Upbeat Déise are just hiding from the truth
WHEN you can’t tell the difference between a wake and a wedding, y ou just know something is not right.
I was invited on Damien Tiernan’s Waterford Local Radio show to discuss Waterford’s Munster hurling final loss to Limerick, along with former Déise county star Fergal Hartley — but the conversation did not roll as I anticipated.
In my time as player and manager, a Munster final post-mortem for the nearest and dearest of the team whose title hopes had expired was a hard listen. People howled at the moon, whether it was about the referee, the team the manager picked or the team he didn’t pick.
Every single play was recalled, fires were lit and reputations were torched, but you made peace with it because the criticism was rooted in disappointment and people were blinded by momentary grief.
You let the talk wash over you and accept that one of the physical side effects of managing a team is that every time you lose, your ears burn.
Liam Cahill would have woken to the gentle strains of a lullaby being sung into his ears last Monday, such was the feelgood factor in Waterford at having only lost by four points to Limerick.
Fergal was in such an upbeat mood, insisting that Waterford might have only lost a game but in the process had laid down a marker for the future.
If so, it’s a future I hope I do not see because I truly believe that with the talent they have in the team, they deserve better.
A week on and I am still struggling to find the source of that optimism. When you took away all the rolling rucks — and in numbers they outstripped what Ireland and Wales managed collectively — Waterford’s main tactic seemed to revolve around pucking the ball out long where, uncontested, it was gathered by Limerick players.
In simpler times, if you gave the ball to the opposition for free, the chances are that you lost. And if you were in charge of a team who did that in a Munster final, you and your loved ones would have been best advised to stay as far away as possible from the radio the following morning, because what they would hear would almost certainly offend.
But instead in Waterford, that performance is deemed to have shown signs of tactical maturity and true grit.
The reality is that they were never in with a chance of winning. Limerick won by four points going on 14. They dictated the rules of engagement and in the end they determined how much they won by, or more to the point, how much Waterford lost by.
True, for 10 second-half minutes Waterford came out and played but then Limerick had their water break, which is — and should not be in terms of the spirit of the game — really a coaching break as they produced their tactical board and hit reset. There was no need for tactics; all they had to be told was wait and Waterford will give you the ball back
And then you listen to The Sunday Game where Henry Shefflin and Brendan Cummins hail the game as an ‘intense’ contest, when it was anything but.
How can it be an intense contest when a ball was not contested inside the 21-yard lines? How was it that Wayne Hutchinson received enough possession to have just one shot at the posts? How did it come to pass that neither goalkeeper felt the weight of the ball once in the whole game, except when they were pucking it out?
Shefflin, playing under Brian Cody, knows what true intensity looks and feels like in a hurling game and if Cummins was still playing in the modern game he lauds, those jaw-dropping reflexes that made him such a celebrated talent would be redundant in a game where going for goal seems to matter no more.
We are seeing this happen all around the country, good players who are being coached i nto mediocrity.
This week, Davy Fitzgerald confirmed he is staying on for a fifth year with Wexford, but I am struggling to see where he can take them.
I like Davy. Personality-wise he is good for our game and there is no doubt he lit a fire under Wexford but it has all but gone out and in overcoaching them, they have forgotten how to play. They have been beaten i nside the opening quarter in back-to-back Championship games for the simple reason the players have become so indoctrinated in systems they have forgotten that you have to get out there and play.
I saw signs of that in Waterford too. Faced with lauded opposition like Limerick, the default position now is to lean on tactics, even if that means hurling without the ball.
Of course, this is playing literally into the hands of the best team in the land, who these days find that the sight of their jerseys is enough to see some opponents cower into the foetal position and hope to avoid a heavy beating.
Teams are literally going out with game-plans designed to lose but not lose big, as if that is some prize in itself.
Waterford are better than that but the danger is that when they find themselves in a contest of equals, they will forget that to win you have to go play.
You might think that is stating the obvious, but in a world flipped where even the lines of winning and losing have become blurred, the obvious is a foreign country right now.
But should Waterford lose to Clare today — and I believe they will — hiding from the truth will no longer be an option.
‘They never had a chance of winning’