Hartley’s heart in the right place

SOME things never change.

Fergal Hartley led the Waterford hurling team last year when they ended almost four decades of disappointment by winning a deserved provincial title. For him, the captaincy was more of a privilege than a worry, but with or without it, the stress of playing in a Munster final remains the same.

"We don't get there that often, so when you do you have to make the most of it," he admits.

Hartley considered retirement at the beginning of the year. The workload of operating his recruitment and training company Hartley People with his sister Roisin, coupled with married life and the huge commitment demanded of inter-county players nowadays was taking a toll. With refreshing honesty, he wondered if he could still contribute to the team at the level expected of him and by himself.

"I have been there a while and wondered if my best was behind me. Maybe it is, I don't know, but I might find out next Sunday," he quipped. What made him decide to continue was his love of the game, and so far he has no regrets.

Ten years ago, he was a member of the team which was shocked by Kerry in Walsh Park (the only other survivors being Brian Greene at centre-forward and Paul Flynn).

At the start of this season, Waterford would have been mainly concerned by the threat that Limerick would pose in the semi-final. However, Kerry first had to be overcome, and the lessons of history would ensure that the Kingdom would be treated with respect: "Naturally, we hoped to beat Kerry, and we viewed the Limerick game as very much fifty-fifty, which it proved to be."

A decade later, Hartley finds it hard to recall the circumstances surrounding the Kerry defeat, but concedes that they took the challenge "a bit lightly" and paid the price for it.

"It was a day when the fear of being beaten was greater than the will to win. That happens when a team which is favoured has their backs to the wall. It's very hard to recover because it's not a situation you expect to find yourself in. That happened us that day and we didn't recover," he says.

"This year we got off to a good start and never looked back. But it was a very tough game. In fairness to Kerry, the score didn't reflect their effort."

Once Waterford got on top at such an early stage in the semi-final, Hartley felt that it was inevitable that Limerick would come back. It would have been unreasonable to expect that they could go on to dominate the entire 70 minutes.

"Limerick had their period of dominance and then it was fairly even," he comments.

"A draw was a fair result. The second day it could have gone either way. We were probably lucky to come away with a win. We didn't play particularly well. I don't think Limerick played their best either.

"You could say that we are showing a greater ability to survive in tight games. We're doing it better than we used to. But look at us in the All-Ireland semi-final against Clare last year, a game that after 20 minutes you'd say we couldn't have lost, but we did.

"That's something we are working on all the time, but you'd have to say that Waterford hurling is probably in a better state than it was ten years ago. The last four or five years we have been competing and we have been serious contenders for Munster.

"There was a time if we got a draw we'd be delighted. It was as good as you could get. That has changed, hopefully we have a bit more respect."

Noting that Cork are second favourites with the bookmakers to win the All-Ireland, Hartley, playing in centre-back on Sunday, acknowledges they will be formidable opposition if they can repeat their form against Clare. But it's not as if Waterford are going into the final hoping for the best, like the old days.

"There's no reason why we can't win, but we'll have a tight battle," he observes.

"We'll have to be at our absolute best."