Cats win a must

Tonight’s game in Wexford Park is not hugely important for the hosts, certainly not remotely as important as it is for the visitors.

A BIG night for Wexford tonight but a bigger one for Kilkenny. A big afternoon for Limerick tomorrow but a bigger one for Waterford.

Wexford’s season is already a success by virtue of retaining their Division One status. Limerick’s season is already a success by virtue of winning promotion from Division Two. The heavy digging has been done and done well.

Few are expecting either team to apply icing to their respective gateaux this weekend. To acquit themselves with distinction, perhaps, but not to win. Does it matter if they don’t? Not really. In Wexford’s case it doesn’t matter at all because they’ve already won the game that mattered against Kilkenny this week: Tuesday’s provincial U21 encounter.

From their point of view tonight isn’t the end of it either. The third of three Wexford/Kilkenny encounters at Wexford Park in the month of June, the Leinster minor semi-final, will take place in a couple of weeks’ time. Imagine if the hosts were to win that also. Two out of three, to paraphrase a large American gentleman, would be very good indeed.

And that is where a potential Wexford revival — so desirable for so many reasons, not the least of them being that when Wexford are thriving hurling is thriving — will start. The only place it will start. On the underage front, not at senior level. To that extent tonight’s game is not hugely important for the hosts, certainly not remotely as important as it is for the visitors. Win with something to spare and Kilkenny are back on the horse.

Fail to win, or only barely win, and the temporary bother that was the National League final becomes a full-blown championship crisis.

On the basis that Brian Cody’s team have to have a couple of decent performances in them this summer, and definitely one very big performance, the possibility exists that they’ll win well. To put it another way: Matthew O’Hanlon, the Wexford full-back, played for the U21s on Tuesday and did alright. This evening he may be required to cope with Henry Shefflin, Richie Power and possibly Eddie Brennan at different stages of the proceedings. Lucky boy.

Kilkenny’s difficulty = Wexford’s opportunity? Looking at the strength of the team the favourites have picked, an XV chosen not only to win but to put down a marker, nah.

The feline ones are available at 7/4 for the All Ireland. This observer wouldn’t back them with counterfeit money. Waterford are available at 16/1. I’d be happy to have a few bob each way.

Remove Tipperary from the equation for a moment and there’s not much standing between Waterford and Croke Park in September. The prospect of Kilkenny would scarcely faze them. The prospect of Cork, Dublin or Galway wouldn’t faze them at all. A few years back Waterford were the hurling equivalent of a lad on a stag party. These days they’re married with two kids, live in a nice semi detached and wash the car on a Saturday morning. They’re not as much fun as they used to be but they’re solid and reliable.

To complain, as many people have, that they don’t hurl with the same flair and abandon under Davy Fitz as they did under Justin McCarthy is to miss the point. They don’t hurl with the same flair and abandon because they cannot. This is not 2007 any more. Times have changed and most of the great entertainers have vacated the stage. In the circumstances, to win Munster last season was an achievement for which they – and their manager — didn’t quite receive the credit they deserved. Maybe it’s a Davy thing. You either love him or hate him. Middle ground is minimal.

But that’s Davy, a man who does everything he does at 200 mph and IN CAPITAL LETTERS!!! . Sometimes you think he’d be better off rowing back a bit. Why get worked up, especially at this hour of his life, over what other people seem to think of him, for instance? Then again, if he chilled his karma and adopted the lotus position he wouldn’t be Davy.

What is not open for argument is the quality of the job he’s done with Waterford. In the wake of the 2008 All Ireland catastrophe they had every reason to run away and never be heard of again. Instead he kept them together and brought them back to run Kilkenny to five points in the semi-final the following year. Last summer yielded provincial silverware for a side incontrovertibly inferior to the county’s all-singing, all-dancing Munster-winning teams of the noughties. The panel has been strengthened and deepened. This year they’re serious MacCarthy Cup contenders again. What’s more, they’ll be serious contenders for the next five years.

In short, under the Sixmilebridge man Waterford have consistently punched their weight, maybe even punched a shade above it, and have done so while keeping an eye to the future as well as their focus on the present.

No more can be asked of a manager. He even had the imagination to do some lateral thinking and build a Brick wall – pun intended – across the Waterford half-back line. The problem with some brick walls, unfortunately, is that they can be ignored or bypassed, which is what Tipperary did last August.

This column’s view is not that the gambit of Brick Walsh at centre-back has failed (last year’s All Star award suggested quite the opposite) but rather that the attempt to pay Paul has left Peter slightly shortchanged.

The aggregate of what Walsh brings to the centre-back spot is less than the combination of drive and forcefulness and personality he’d bring to midfield.

Another man could do what Walsh does at number six, and Kevin Moran’s clearances would actually be crisper and longer in the event that the Waterford centre-back was required to belt the sliotar downfield instead of laying it off to a nearby colleague. But only Brick can do what he used to do at midfield. The bed has been made. Don’t expect Limerick, even under the cutest of cute hoor managers, to upset it tomorrow.

Picture: Kilkenny manager Brian Cody and selector Martin Fogarty watch the recent Leinster SHC game between Wexford and Antrim.