Anthony Daly: Sometimes you long for the old Cork-Waterford ping-pong fests
Cork's Shane Kingston strikes as Shane McNulty of Waterford attempts to flick the sliotar away. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
Hurling has been so good to us now for so long that it can often be easy to forget how good we’ve really had it. Clare and Laois may have shipped hidings last weekend but the Liam MacCarthy Cup has still never been more open; Nostradamus would do well to select the winners from the four games today and tomorrow.
Of course, there was a time when it wasn’t so good, or when the landscape didn’t look so healthy, especially when Kilkenny were burning and razing as they went on their epic crusade. And yet still, in the midst of all that dominance, we were still treated to possibly the greatest and most satisfying hurling rivalry that many of us can remember.
Despite the recent murmurings, I still believe the game is in a great place but, given how tactical hurling has become, you’d still often yearn for a good old fashioned carnival/fiesta/ping-pong goal-fest and shootout that Cork and Waterford regularly served up between 2002-2010.
That time no longer exists. The massive characters that drove that rivalry are no longer around either. Cork are no longer winning All-Irelands. Waterford aren’t hoovering up Munster titles anymore, but there are still legacy issues from that period, especially from a Waterford perspective; Waterford did more than just prove they could buck a historical trend and regularly beat Cork — they showed the way for future generations too.
Cork are favourites today but this Waterford team will aim to disprove those odds because they certainly won’t believe Cork are better than them. Even though it may have been a few years, they’ve beaten Cork in huge games — the 2015 league final, the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final. A young and inexperienced side took down Cork in the league in January.
Neither of these groups have All-Ireland senior medals but many of these Waterford players still have medals that Cork don’t — All-Ireland minor and U-21 titles.
Waterford have had a rough couple of years but Liam Cahill has certainly rejuvenated this group. I remember talking to John Mullane earlier in the year after he watched them training in IT Waterford and he was raving about how they were going. John is friendly with Noelie Connors but even the way Cahill got rid of Noelie and Maurice Shanahan proved to Mullane how different things were going to be under the Tippman.
Of course, everything is different again now though. Having seen the action up close and personal last Sunday, and experienced the weirdness of it all, I believe that some players will react differently to that new reality.
I felt that with some of the Limerick players last week, especially in the first half. Some of these guys may take their emotional energy from the crowd so you’d wonder now will that have an effect on the big guns here like Patrick Horgan and Austin Gleeson? These guys are perfectionists but they’re entertainers too who like to put on a show every time they take the field.
The arena is vastly changed now. The Munster Championship is not the amphitheatre it always was but the players will just adapt. It will still be a war first but adapting to that attrition is going to be even more important again now given how much the weather has turned in the week. Thurles was in good shape last Sunday but it will be that bit heavier and slippier today. That will be completely new for Cork because they always seemed like a team built for summer, not winter.
What style of play will Liam bring? If you look at what he did with the Tipp U-20s and U-21s, it will certainly be high-octane stuff, full of running and working and attacking in waves.
I’ve always felt that the new management teams will struggle when compared to the established managements, and their teams, but I don’t put Kieran Kingston into that bracket. Kieran has been here before, having managed Cork in 2016 and 2017. Three years is a long time in hurling now but I still think that experience is massive.
Both teams have their injury worries with Darragh Fitzgibbon, Eoin Cadogan, and Pauric Mahony out. This is a big test for Conor Prunty at full-back but I’m sure we’ll see Tadgh de Burca in a natural number 6 role for the first time since his U-21 days.
The word is that Aussie will be at 11 with Stephen Bennett at 14 but if Waterford are to win, they need Gleeson to hit the heights he reached when he was Hurler of the Year in 2016.
Cork will certainly miss Cadogan for his experience and physicality while no team could afford to be without a player of Darragh Fitzgibbon’s class. Robbie O’Flynn is also a loss but I still fancy Cork. I just feel the players know the magnitude of what’s at stake now, and they won’t want to let this opportunity slip. In a winter campaign, Cork will also want to avoid the bearpit of the qualifiers.
In my podcast predictions, I went for Cork to win Munster. And I expect them to take the first step this evening.
