Enda McEvoy: Why Waterford's time has come
Jack Fagan of Waterford in action against Kyle Hayes of Limerick during the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final between Limerick and Waterford at Croke Park. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
Here’s the bit to most look forward to, the unique selling point of Championship 2022. It is almost certain to be a competition with an extraordinary conclusion. You on board now?
Of course you are. What sentient human being could resist the promise of a movie with a closing reel of rainbows and starbursts?
Even money says Limerick will negotiate the leap from greatness to immortality by making it three in a row and four out of five. In today’s currency it would be near enough the equivalent of Kilkenny’s four in a row if not quite their six out of seven. Extraordinary.
The next most likely scenario entails Waterford bringing home the MacCarthy Cup for the first time in 63 years. Knowing what we’ve come to know of Liam Cahill’s team lately, this may not be extraordinary in itself. But it would make for immensely enriching, life-affirming spectating. for the entire nation for a day or two and large bottles all round. Even for Mooncoin folk. (Possibly.) Or Cork will be All-Ireland champions for the first time in 17 years. Okay, not that extraordinary in comparison with the notion of an end to the Déise’s hiatus. But did you see Cork in the league final?
Or even this: Kilkenny or Tipperary, trading respectively at 11/1 and 18/1 in the betting, win out.Â
Their prices indicate that this would be close to extraordinary. How the recently mighty etc.
Here’s another cheering thought. For all that it looks a two-horse race, this is emphatically a marathon rather than a sprint. Two circuits of the course to be negotiated. Five fences to be jumped in Leinster, four in Munster. Four more obstacles, the preliminary quarter-finals included, in the All-Ireland series. Common sense enjoins us to brace for a couple of twists along the way. It is the way of the championship that an early surprise or two can prove catching and send the dominoes falling. The first round-robin championship in three years furthermore furnishes the prospect of a steamer coming up on the blindside. Someone staggering out of their province, reinventing themselves in an All-Ireland quarter-final and surfing the wave from there. Maybe Cork. Maybe Galway.
As for the aforementioned early surprise, how about Tipp travelling to Walsh Park on Easter Sunday, rolling away the stone, rising from the apparent dead and thereby turning Munster upside down? indeed. Upon which Waterford head to the Gaelic Grounds Saturday night week obliged to get a result. Whoa.
Maybe not this weekend. But anticipate a concussion grenade sooner or later.
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Surmising the bill of fare from each of the leading contenders is quickly done.
Limerick? The finest steak, with Chef Kinnerk continually discovering new ways to plate and serve it. If there’s a slight qualm it’s that the range of ingredients he’s employing hasn’t changed much over the past few years.
Waterford? Also steak. Cooked in jig time and served rare by brisk, speedy waiters.
Cork are still a meringue. Sweet, pretty, fluffy. Collapses under the pressure of a knife.
Tipperary? Under new management, so too soon to speculate. There’s plenty of scope, on the other hand, for speculating how successful a chef Brian Lohan might be in Clare had he full control over his own kitchen.
Kilkenny remain meat and potatoes minus all the trimmings. Hearty, sustaining, dull. An imaginative chef would attempt to reinvent the dish. The current guy, multi Michelin starred back in the day, does not seem overly bothered.
As for Galway, same as ever. We don’t know what they’ll serve up, they probably don’t know themselves and they’re potentially more dangerous as a result.
Admittedly a common mistake with Galway, and one your correspondent has made so often that the psychiatric authorities might have stepped in and staged an intervention, is – due to the lack of evidence to go on – to assume they’re better than they are. It rarely proves so. No matter how brilliant an intercounty manager Henry Shefflin may turn out to be, even a man with ten All-Ireland medals cannot be anything other than a hostage to the materials he works with.
Ronan Glennon looked promising during the league, for instance. But Galway youngsters usually do.
Avoid provincial disaster and the county’s summer will begin in earnest come the All-Ireland series.Â
A similar remark applies to Cork should they avoid dismemberment in the piranha tank down south.
Emphasising once more the truism that they only win matches played on their terms, over the course of the league semi-final and final they contrived to concede the same goal, with small adjustments, not twice but six times. Bizarre beyond belief given the number of former defenders on Kieran Kingston’s staff.
