Something of the night about them

Tuesday night’s match against Shelbourne represented the first real obstacle in my attempts to connect with Waterford United. When living in Liverpool, going to night time matches was a chore. You’d get home, have maybe an hour to wolf down your dinner and perform the multitude of daily tasks that have accrued to any 21st century home owning man – sometimes you’d even have to do the food prep yourself, Goddammit! – before engaging in a madcap charge up to the ground a good ninety minutes before kickoff so you could be sure of getting a decent parking space. Getting away was an exercise in torment as 44,000 people tried to squeeze through the bottlenecks around Anfield. It was always enjoyable when you were in the ground, but there were many times when but for having already laid down £35 for a ticket I’d have stayed at home and played Pro Evolution Soccer.

So forgive me Father for I have sinned – the relief that flooded through me when the match was called off was dangerously close to a mortal one. Admittedly parking and quick getaways are not a problem at the RSC but finishing work at half five, getting back to Tramore, eating without chewing then getting back to Waterford leaves about, ooh, half an hour for me time. How diehards not only do this but actually seem to revel in it . . . perhaps I’m getting old.

It makes you grateful for the more intense nature of the hurling championship, where even the nature of local rivalries means even a devalued-by-the-back-door Munster championship retains its charge. Bundling all the excitement into a few matches allows you to get a ferocious hit and time to enjoy the more tranquil pace of real life. League soccer is often called a marathon, not a sprint. At times it feels more like thirty-something marathons.

Then to put the tin hat on proceedings, I only noticed the Monaghan match was on last night five minutes before kick-off. Like the Blues, I must try harder.

Play on? Play off!

I’ve been convinced for many years now that when it comes to League of Ireland playoffs, no one can screw it up quite like Waterford United. I was certain that at one point back in the 1990’s the only team from the top division to fail to stay up after the playoffs were the Blues – and we’d managed it twice. This is all anecdotal though, so I decided to do some research using that admittedly anecdotal repository, Wikipedia, and this is what I found:

• The Blues lost the first ever promotion/ relegation playoff in 1992/3, going down 5-2 on aggregate to the First Division team Monaghan United.
• The playoff was staged in this format with minimal tweaks each subsequent year until 2003. Of the twelve playoffs, the team in the top flight only lost three times: Athlone Town in 1995/6 and the Blues in that first staging in 1992/3 and in 1999/2000 to Kilkenny City. The Blues almost managed to lose once from the First Division in 1996/7 when they were beaten 3-1 on aggregate by Dundalk.
• There was no playoff in 2004.
• The pattern of Premier beating First was bucked in 2005 when Dublin City beat Shamrock Rovers and restored in 2006 when Dundalk beat – you’ve guessed it – Waterford United. The Blues stayed up though thanks to FAI licencing regulations.
• With the natural order restored, it was just the time for the Blues to buck it again, losing to First Division Finn Harps in the 2007 playoff.

There was no playoff in 2008, which leads us up to the present day. Waterford have been in five playoffs and lost every one of them. Of fifteen stagings of the playoffs, the Premier Division side has survived on ten occasions. A ratio of 2:1 wouldn’t be statistically significant until you consider that three of the five Premier Division losers have been Waterford United. Sometimes, much like England in penalty shootouts, the anecdotes are accurate. Those stuck in the Premier Division mire must be praying for the Blues to reach the playoff.

All shall have prizes (except you)

In chez deiseach, marital bliss is all about compromise. When it comes to English newspapers, I prefer the Guardian and Mrs d prefers the Times. So when we buy an English newspaper, in the spirit of the aforementioned compromise, we buy the Times.

I kid, I kid because I love. In truth the Times is a perfectly decent rag, and one of the best things in it is Daniel Finkelstein’s Fink Tank, an attempt to predict outcomes by the ruthless application of statistics. Finkelstein came to mind when reading extratime.ie’s preview of the First Division run-in.

