‘Elation, relief – and ecstasy’
McGRATH’S ONE VERY HAPPY MAN
EVEN the English teacher in Derek McGrath had difficulty finding just one word to sum up his emotion after a draining, dramatic afternoon in Croke Park. Too much was swirling around his head.
‘Hugely satisfying. It’s a mixture of elation, relief, anticipation now at this stage of what’s to come. All those emotions. Elation, relief, joy, ecstasy. It was everything coming into it and we were able to perform so well. It’s very, very satisfying.’
For the second time in three games, a supposedly defensive side hit four goals. For a side that apparently don’t hit the net enough, they have found it at crucial times this summer.
Dan Shanahan, a constant bundle of energy beside McGrath in front of the Hogan Stand, felt that Waterford’s four goals answered plenty of their critics.
‘We have been getting grief about the sweeper system, but we knew coming here that we had to get goals,’ Shanahan said. ‘We got four and we made three or four other half-chances.
‘The lads deserved this for the work they have put in over a massive four years. Derek has probably put in five, working away behind the scenes before he got the job. They deserved it, especially Tadhg (de Búrca). We said it before the match that he’s done it for us. Now we will do it for him.’
Darragh Fives deputised brilliantly for de Búrca in the sweeper role, with McGrath lauding his contribution as ‘heroic’ but also pointing out that the pair were swapping the role during the National League.
‘Tadhg and Darragh actually alternated the roles up to the league quarter-final. So Darragh was always to be the man who was going to be there. And he did really well. I thought he was really safe near the end, especially when a lot of long balls went in with about 10 minutes to go.
‘He was heroic. It’s a brilliant story for him too because he’s had so much torture with injuries. He didn’t even train this week.’
Shanahan was his usual hyperactive self as McGrath’s runner, although he did get tangled with Cork selector Diarmuid O’Sullivan once or twice.
‘It’s very hard to get your point across to your full-back line or half-back line lads on the opposite side of the field. You have to cross boundaries a bit,’ Shanahan said.
Like his manager, Shanahan didn’t see the incident that led to Conor Gleeson’s red card. ‘I’m doing an Arsene Wenger here but I didn’t see it. I genuinely didn’t. We’ll have a look at it. He’s distraught, absolutely distraught. We tried with Tadhg, we’re going to try with Conor.’
And while Derek McGrath kicked for touch when asked about Galway skipper David Burke’s comments that Waterford won’t win an All-Ireland playing a sweeper, Shanahan showed that they were noted down south.
‘They are the team to beat and their captain has come out and said that Waterford won’t win an All-Ireland with a sweeper. It’s up to them to beat us.’
There were no complaints from the Cork camp, despite seeing two of their players dismissed during a tetchy second-half. And while Waterford seemed to take control after Damien Cahalane was shown red, selector Pat Harnett wasn’t using that as an excuse.
‘The better team won on the day,’ Hartnett accepted. ‘For a period in the second-half when we were two points up, the game got Tussle: Cork’s Shane Kingston and Philip Mahony of Waterford away from us. We wouldn’t like to focus on the red cards.
‘I saw the first one (Cahalane’s yellow). I didn’t see the second. There’s no one more disappointed, but he has been phenomenal all year. I thought he was a genuine leader and these things happen.’
Even though Harnett wasn’t looking for excuses, he did explain that Alan Cadogan had been very sick with a bout of cellulitis prior to the game, while Luke Meade had a fractured finger. And while Kieran Kingston agreed that his side have come a long way this summer, he couldn’t mask his disappointment at the result.
‘We are greedy, we are ambitious. We want to do more than that and we had a right chance of getting to an All-Ireland final,’ the Rebel boss felt.
‘Going in at half-time, we were a point down but we felt that we had mastered the breeze... The game was still to be won.
‘We are confident in the group we have and we felt that we could have won today. It does reflect on the progress we have made. But it doesn’t make it any easier.’
Before signing off for the season, Kingston said that the sudden death of Tony Keady put everything in perspective.
‘It would be remiss of me not to mention Margaret Keady and her family. None of us can be there because of the game, but that puts sport in perspective.’