hands – bigger than our All-Ireland final defeat! – was a blip. Unless, of course, they’ve decided that they can’t work with Denis Walsh.

Return of the Mac

The meeja often get criticised for whipping up storms of indignation where none would otherwise exist. Conflict is grist to the mill of your average hack. Which makes it all the more impressive that Justin McCarthy has kept his counsel on the manner in which he was frog-marched out of the county on which he had lavished such riches. When you see the understandable manner in which Gerald McCarthy lashed out at those who traduced him in the recent strike in Cork, it makes Justin’s silence all the more remarkable – and classy.

This is not to say that I’d rather that Justin was still in the Waterford hot seat. His time had run his course, and like many a successful manager before him the ideas that had invigorated players at first seemed stale nearly seven years on. The manner in which he left still sticks in the craw though. Having hit the ground running in previous stints with Antrim, Clare, Cork and Waterford, it doesn’t seem fanciful to think he could do the same with Limerick, All-Ireland finalists a mere two years ago. If he does, the stick the Waterford panel will receive will be merciless. The only consolation would be that Justin won’t be the type to rub salt into the wounds.

First is first, second isn’t too bad either

Chapter and verse has been written up and down the land on the antics of one Kevin Myers over the years. You can Google his name if you want to find the various assaults on his output over the years, so I’ll just limit myself to observing that Myers is the classic example of someone who thinks they are engaging in straight-talking when they are really being pig-ignorant.

A recent missive from the bould Kevin caught my eye only because it was highlighted on An Fear Rua. He was rather scornful of the hoopla surrounding Ireland’s Grand Slam success because no-one outside of Ireland gives a monkeys. It seems that:

Even if you asked an average Englishman or Frenchman, with a reasonable interest in rugby, which team won this year’s rugby Grand Slam, they might possibly know today, (though I doubt it, for their countries notoriously take an interest only in their own sporting achievements) but they certainly won’t by next Saturday.

I find it hard to believe that anyone with a ‘reasonable’ interest in the sport would not know this. I would ‘fess to only having a passing intererst in American sports yet I could effortlessly tell you who won last season’s Super Bowl, World Series and NBA (would struggle with the NHL – but that’s only the second biggest NHL in the world). But even if it were true, it would only serve to demonstrate the increasingly twisted value system we have when it comes to sport where the big prize is the only thing that matters.

This is pertinent in the context of Waterford. We spent years hacking away in the trenches winning absolutely naff all, then when we finally get some success in Munster and the National League it gets belittled by all and sundry because it isn’t the All-Ireland. It’s not just trolls from Tipperary who think this way. Many Waterford folk seem to subscribe to the idea attributed to Bill Shankly that ‘first is first, second is nowhere’.

Was this attitude always so prevalent? Perhaps the mind is playing tricks on me in my dotage, but having been present before the platform when John Treacy brought home an Olympic silver medal from Los Angeles, I think we were not always so Manichean. At the risk of sounding Zen, people could do with lowering their expectations from their team. Or better still, from hacks.

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 . . .