All successful teams have occasional, or more than occasional, recourse to judiciously administered dirt. Whatever beverage is the antonym of the milk of human kindness, the Cork defence have been chugging it for a long time now. Stephen Bennett’s second goal in Thurles a fortnight ago involved a routine no more complicated than catch, turn, run, squeeze the trigger. Hitting the net shouldn’t be quite so straightforward at intercounty level.
Deploying a seventh defender or third midfielder in the vicinity of Cian Lynch on Sunday, even for the opening half an hour, would not be an admission of Leeside weakness. It would be an assertion of Leeside pragmatism.
Still on the league decider, with two and then three goals in the bank most teams would have been content to keep the umpire with the white flag busy.Â
Not this Waterford, who are spewing the kind of rattlesnake venom missing a few years back. Pauric Mahony has been a magnificent servant, a clockwork pointscorer and an under-appreciated creator of space. Most of his time in white has been spent shuttling back and forth across the half-forward line, that being the type of attacker he was, rather than going bull-headed for the enemy posts, that being the type of attacker he wasn’t.
In his absence it’s become clear why those Tipperary U21/U20 outfits of Cahill’s and Michael Bevins were green-flag androids. Take your goals and the points will come.
In parallel with the echoing down south there’s something happening in a minor key elsewhere. It’s called the Leinster championship.
Little enough separates the runners and riders. Anyone could beat anyone else on a good day and probably will. Dublin’s abjectness against Kilkenny in the league fixture at Parnell Park rules them out as provincial champions but doesn’t rule them out of taking a scalp.
Chatter about both Darragh Egan’s Wexford and the supposed New Kilkenny died a quick death after the league semi-finals. Apropos of the latter it predictably emerged that a single swallow, in this case the lesser spotted crossfield ball from one of the wing-backs to one of the half-forwards, does not a summer make.
The services of Nostradamus are unnecessary for forecasting how Kilkenny’s season will end. Good intentions will fly out the window with ten minutes to go on a warm day when they’re chasing the game and the air is getting thinner. Recent conditioning will be abandoned, they’ll grasp for the comfort blanket of the long ball and that will be that.
One feels for Colm Bonnar, an interim manager whose hands have been further tied by Seamus Callanan’s injury complications. He was already minus the services of John O’Dwyer, the only person in Tipperary with better hands than Rachael Blackmore. (Both from Killenaule. Something in the water, presumably.) One also feels for Brian Lohan. What might he not achieve with a full complement of players and a stable domestic environment?
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To the movie’s final reel and closing credits.
Were the holders facing a four-battle campaign like last season’s there wouldn’t be the slightest temptation to visualise anyone other than Declan Hannon on the Hogan Stand steps on July 17th.
Kinnerk and John Kiely have been storing up their powder; a forcefield of nervous energy was purged from the collective’s system during the league; and it’s only eight months ago they carried off the MacCarthy Cup, with binoculars called for in order to locate the position of their nearest challengers.
Yet each new championship, like no man, is an island. In their fifth season on the road as a successful combination Limerick are more vulnerable than previously to injuries, metal fatigue, events. Also, having twice altered his team’s centre of gravity, what with moving Cian Lynch to centre-forward – which changed everything – and then refitting Kyle Hayes as a wing-back, how much longer Kiely can keep finessing the same basic hand is a moot point.
Step forward the next most obvious alternative, indeed the only obvious alternative. Though one remains to be convinced by their goalie, and though to get over the line they may still require someone to surgically excise the champions, Waterford are extremely – almost ostentatiously – eligible.
They have silverware, momentum, confidence, panel depth. They defend with rigour and attack with vigour. Tadhg De Burca, the keystone of their rearguard, can hurl off both the backfoot and, when - but only when - he deems it necessary, the front foot. From midfield up they could be mistaken for a pack of ravening wolves. That they lack the obvious card-carrying characters of the Justin McCarthy era is a mild pity but simultaneously no harm at all.
Extraordinary scenes on July 17th? There is every possibility.Â
Hold on to that feelin’.
