Déise focused and driving it on, declares skipper Molumphy

WATERFORD captain Stephen Molumphy isn’t long articulating the leadership principles in his team.

“Look at the players out there,” he says. “There are guys out there who might not be leaders in name, but they are real leaders. You are not going to have 70 minutes from everyone, but the thing is when it’s in the frying pan, when you’re in trouble, a guy can step up for five minutes and then someone else can step up for five minutes.

“There might be a situation on one side of the field and two guys carry it on. That’s the way it is and it’s team work now. We have that now where we mightn’t have had it before.

“It’s donkey work — I wouldn’t care if I didn’t score again for the rest of the year as long as we keep winning and that’s the general attitude throughout the pitch and we’ll keep driving it on.”

The army officer concedes that Tipp are the popular choice to make the big show in September.

“Everybody sees them — Tipperary — getting to the All-Ireland, especially after the way they beat Galway.

“It was a fantastic game, they have massive players and they played well. People will be expecting to see that again so we’ll have to try to match them on the day.”

In that sense how important was it to win against Tipperary in the All-Ireland semi-final clash two years ago?

“Again, it’s nice to have that base level, but we’re not happy with that. We have to push on.

“If you were happy with that you’d just go out and give it a shot, but we want to take that step forward. It’s nice to break that hoodoo, a nice thing to work out, but it’s going to be hard to get there this year and to push on.”

Molumphy says Waterford’s focus is now wholly on the All-Ireland.

“It was a great thing to win Munster and get silverware. But now that is over. Put the Munster championship to one side. The biggest step of all is to get the All-Ireland (final).

“It is a major step again. Facing Tipperary again is a huge step. As you can see they are the team in form at the moment. They were fantastic against Galway so we know we have to raise it to compete with them.

“It is good to have (silverware). We have won four titles in a decade and it is one of our best decades. But we want something more again. You want a place in the All-Ireland, that is what we are aiming for. It is the next step that we need to achieve.”

To do so they’ll need to continue to defend well against Tipp, who leaked goals themselves against Cork and Galway. We haven’t conceded as many goals, but to be honest when you see the forwards they (Galway) have, you would expect any team to concede those goals against the likes of Joe Canning and Hayes.

“Cork played them unbelievably well on the day. Tipperary would find it hard to repeat the All-Ireland (final performance) of last year, especially in the first round.

“But you can see they are back on track. Their last day they seemed the most complete team this year. They have reached the heights they showed last year in the All-Ireland final and maybe gone a step above that again.

“They will be tougher again this year and I think they are waiting to take on Kilkenny.”

Molumphy says the pressure is on Tipp to reproduce the form of last year’s All-Ireland final.

“Yeah, it is. It is a case of seeing how good they are or can be. Most people would see them as the only team that will stop them (Kilkenny).

“We are coming in as the underdogs again and it shows the amount of work we have to do to get up to that level.”