Davy must tread fine line in order to beat spread

Basics will be the key to Déise hopes

RIGHT, then. The bookies are giving Waterford a seven-point start tomorrow. You have a free bet. Knowing what you know about themselves and Kilkenny, and about the respective managers, do you back them to beat the handicap or not?

To a degree, admittedly, the answer hinges on your opinion not of Waterford’s current health and welfare but of Kilkenny’s. We know that Waterford are not the team of a few years ago, cannot be expected to be and will not be again in this generation. Kilkenny are not the team of a few years ago either, but they look a better, more cerebral, less injury-ridden proposition than they were last summer.

“Look” being the operative word there.

What Kilkenny are attempting this season is what very few successful teams have achieved over the years, Kerry 1984-86 notably excepted: rewinding the clock. We won’t know if they’ve managed until some other team put a gun to their heads. Possibly tomorrow, more likely next month.

As it stands, Kilkenny are vulnerable in the full-back line and are a reliable corner-forward short up front. But Michael Fennelly has developed into a monster and is on course to be Hurler of the Year; the redeployment of Richie Power at centre-forward is potentially the game-changing move of 2011; and if Clinton Hennessy intends to keep a clean sheet against Henry Shefflin et al he’ll have to be sharper than he was for Aidan Harte’s late consolation goal a fortnight ago.

What tactical voodoo can Davy Fitzgerald adopt to disrupt the favourites? Eye of newt, head of toad, leg of wing-forward back on top of his own wing-back? Brian Flannery had the perfect answer on these pages the day before the Munster final. It wasn’t about tactics, he said, it was about doing the basics right.

First principles. “You still have to win your own ball, to win puck-outs. All these things.”

All these things that Waterford did so badly against Tipperary and so well against Galway. Admittedly, rumour has it that Dublin Zoo is still on the lookout for the exotic maroon and white creature witnessed in Thurles two Sundays ago, a strange entity with 30 legs but no spinal cord. But let that pass.

Sometimes in hurling we stray too far from the sensible middle ground. On one side you have Davy, who loves his tactics, and Limerick, taking the running game to extremes against Dublin. Fair enough, they were in the first year of it and these things, as a man from Manchester once sang, take time. On the other side you have the old-timers. Man’s game, simple game, let the ball do the work, blahdee blah. All well and good, except saying that hurling comes down to mano a mano stuff, one guy against his marker, is an oversimplification. In that case the team with the better players will always win. So what do you do if you’re the manager of the inferior team? You devise a way of making damn sure it doesn’t come down to 15 individual battles.

For Davy tomorrow the objective is to find a happy medium. Send out a team that for starters will get their hands dirty in a way they didn’t against Tipp. At the very minimum that means his midfielders not standing gawking as an opponent goes up unchallenged for Clinton Hennessy’s first puck-out, as was the case in the Munster final.

But fulfilling the objective also means sending out a team that is properly and sensibly chosen in the first place.

Not like the team eaten alive by Tipperary. Not like the team selected for the 2009 All-Ireland semi-final against tomorrow’s opponents when Aidan Kearney, a grand ball-playing wing-back, was sited on the edge of the square against Henry Shefflin. Stevie Wonder could have seen that that particular kite wasn’t gonna fly.

By the time Declan Prendergast was sent in to spoil Shefflin the ship had long since been holed. (On the subject of full-backs, Liam Lawlor doesn’t have to hit a single ball tomorrow. All he has to do is stop Eoin Larkin, and anyone else sent in there, hitting one. That isn’t actually a tactical issue. It’s a coaching issue.)

Waterford got it wrong again last year when asking Brian O’Halloran to lead their deliberately depleted attack in the All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary. It was a job for a man like Seamus Prendergast who, if nothing else, would have held up the sliotar and kept it there, not for a teenager like O’Halloran.

None of this is to suggest that Davy is tactically illiterate. His problem is that, given the resources at his disposal, every big decision he makes has to be the correct decision. Brian Cody has made errors in his 12-and-a-bit seasons with Kilkenny (and will doubtless make further errors in his next 12-and-a-bit seasons with them). Declan Ryan will almost certainly have a critical tactical decision to make with Tipp before he’s too much older; it’ll be fascinating to see what ensues.

Difference is, the latter duo can make a minor mess of an individual match-up yet get away with it.

Davy cannot.

Not enough people, incidentally, have given him credit for getting Waterford to an All-Ireland semi-final in each of his four seasons on Suirside. And not enough people have given either him or his players credit for the fluency with which they switched to a defensive configuration once they’d opened up a gap against Galway. Plenty of bodies in defence and midfield and a rake of intelligent, angled balls into space for the forwards to feast on.

The aforementioned Seamus Prendergast was one of their star performers the same afternoon. Granted, he had four wides from five attempts, but putting the sliotar between the uprights wasn’t what Prendergast was there for. They’ll need him winning the same power of ball again tomorrow, or at least preventing the Kilkenny half-back line winning it. And they’ll surely have the cop-on to keep the richly promising young Pauric Mahony — related through his grandfather Kevin to TJ Reid — away from Tommy Walsh for the first quarter. Keeping the sliotar away from Padraic Maher was the only thing Waterford got right in the Munster final.

In Prendergast, Noel Connors, Tony Browne (has he bequeathed his body to medical science yet?), Brick Walsh, Kevin Moran — their best player against Tipp and better still versus Galway — and John Mullane the underdogs have enough knights at arms to acquit themselves with honour.

They’re warriors and will remain warriors, regardless of the absence of September silverware.

Expecting them to beat the handicap tomorrow is no leap of faith. Expecting them to beat Kilkenny is.