How so? A while back, Finkelstein observed that the English Football League Championship (the old First Division) is ridiculously hard to predict because of the massive amount of variables involved. Who would have seen at the start of the season the likes of Reading and Ipswich Town languishing at the bottom of the table? Who would have predicted in recent years the likes of Stoke City and Hull City bigging it up at the top, to the point where they could eventually escape the division’s clutches? It is for this reason that Finkelstein felt that the rebranding of the competition as ‘The Championship’ was not ridiculed by all and sundry. The Championship was a serious Competition, unlike the bloatfest that was the English Premier League where only stupendous amounts of Arab money could hope to crack the oligopoly of the Big Four.

With that in mind, observe the preposterously exciting end to the 2009 League of Ireland First Division. Shelbourne, UCD, Sporting Fingal and the Blues are left. One team will win the title. One will be promoted. One will enter the playoff. And one will get nothing. The prizes on offer cover the full range of emotions. It would almost make you care about the eventual outcome.

Update: the promotion opportunities are not as generous as I first thought, with only the champions being automatically promoted. Second and third will play for the right to play the losers of the match between the teams that finished eight and ninth in the Premier Division. The principle remains the same though – there are benefits to finishing second as you get home advantage in the playoff. And winning the title becomes ever more important.

Justice must not only be done, but be seen to be believed

As sports fans go I like to think I’m pretty reasonable, or at least reasonable enough to know the limits of my own reasonableness (er . . . ) The knucklehead mentality that assumes referees are out to get you grates on my nerves. Incompetence is one thing, bias is another. Referees are routinely duped by players yet fans hypocritically blame the man with the whistle – don’t want to have to point the finger of blame at one of your own players when they engage in a spot of on-field thesping, do you?

The performance of Derek Tomney on Saturday should be viewed through this prism. He had two major decisions to make in the first half and as far as everyone in Blue was concerned he got both wrong leading to a tsunami of abuse being poured on his head as he left the pitch. How could he sleep at night? Watching MNS the other night, the answer was ‘pretty soundly’. The first decision, the handball for the free that produced the first goal, was a blatant handball. Sitting where I was it looked like it struck a Bohs player, but it was definitely Kevin Murray. The second decision, the penalty, was much more contentious. Watching it again there was minimal contact between the luckless / foolish Murray and the Bohs forward, and you can almost imagine the Bohs players winking at his team mates as he received their high-fives. But the ref can certainly say with an utterly straight face that it was a penalty. More importantly, what he would have seen in real time would have looked like a penalty. Most of the other decisions he made regarding potential Waterford frees and handbags at five paces were all individually justifiable. Yep, Mr Tomney wouldn’t have needed any sleeping pills that night.

Whether the ref has a record in screwing the Blues is not something I’m qualified to comment on. A less emollient assessment of talents can be found here.

What was extraordinary though is the fact that Derek Tomney is from Dublin. Some might suggest that that’s too much of a GAA perspective, that a fan of (say) Shamrock Rovers is going to love nothing more than putting the boot in to Bohs. And instinctively one must assume that it would be difficult to stage a League of Ireland match if you were to exclude all Dublin refs from matches involving Dublin teams, a point alluded to in this thread.

But difficult isn’t the same as impossible, and the appearance of impropriety is what matters here. Mike Dean was initially selected to referee the 2006 English FA Cup final, but had to be removed when Liverpool ended up getting through because a native of the Wirral was considered to be closer to Liverpool than was comfortable. The nature of the relationship between Liverpool and the Wirral (‘over the water’) is something I am qualified to comment on. In a nutshell, they’re not that close. If a fellow native of Heswall like Jim Bowen can end up supporting Blackburn Rovers, then you can see that the ties that bind the Wirral to Liverpool are not that strong. But the suggestion of impropriety was enough. By allowing Dublin refs to take charge of games involving Dublin teams, the FAI isn’t doing the likes of Derek Tomney any favours.

Waterford United 1-3 Bohemians

I doubt that many people can claim to have been to a final of both the English League Cup and the Irish (FAI) League Cup. So before we look at the Blues’ efforts in the EA Sports Cup, let’s refresh our memories on how Liverpool did when we saw them in the 2003 Worthington Cup.

Hey kids, bet you didn’t know that that Michael Owen played for Liverpool back in the day!

