Just enough time to get it right

Just what do you do for the week?

Cork hurler Tom Kenny: “You wouldn’t dwell a lot on how the game ended or anything – we’ve a lot of experienced lads and nobody would be too downhearted for long after the draw. The important thing to bear in mind is that you’re still in the competition. That’s the mindset you need when you’re replaying within a week.

“The preparation wouldn’t be that different from the normal week of a game. You don’t do a whole lot of physical stuff, obviously – we’ll have a few drills in training where we’ll push ourselves but in general it’s more about keeping the eye in, keeping your hurling sharp, we’ll hardly train for more than 50 minutes on the two nights that we meet up.

“I had a dip in the sea earlier in the week, but there isn’t a lot of recovery work you can do in six days.

“That’s particularly true when it comes to injuries – you don’t have the couple of weeks that would allow you to get a knock right, and you can fall between two stools to an extent. Should you do little or nothing with an injury and hope it comes right or should you try intensive treatment only for it to go again on the day of the game?

“We’ll probably look at Waterford again, given everything that happened in the game, but there’s only so much benefit you get from that kind of analysis, and that’s because it’s Waterford who are involved. A lot of the time any plans you might have go out the window because they play with great freedom. Tactics become less important than just trying to play the game on its merits.

“It’s a little unusual to be playing the game on a Saturday night – compared to a Sunday, where you’re on the road by 11am and you know the routine well. In that case the day just flies along until the throw-in, but you’ve got to put down a lot of Saturday before the evening. It’s a pity the World Cup is over in that sense, but there’s always the Tri-Nations, I’ll probably watch that to kill some time.

“You can overdo that kind of thing too – ‘it’s not the same on a Saturday night, the game should really be played on a Sunday’, but when all’s said and done there’s a Munster final there to be won. That’s our outlook, certainly.”

So what do you do with the tactics when there isn’t a week between the games?

Padraig Fanning, Waterford selector: “I know people were saying the first half wasn’t that good, and maybe it wasn’t as entertaining to watch as some of the previous matches between the teams, but I felt it was very intense in terms of the tackling and the challenges – and intriguing from the point of view of tactics.

“It might have been more tactical than people expected but we had made our plans for the match and Cork had made theirs – in that sense it was like a game of chess at times, but the tackling was very hard and there was very little room for players to operate in, and that went for both teams.

“That’s probably part of the reason it was tight – both teams were very committed and every player, on both sides, went for everything full out, so there wasn’t much time on the ball.

That would explain why it wasn’t as open as previous Cork-Waterford games.

“People forget that even though the games between Cork and Waterford might be open in terms of general play over the last few years, the scorelines have been very tight.

“There’s never more than a score or two between the sides, and last Sunday’s was no different. I suppose part of every game plan is to keep the game tight in as far as you can, and to make room for your own lads, and obviously Cork were trying to do the same.

“The Cork forwards are very dangerous and we would be trying to cut down their room, obviously.”

It’s Cork v Waterford at the end of the day – how big an issue is that familiarity?

Dan Shanahan, Waterford: “Obviously you have lads there who played against each other in the Munster championship eight years ago – in fact, some of us played against each other in the national league final in 1998. You’d have to say that we know each other inside out. To some extent that can be a help for younger players on both sides. There are enough experienced men to tell them, ‘look, you’re marking such-and- such, he’s good at this but he’s not so good at that’. That probably helps them to some extent, to have a guy sitting next to them in the dressing-room who’ll tell them what to expect. But that’s not necessarily a huge help in the heat of the action either.

“Just because a player did something in a Cork-Waterford game six years ago doesn’t mean it’ll be in your mind when you’re going in to tackle him. You’re talking about the Munster c’ship – you barely have time to think.”