Enda McEvoy: It is not an equally big match for both sides — Cork simply have to win

The opening of To Kill A Mockingbird, a book Derek McGrath has taught to generations of English scholars at De La Salle secondary school in Waterford, describes how Jem Finch and his sister Scout got the notion to make Boo Radley, their reclusive neighbour, come out.

Out of the house... Not out of any press or wardrobe or similar item therein. The book is set in the 1930s.)

McGrath’s vision of a dead mockingbird tomorrow? It almost certainly goes something along the following lines.

Cork bomb out of the traps in Thurles. Conor Lehane, emboldened to demonstrate he might be something more than merely a very good inter-county player, latches onto a ball 40 metres out and instead of popping his point puts his head down, solos through and takes a belt or two. Rather than going across Stephen O’Keeffe, as Seamus Harnedy did in the first half of the league final, he goes to the near side, high, and hangs the sliotar up in the top corner. The men in red are off to a flier and lead by 1-3 to 0-0 after eight minutes.

Would that be enough to make Waterford come out? Probably not. It would tilt the early dynamic but it wouldn’t make them lose their heads and abandon the principles that have got them so far so quickly. Tipp shredded their defensive duvet in the opening10 minutes at Nowlan Park and it didn’t take a feather out of them. They kept their poise and their patience and made their forward sallies on their own terms. Two victories later, imagine how engrained in the game plan is the faith of the Waterford players.

If Cork are leading by six entering the closing 10 minutes, well, that’ll be a different story. The league champions will have to get bodies up the field, with obvious consequences for their security close to home.

Up till then, however, Waterford will do what they’ve been doing all year. Maintaining an overload in defence, inserting bodies at the breakdown and getting over the sliotar in the rucks. The challenge for Cork, then, is two-headed. Break even in the close-quarter stuff. Then negotiate their way through the ranks of white jerseys as if crossing a stream via stepping stones.

It’s as much an intellectual puzzle as anything else and Jimmy Barry-Murphy had better have devised some sort of an answer, not least because he sat the mocks five weeks ago. He failed comprehensively, but now he has some idea about the paper he’s required to sit.

The task isn’t so much tactical as logistical. It involves transporting the sliotar and the bodies into the right areas of the field to hurt Waterford and its solution cannot entail Cork’s spare man hitting the ball to Tadhg De Burca and De Burca returning it with interest.

There will no excuses for Cork tomorrow. There cannot possibly be. They’ve been inside the gates and had a tour of the grounds. They know that Austin Gleeson will try and pull strings from right-half back and have the occasional pop from range. They’re aware Colin Dunford will venture forward from the right side of midfield, simultaneously guard and intruder.

They’ve seen how Maurice Shanahan shows for long deliveries from the back. Being forewarned, they have to be forearmed.

It is not an equally big match for both sides. Cork simply have to win. There is no way around this.

Lose here and Waterford will process it, get over it, rearrange the furniture as needs be and move on. The season will still be a resounding triumph and Derek McGrath will still, barring an All-Ireland victory for Limerick or Wexford or Galway, be hurling manager of the year.

A Cork defeat, on the other hand, and it’s all over bar the shouting. They’ll putter along for another few weeks, maybe even for another month or two, but eventually they’ll be put out of their misery.

Of late it’s as though they’re governed by some modern corollary of one of Newton’s laws. For every step forward there’s an equal and almost instant step backwards. Thus 2013 with its two September outings was followed by 2014. Thus the 2014 provincial victory was immediately followed by the All-Ireland semi-final fiasco. Thus this year’s league semi-final was promptly followed by the league final.

Looking on the bright side, what they do have going for them here is a trend that’s been another pattern during JBM’s second coming. By and large Cork win the matches they’re entitled to win. They don’t punch above their weight but — excepting the league final and last August against Tipp — they don’t punch below it either. They usually score enough to give themselves a shout, and when the game is an open game they’ll score more than that.

That said, they cannot expect Waterford not to have a Plan B. McGrath’s side will surely set up the same way they set up in the league final. Equally, they surely won’t be slow about changing it if needs be, for the stamp of Waterford this season has been their flexibility. Their system doesn’t prevent them hurling. On the contrary: It frees them to hurl.

Some other observations. A magnificent and monstrous article recently on the 1982 World Cup semi-final between West Germany and France in Seville described that French team, brilliantly, as “an orchestra missing a bass section. Highly strung, enigmatic, delightful at times — if perhaps incapable of a required discipline — but that only added to their attraction.”

Remind you of another team we once knew in another code? Yeah, course it does. The author might as well have been writing about the Waterford team of the noughties. He couldn’t possibly be writing about the county’s current iteration because their bass section is the core of the ensemble. Dunford, Kevin Moran, Jamie Barron, Brick Walsh. Human hives of industry.

While Cork will hurl better than they did in the league final, if only because they cannot be as anaemic again, Waterford have room for improvement themselves. Too often last month they lumped the ball forward quickly and early to nobody. It didn’t matter ultimately but it’ll matter tomorrow.

The Cork forwards mustn’t rush their shots. Against this Waterford outfit every bullet counts.

So much the better if they find their target in the first half when the shape of the game is being moulded.

The Déise hit 1-24 in the league final and drove 15 wides. Create another 39 scoring chances tomorrow and that’ll be that.

Pauric Mahony constitutes a loss not because he was their attack leader (in McGrath’s system there is no attack leader) or because he’s the hunter-gatherer type who carries the sliotar into the heart of the enemy citadel. He’ll be a loss because he was close to remorseless from set pieces. Still, if his understudy registers no more than one wide from placed balls Mahony’s absence will not prove fatal.

To Kill a Mockingbird, incidentally, finishes with Boo Radley coming out of the house alright. With surprising results.

Being a counter-puncher who seeks to win on points, any goal Waterford concede amounts — not literally but morally and existentially — to more than a three-point reverse. Hit two goals tomorrow and Cork will win.