Sticking with the history lesson, the 74,000 people at Cardiff may not have much in common with the 4,000 (?) who were at the RSC. But both competitions have always been the subject of much scorn. The English one was ridiculed as ‘Hardaker’s folly‘ in its early years and things haven’t improved since with a race to the bottom from managers to see how inept a team they can enter. The Irish one doesn’t seem to be much better regarded, a recent blog entry on eleven-a-side.com capturing a certain indifference among the League of Ireland faithful.

For all of that, only one manager – Arsene Wenger – can maintain the indifference when faced with being 90 minutes away from the silverware, and Pat Fenlon couldn’t walk the walk as he decided to field a full strength side (it says here). And while I may not know what players on the Bohemians team would be their top players – God be with the good ol’ days of Gino Lawless – it was the clear from the start, a flying break down the wing which led to a corner, that Bohs were of a different magnitude of quality to St Patrick’s Athletic. Their fans were confident enough to give a rendition of the Fields of bleedin’ Athenry before they had their first real opening, a dubious offside flag saving the Blues from an early goal.

It couldn’t save them for long though. After eight minutes the ball popped up in a melee just outside the Blues penalty area and struck a hand. Initially I thought it was a Bohs player but it wasn’t clear enough for me to be able to contradict the decision to give it the other way (not that that stopped everyone around me). Up stepped Killian Brennan who clipped the ball over the wall and Michael Devine could only help the ball on its way into the net. There wasn’t much pace on the ball and you were left wondering whether Devine could have done better in getting across.

At the risk of being pounded for chastising one of the real stars that are still playing for Waterford, one of the biggest differences between the teams were the goalkeepers. Countless times the Blues would send a well flighted ball into the box, and invariably the ball would stick like glue to Brian Murphy’s gloves – continental coaches don’t put great stock by that kind of thing, their attitude being that they’d rather you punched it rather than taking the risk of dropping the ball into the mix, but when you consider how much cross-channel pundits fetishise being able to catch the ball (“why didn’t he CATCH it?!”) I’m surprised that such a talent on Murphy’s part hasn’t seen Daddy Football League come calling.

Or maybe they have and he doesn’t feel the need to go because he’s already earning big bucks with Bohs, the kind of bucks the Blues can only dream of. Joseph N’Do, who I was informed at half time had played for Cameroon in the World Cup, was having the freedom of the left wing and the Blues were doing well to snuff out much of the neat interplay that was threatening to cut them open, Seamus Long doing particularly well to clear a ball that had pinged up into the air. The Blues were relying completely on set pieces which as mentioned already were being handled by Murphy with aplomb. The only chance the Blues got in the early stages with this tactic was when a defender headed the ball to Vinny O’Sullivan who blazed a difficult chance over the bar.

The desire to carve out those set pieces led to one blatant dive by Vinny O’Sullivan, the non-award of the free kick bringing a cacophony of boos from the Ultras behind us. The inadequacy of referees is a common refrain over on BTID and this seemed to be confirmed a couple of minutes later when a Bohs forward crumpled over the in the box. Now, the moment he got the ball heading away from goal with John Kearney behind my wife leaned forward and said “he’s going to dive!” and down he went. It looked blatant, his knees buckling and arms flying up in the air. Reading reports on the match later on, they all seemed to agree it was a push and a needlessly conceded penalty. At the time though (and not having seen any replays, the feeling still lingers despite those reports) it looked like a dive and I couldn’t believe the ref, who hadn’t fallen for Vinny’s dive, had been duped. Brennan rolled the penalty into the corner and the Blues ‘ goose was cooked.

At this point you feared a massacre. I felt most sorry for the committed fans, not just because it was inherently depressing that the trophy was slipping away but because they must have been yearning for a barnstorming performance to keep the day trippers coming back. The Blues were fortunate not to concede anther penalty not long after the goal, John Kearney going flying over the top and injuring himself in the process. This was more of a penalty than the one that was awarded but the ref stopped play for the ‘injury’. Any feeling of gratitude was snuffed out when the ref insisted the Blues kick the ball back to Bohs. The aura of uselessness clinging to Derek Tomney was emphasised when Dave Warren got involved in some handbags with a Bohs player. Result? Bohs free. Thank for nothing, mate.

