McGrath making sure Déise positives carry over

Reasons to be cheerful. Waterford manager Derek McGrath is well aware of the perception that his side have missed their chance, having drawn with Cork a couple of weeks ago.

It hasn’t penetrated the group, that’s all.

“The mood’s one of optimism. It’s positive.

“The general consensus is that our chance is gone. We’re not inclined to go along with that, though, we’re very happy with the mood within our camp, which is very positive.

“Cork will be a different kettle of fish the next day — replays are often different and don’t pan out the same way, but we’re taking the positives out of the draw and looking forward to the next day out.”

Some of McGrath’s players cramped up toward the end of the draw; is it a regret, the sessions missed now because of the Waterford County Board’s insistence on running off championship games last month?

“It probably is because we’re in a situation where we had to cram in a lot of training, to be honest.

“There were other factors involved last Sunday week with the cramping and so on, though — emotional factors in terms of the build-up to the game, for instance — and there’s probably been a bit of over-analysis of all of that.

“We’d have felt in the two or three weeks period that we had that we got a lot done, but in the last 15, 20 minutes the efforts caught up with us, for one thing, and also the momentum shifted.

“I’d think that as much as anything else when a team has momentum the last thing that’s questioned is their fitness or training regime.

“Take last year when Dublin played Kerry in the football championship: after 66, 67 minutes Kerry were winning by a point or two but then Dublin come with a goal and all of a sudden it’s all down to Kerry having the old legs.

“The reality is that Dublin got the momentum and pushed on, and there’s got to be a balance in analysis of momentum versus fitness.”

McGrath brings that analysis to be bear on two of Waterford’s impressive debutants.

“Austin (Gleeson) and Tadhg (de Burca) are both lads who aren’t fully physically developed yet, that’s the nature of their bodies. They’re probably still growing, which is something that has to be borne in mind when it comes to strength and conditioning programmes for them. A lot of people think you’re fully grown at 18, but I’m not so sure, and looking at the lads, they’re long-legged and will probably get taller over the next year or two.”

One of them announced himself with one of the goals of the season . . .

“Austin’s from a talented family who give him great support, he’s naturally talented himself.

“What’s a good sign of him, he’s very chilled out and nothing will rattle him, he still has the same mates that he always had, so he’s very grounded.

“The genie’s out of the bottle but he’ll be all the better for it long-term. Not the next day, maybe, but in the longer term it’ll stand to him. He’s on the radar now.”

McGrath himself was able to knock some enjoyment out of his first day on the sideline as a Munster championship manager, despite the pressure.

“I was looking forward to the next day straight away — my sense was, ‘I enjoyed that, I’d like to be part of that again’.

“On a personal level there’s an emotional build-up, but it was certainly enjoyable to get back home on a Sunday evening — I skipped The Sunday Game — and then get back into analysing things on the Monday. We were back on the Tuesday, back into it.”

McGrath demurs when you suggest there must be great fulfilment when a tactical plan comes together, as it largely did for Waterford the first day.

“I wouldn’t say there’s a sense of satisfaction or that we outwitted anyone the last day — our plan was fairly basic, to work as hard as possible. People might talk about tactics but we were more interested in working as hard as we could.

“After any reasonable performance there’s probably an over-emphasis on how you set up, but we know well that Cork will come with massive intensity and energy the next day.

“Certainly there’d be no sense of smugness about our performance. Don’t forget we lost a nine-point lead. That wasn’t good enough.”

We all enjoyed a great Cork-Waterford rivalry in the last ten years. McGrath’s looking forward to the next instalment.

“It’d be great to start a rivalry between these developing teams going forward. It’d be something special.”

Starting tomorrow.

- Tickets for the game (€5 off) will be available to purchase in Centra & Supervalu stores until 12pm, tomorrow. More details on munstergaa.ie