Waterford star Wall ‘upbeat’ ahead of Kerry’s visit

THE apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

There aren’t many Waterford footballers with a Railway Cup medal in their back pocket, but Jim Wall collected one as a fine full-back. No wonder, then, Jim’s son Brian was one of the leaders on the Waterford side which turned Clare over in their first round Munster SFC game.

The reward? A date with Kerry on Sunday. Don’t expect Wall to tremble, however.

“We’re looking forward to Sunday, we’re upbeat about it. Since the Clare game we’ve been preparing for it, and we’re ready for it now. The two weeks was a nice break and it gave us time to get back down to earth. We had a weekend in between and we had a chat and so on to focus on the game.”

But Kerry? Surely coming up against the All-Ireland champions is intimidating?

“Not really – I wouldn’t describe it as intimidating. We know what to expect, we played them last year – they’re 15 footballers, the same as ourselves, and we’ll be going out to do the best we can. That means concentrating on what we can do, doing the best we can, and letting them concentrate on what they can do. Most teams are only as good as you let them play, but we’re just concentrating on ourselves – hopefully it’ll go well for us on the day.”

It’s a time of year when condescending noises are made about the minnows of the championship – a lot of sure-aren’t-they-great talk. Wall says the atmosphere within the side is very different.

“We hear that a lot, but we’d have a very different view of that in the camp itself. We knew before the Clare game that it was 19 years since we’d won a championship game, we knew we had a chance of playing the All-Ireland champions if we got over that match – that’s where you want to pitch yourself, isn’t it, against the best? They’re the best at the moment, so that’s who we want to be playing against.”

Waterford have one advantage over Kerry, of course: a championship win in 2007. The hype before they beat Clare was almost entirely on the Banner’s new manager, and the Déise turned that to their advantage.

“We always knew Páidí would attract a lot of the focus for the Clare game,” says Wall.

“That didn’t bother us at all – it suited us really, because it took the attention off the 19-year gap (since the last championship win). Everyone was focusing on Páidí coming down and what he’d do before the game, and after the game the media were talking about what he was going to do next.

“We didn’t mind that at all; whether Páidí took the headlines or not didn’t matter to us, we’d won the game and that was the most important thing.”

The down-to-earth man from The Nire – now a teacher in Mount Sion NS in Waterford city – is hoping to see plenty of white and blue in Fraher Field on Sunday.

“I suppose the game is more for the county board to show off what they can do rather than the fact that it’s on television and so on. Waterford doesn’t get that many chances to host intercounty games so it’s a chance of the county board to show what they can do.

“But we’ll be hoping for a good turn-out of our own supporters as well on Sunday.”