You wondered all through whether Bohs had something in reserve. This feeling was heightened when they had a two-on-one break. It should have been a goal but the Bohs forward opted to shot from about thirty yards out. Such self-indulgence would have been punished by a just God. But the universe is unfair, and this was demonstrated moments later when Neale Fenn tried one from a similar distance. It was a decent effort but Devine had it covered all the way – right up to the point of impact when his effort to prevent pushing it over the bar only saw him fall back in to the net and the ball followed him in.

Darn. Couldn’t really exclusively blame the ref now, not that it stopped us at half time (ho ho). The Blues needed to hit the ground running in the second half to prevent an exodus and they certainly started with greater purpose, Graham Cummins shooting over and then earning a corner which was gathered by Murphy. As they threw caution to the wind it was inevitable that they’d leave more gaps at the back though. Kenny ‘Fletch’ Browne’s penchant for side-stepping attackers is handy in situations like this as it unsettles defenders not expecting the ball to be sent back to them so soon. This is great until it goes wrong when it’s not so great. Stephen Grant needed to go hareing to the rescue at one point, and the offside flag / a brilliant Devine save helped out on another. The Bohs fans had found their voice at this stage, which showed that the Blues weren’t doing any lasting damage.

Bohs were content to try and get a fourth on the break and it was going to take something spectacular or a gaff to get Waterford a goal. Willie John Kiely tried the spectacular from a cleared corner, a bicycle kick flying over the bar. John Kearney also tried the spectacular on a few occasions, galloping from defence like he was going to go all the way on his own. It was from such a break that Cummins was able to tee up Vinny O’Sullivan but he blazed his shot over the bar when he really should have scored.

But like Robert the Bruce’s spider, try try try again. Combine a Kearney break with – finally! – some less than authoritative handling from Brian Murphy from a free and you have Kearney playing the ball back in for Kenny Browne to smash the ball home from close range. This should have been the cue for a grandstand finish, and Bohs did wobble for a couple of tantalising minutes. A pile up in the box after a corner eventually led to an opening for Vinny but his shot was well saved by Murphy. Then we had a playground charge towards the box which ended up in what looked like another dive, the sort that probably would have led to a free had a Bohs player done it. Soon after Willie John Kiely found himself in space in the box with his back to goal but he seemed caught in two minds as whether to shoot or lay it off and ended up playing a harmless ball wide. A couple of Waterford headers in injury time rounded it all off comfortably enough for Bohemians in the end.

I was convinced the Blues were going to win before the game. It’s meant to be, innit? The gap between a team who a few months ago were aspiring to play in the group stages of the Champions League and one who, well, had no such aspirations was too great though. Everything needed to go right for the Blues and with unhelpful refs and goalkeeping clangers it was a case of nothing going right. It was a gallant effort, and perhaps the softer opposition in the Cup represent a more realistic prospect. That would be some consolation.

Waterford United v Bohemians, 26 September 2009

The wretched of the earth

Eamonn Sweeney is as curious a hack as there is going. The first time he entered my consciousness was the publication of his book There’s Only One Red Army, a paean of praise to the virtues of following Sligo Rovers. I haven’t read the book, and my kneejerk reaction on reading the reviews was that this would be a typical blast from a chip-on-the-shoulder League of Ireland diehard who can’t understand why the domestic game isn’t carrying all before it and it must be the fault of the beastly GAA with their bog ball and their bog hockey.

Still haven’t read the book, so there’s a remote possibility that my initial prejudices were correct. But they’d be very remote as Sweeney has written some very complimentary things over the years about the GAA in general and Waterford in particular. Indeed his defence of Waterford in the face of Brian Corcoran’s withering comments about us in his autobiography was enough to make a grown man weep. Predictably I haven’t been able to find them online, but the most memorable comment was to the effect that Corcoran may have thought Waterford would try to drag the game down to their level but that Waterford had dragged the game up to a level that Cork couldn’t reach in the 2004 Munster final. I never had any great issue with Corcoran’s comments – one must assume they were what he thought at the time and all you can do is either agree or disagree with the sentiments – but it was nice to see a prominent hack leap to Waterford’s defence.

