The man with Plan B and C
FOR a manager who makes no bones about his fascination with detail, Derek McGrath is still clear- headed enough to see the bottom line. He is bracing himself tomorrow for his biggest test, taking on a Tipperary team in Thurles that are shaping up for what has the feel of a defining season under Eamon O’Shea.
On his side, he will put the only unbeaten inter- county record in the land on the line and when it’s all over he will steel himself for the post mortem, whoever’s corpse ends up on the cutting table.
The irony is that the man who has been credited with gifting Waterford such tactical nous, has grown weary of those armed with hindsight and equipped with the belief that 70 minutes of ball can cough up reason by shining a light into every crevice, no matter how abstract.
‘If you listened to some of the analysis of the 2008 All-Ireland final, it was all about “the Waterford warm-up was terrible, they were dropping balls, blah blah... they had two open nights and
lost the run of themselves. They shouldn’t have gone up on the Saturday night”.
‘All those things are retrospective. If we hit the ground running on Sunday it’ll be, “ah, the warm-up was great, I knew by the warm-up”.
‘It’s mad. If Tipp win it’ll be because they’re better and it will be the same if we win,’ says McGrath.
If that is stating the obvious, he probably feels the need to because his success this season has been used as evidence that the game can be broken down with rulers and protractors, and its moving parts operated by remote control.
That is not to say that Waterford won’t lean on the structure which has allowed them defend in numbers and sting with some effect on the counterattack all season, but even that argues McGrath has been over-played.
More than that, it will most likely be used as a stick to beat them with when they eventually lose.
‘There’s a lot of thought put into it. I am not being disrespectful to people, but we have probably changed it and played differently in different games.
‘We are not the only ones. If you look at Dublin against Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final two years ago they’d a system, but they changed it in the first half of that game, whereby they were fairly conventional, 15 on 15, and they changed back to the old system for the second half.
‘If we lose on Sunday, the common theme afterwards is that there was no plan B, or plan C. The reality is that there is and we try to roll those out in games and training.
‘Maybe people don’t pick up on them, they’re subtle things, but it’s imposing those plans without hamstringing fel- las into being robotic.
‘It’s the decisions they make on the f i eld. It’s not PlayStation,’ says McGrath.
Going with the gut as well as the blackboard extends beyond the pitch and onto the sideline. While McGrath is the driving force behind how the team has changed, along with coach Fintan O’Connor, they also feed off the experience and the hurling intelligence of Dan Shananan.
The latter has played in eight Munster finals, and that offers a perspective that will not always be found on tactic boards.
‘We rely on Dan, that’s the beauty of having someone who’s been there and done it. But he does it in a way that isn’t overwhelming.
‘We defer to him on most things because if you’ve 13 years inter-county experience, three All-Stars, (are) a former Hurler of the Year and Waterford’s record goal-scorer then you have someone who has a finely- tuned instinct for the game.’
That ability to lean on instinct as well as structure crucially extends onto the field, where for all of Waterford’s inexperience — eight players will be starting in their first final tomorrow — the likes of Michael ‘ Brick’ Walsh, Noel Connors and, above all, their captain Kevin Moran, means that they also have an appreciation of the value of thinking on their feet.
While Waterford, most notably Shanahan, bristled at the comparison with the Donegal footballers peddled by some media pundits, the one area it does hold up is in terms of the defined role of the captain.
Just as Michael Murphy has been absorbed into part of the Donegal management team over the past couple of seasons so too has Moran.
‘In terms of his leadership he’s been massive. He’s leading the thing. He empties himself, which is all we want from every player. We’ve been encouraging the collective all year, and so has Kevin.
‘I won’t say that’s a change for him, but there’s a real relationship there between me, Dan, Fintan and Kevin in terms of the message to be conveyed to the lads.’