Waterford must solve full-back problem
Declan Prendergast, never truly comfortable at full-back, performed much better in last year’s championship when released to fill a wing back role. If you look back at Waterford’s losses over the past number of years, the spotlight always narrows in on full-back line errors.
Goals win matches but defences win championships is a well known saying and the Waterford manager and fans are acutely aware of this.
They used the league to cast the net wide with two players getting game time at full-back with none totally convincing.
Mark O’Brien seemed to enjoy the manager’s confidence in the latter stages with Liam Lawlor, the earlier occupant, losing out. Recently Kilkenny scored five goals against Waterford in a challenge game and Fitzgerald will, in all probability, turn back to Lawlor to start in Monday’s provincial semi-final.
This may not cause Davy Fitzgerald any great stress against Clare. However, the psychological boost brought by a dominant “burst out of defence rallying the troops” type performance as given by Cork’s Eoin Cadogan last Sunday is continuously denied to Waterford.
They may not need this type of performance on Monday. For a start an unspectacular error free bread-and- butter type full-back display will do Waterford for now.
NO matter how good, bad or indifferent Clare’s management has been this century they have been hampered by the lack of top-quality goalscorers.
Recently retired Niall Gilligan – or current manager Ger O’Loughlin – was the nearest Clare came to a finisher in recent times. Currently they lack forwards who create goals by doing the unexpected like upsetting defences with darting angled runs across the 13 metre line run to receive a pass or peel off a defender to create space inside.
These skills can be executed well by receptive forwards but there are much more likely to succeed with natural goalscorers.
Clare’s Colin Ryan scored a great instinctive goal with a first-time ground strike in the recent second division league final to Wexford but these type of goals are not scored regularly enough by Clare.
Because of this the Clare forwards will have to rely on old fashioned work rate and discipline. Their work will have to concentrate on pressurising the Waterford defence like a swarm of bees and hope to harry the Waterford defence into errors hoping that they cough up some scoring chances.
Clare’s John Conlon is very good and a future forward division may be built around him but hard, fair tackling up front is Clare’s only way presently.
LAOIS manager Niall Rigney will relish tomorrow’s Leinster Championship clash with the Dubs. There is no pressure as they face up to last season’s most improved team in Dublin.
Anthony Daly will be acutely aware of this. He will have seen their economical display against Limerick last year where they could have won.
Limerick, of course, triumphed over Dublin subsequently. Niall Rigney plotted Limerick’s downfall that day and based the Laois game plan on sharp support play.
Each Laois player offered himself as an outlet once a colleague was on the ball. This allowed them to play short ball forward from player to player, cutting out the temptation of using long ball that so often result in turnovers.
Joe Fitzpatrick, missing last year through injury and scorer of 1-3 against Carlow, is a big plus for Rigney. The last thing Dublin need is to be drawn into a close contest. Dublin stuttered a little through the league and if I was Anthony Daly I’d want to finish this contest early.
Teams not used to playing at the top level rarely recover after poor starts.
No matter what Dublin score or win by they will still be underdogs against Kilkenny in the semi.
A good confidence boosting performance, as near to the levels of 2009 as is possible is what Dublin need above all tomorrow.