Having established Sweeney’s credentials as a latter-day sporting Renaissance man, time to plunge the knife. He was writing this week about the attitudes towards the League of Ireland (h/t to FootballPress, not that he’d appreciate it). It’s hard to dispute his central contention, that it’s not enough for certain sports fans to ignore domestic soccer and how many people get a good kick out of giving the League of Ireland a good kick. I’ve done it myself more than once and, having recently observed first-hand the aching sincerity of people following the Blues, can admit to feeling rather guilty about it.

Two things stuck in the craw though. Let’s take the shallowness of following teams in England as a given. It’s certainly true that it is relatively easy given that few people choose to support the bad teams. But if Liverpool FC were to implode and vanish from the earth, Colm Cooper and his ilk wouldn’t turn around and satisfy their love of soccer with . . . well, who would Colm Cooper support in the League of Ireland? Limerick United / City / 37 / FC? Having grown up in a GAA household, albeit one without any trace of supremacism, it never entered the heads of our parents to bring us to soccer matches. Chiding Colm Cooper for hankering after Anfield while not following the domestic game is akin to criticising a Protestant for going to St Peter’s and not getting Mass.

Secondly, and this is the elephant in the League of Ireland room, why is there no questioning of those who now go cross channel where they once went to the likes of Kilcohan Park? While perusing the match programme for the St Patrick’s Athletic game, I was gobsmacked to find that there were five thousand people at the quarter-final against Drogheda United in 1997. Those are the people Eamonn Sweeney should be chasing to account for the gap of at least 4,300 on the match against Pats. You’re unlikely to find them at a league match in Walsh Park.

While it’s reasonable for Eamonn Sweeney to be irritated by those who would “recommend that [the League of Ireland] be liquidated altogether”, some of those people would be genuinely concerned at the seeming death-spiral of professional soccer in Ireland. In their book Why England Lose: and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski noted that people ‘reward success and shun failure‘ (another book I haven’t read. Oh the shame). You don’t have to hate the League of Ireland to propose outlandish schemes to fix it; carrying on the way things are doesn’t look like an option if you want the League to be a success, or at least successful enough that people reward it with their bums on seats.

I’m not pushed. My future presence at the RSC will not be determined by whether Waterford can win things or not. It’s been great craic thus far, but the occasionally rancid contempt in which the GAA is held can be off-putting. Eamonn Sweeney has the experience to straddle the fence. Time will tell whether I’m too long in the tooth to learn this new trick.

Misty water-coloured memories of the way we were

RTÉ made a rare visit to the RSC for the visit of St Pat’s in the FAI Cup (sez he, as if there’s a seat in there with his buttock shape worn in to it), heavily interspersed with recollections of the last time Waterford won the Cup in 1980. Owen Tubbritt of the Independent Blues Supporters Club was there to make sure they didn’t get a collective nosebleed.

As for me? That’s my scalp in the background on 3:38. Couldn’t have done it without me.

Waterford United 1-1 St Patrick’s Athletic

When the FAI and the League of Ireland moved to summer soccer, they would have had days like last night in mind, a splendidly balmy evening in the sunny south-east. If some market research ponytail had canvassed my opinion before the switch, I would have enthusiastically insisted that I’d be a regular at the RSC if only we could get away from the grime of winter.

The problem with this is that going to the game is habit-forming, and there were always going to be people used to the traditional season who were going to be put out, much as the end of terraces in England led to a lot of people opting out of the weekly routine. Lots of other groups emerged to replace the Echo-wielding piss artist (literally). It wasn’t necessarily terraces that put off black people, women and families from going up the ground, but there was a sea change just after Italia ‘90 that increased attendances. The change hasn’t happened here in Ireland as the people that summer soccer was aimed at have stayed away. People like me, I guess.

Still, here I am now. As stated at the beginning, this was the perfect evening for live sport, warm enough that you could do without a jumper until the last few minutes yet no sun in your eyes. Moaning about the crowd, or lack thereof, is a well worn canard at this stage, but last night saw another curiosity. When the match kicked off it was probably the poorest crowd of the three I’ve been to this season, which was a shock when you consider there were a decent number of St Pat’s fans and this was a knockout match. With television cameras loitering around us with intent, it all felt a little exposed. Perhaps I imagined it, but it seemed that  by half-time the numbers had swelled to almost respectable proportions. I’m well familiar with people leaving Anfield early – sometimes after an hour! – but arriving late en masse was a new one.

If people did turn up late, they missed a much improved Blues performance over the effort  over UCD. Midway through the first half, a seven year old in our company asked why the Blues could play so well against Premier Division opponents while struggle against First Division teams. Ah, from the mouth of babes. There was no answer to this eternal question against Pats as the Blues hit them hard from the off. After an initial few exchanges of long ball play, the half settled down into the Blues pushing their opponents back at every opportunity while keeping hold of the ball. Considering the turgid performances in previous games this was refreshingly aggressive from the Blues. One early incident saw Willie John Kiely, goalless since the old King died, harassing the Pats defenders to the point where he managed a small sight of goal but could only blaze over. It was a foreshadow of what was to come after quarter of an hour as some good approach work led to two chances which were both spurned as the player wanted an extra touch. But Pats couldn’t clear it and the ball seemed to bobble just as Kiely hit it on the turn and it flew into the top corner. It was a thoroughly deserved goal, fully justifying the frenetic efforts of the Ultras to make some noise.

Usually it’s the away fans you can rely on to make the most noise, fuelled up as they usually are by the camaraderie of long shared journeys and alcohol, and I went along expecting a rousing performance from the Pats fans. So it was a pleasant surprise to see it was the Blues faithful who were leading the charge. I doubt this is typical, but the presence of a top Dublin club which allowed the fans to deploy an arsenal of anti-Jackeen songs – did you know Inchicore is full of smack? – allied with the presence of the Monday Night Soccer cameras there for a feature on the Blues revved up the committed in the new stand. Ironically, the one moment that was indisputably useable by RTÉ – the amount of bleeping on the other songs might get prohibitive – was missed by the camera man. Cue a hilariously lame attempt to replay the moment at the half time whistle, one that was probably used by Jeff Kenna to ‘inspire’ the players at half time.

Not that they would have needed much inspiration, as despite oceans of possession and a lot of endeavour the Blues didn’t really threaten the Pats goal, and the last five minutes saw the alarm bells ring. Gary Dempsey, former Blue and alleged freetaker extraordinaire, lived up to both the freetaking title and the cliché about returning players – especially pertinent on the day that Emmanuel Adebayor made such an arse (pun unintended) of himself – as he rattled the crossbar with a sweet effort. Then Pats cut Waterford open after some hesitancy in defence and really should have scored, their strikers effort going narrowly wide. Pats started the second half in much the same fashion and a catalogue of clangers almost gifted them the equaliser. Good attacking play down the left found the Waterford forward in no man’s land and he played the ball back towards the halfway line where it was predictably intercepted. The initial attack broke down but Mick Devine sliced the ball to the mulleted Pats forward Ryan Guy who tried to pivot and strike first time when a little more cool was needed and the ball went wide. Way too close a call.

The Blues had stopped the rot by the midway point of the second half though, helped by the rampaging runs of Graham Cummins and some Alan Hansen-esque play in defence from Kenny ‘Fletch’(?) Browne. Pats were still threatening, Guy in particular trying to it all on his own on a few occasions and almost succeeding. Pats would get the equaliser though in an irony-laden fashion. It had superficial similarities to Waterford’s goal, although there was a lot more pinball involved in it, and the aforementioned Adebayor syndrome reared its head as Gary Dempsey was the man to finally smash the ball home from close range.

It hadn’t been coming, but Pats deserved it on the run of play. The big worry now was that the outfit with more full time players would squeeze the life out of the part-timers. It didn’t happen that way and in the end it was the Blues who ended the game on the up, making the keeper work with a free and having a Ginger McLoughlin-style pileup in the box where the ball could have ended up going anywhere. In the end, it was a fair result. Waterford will feel they have missed a boat that doesn’t come around often and you have to wonder given the even nature of the match whether Pats have something in reserve – they have to. For all of that, it was a tremendous evening’s entertainment. You could see yourself caring.

Waterford United 0-1 UCD

Is there a wackier club in any sport than UCD? So poverty-stricken are their supporter numbers that the usual appeals to the referee have an unusual aspect. Early in the game there was a kerfuffle in the Waterford box and the cry of ‘penalty!’ went up. From one person. On the UCD bench. Cue gales of laughter. What a hopeless bunch!

But they can play soccer, or at least they can play it to the extent that they took Waterford to the cleaners last night, the 1-0 result completely flattering the Blues. When UCD deservedly took the lead with 20 minutes to go, sweeping a clearance in to the box for David McMillan to score from close range, the silence in the ground was deafening. You almost felt sorry for the players. Then again, it does mean they don’t have to put up with this.

Having got that dose of self-pity out of the way, it falls to me to ask how the Blues got it so wrong. Talking to people around me, they agreed that the second half of our – can I say that? – win at the Belfield Bowl (?) was one of our best performances of the season. And when Kevin Waters whipped in a cross in the first minute which was frantically cleared by the UCD defence, it looked like Waterford were picking up where they left off. It is not an exaggeration to say that this was as good as it got though.

It started with an effort from forty yards that just cleared the top of Michael Devine’s crossbar. Speaking of Mick – can I say that? – Devine, he has a reputation as being one of the League’s top goalies but I must confess that on the previous occasions I’ve seen him (the notorious Ipswich game and the replay in the FAI Cup against St Pat’s way back in 1999, I think it was), he has dropped the ball right on the toe of the opposition striker. So it was perversely marvellous to see what all the fuss has been about as Devine kept the Blues from being completely stuffed. One save in particular, getting low to his right to save a strike from all of 12 yards out, was the stuff of fantasies. Apart from that there was two flying saves to shots from distance and a firm gathering of the ball under pressure when the defence really should have taken responsibility to deal with it. A flawless performance all round.

Why did he have to be so good though? Liverpool fans are well familiar with the problem of not getting ball wide. For Waterford, the opposite was the case. Everything was either a hoof for Graham Cummins – a sometime centre back it seems – to try and gather or galloping down the wings. The quality of the crosses was uniformly excellent, but it was rather predictable. Compare this with UCD who repeatedly ran at the Blues defence who repeatedly backed off allowing UCD to repeatedly shot from distance forcing Devine into those flying saves and on two occasions seeing shots fizz past the post which everyone was convinced were in. Half time couldn’t come soon enough.

Yep, this was all in the first half. The second half got off to a great start for Waterford when Greg Bolger was sent off for a two-footed tackle. It looked a wee bit harsh at first blush but the manner in which the ref whipped the red card out with venom suggested he may have seen some extra intent in the tackle and conversations later on with people better placed would confirm this.

With rain having made conditions very heavy underfoot this was a good time (not that there’s a bad time) to be a man up. Incredibly though the Blues failed to push on. Indeed there was only one short period in the middle of the half when they kept UCD on the back foot. The only clear cut chance was a fluke, a swirling corner that the UCD goalie flapped at. In the subsequent confusion it looked like the ball had gone in but it was only the goalie trashing around in the net and there were only muted appeals from the Blues. UCD always looked menacing on the break and this was even more apparent after they took the lead, one mazy dribble almost yielding a second goal and generally keeping Waterford pinned back in their own half when they should have being laying siege to UCD’s penalty area. There was one mad scramble late on when the ball somehow stayed out but there was no pattern to Waterford’s play and UCD ran out deserving winners.

So to go back to the beginning: how did the Blues get it so wrong having got it so right in Belfield? I’m tempted to say that UCD learned more from the defeat, adopting a strategy that neutralised whatever it is that Waterford got so right that day. Hopefully Stephen Henderson will have spotted the flaw and react accordingly, because this was a seriously flawed performance.