Waterford sowing the seeds for future success

MUNSTER SHC QUARTER-FINAL REPLAY:

Glass half full or glass half-empty, Waterford readers? A touch of both, perhaps, if that isn’t a contradiction. Glass distinctly half-empty at teatime last Sunday week. Glass currently, with the benefit of reflection and the passage of 13 days, half-full and likely to remain so for the remainder of the summer, irrespective of the outcome tomorrow.

Forget that Waterford blew a nine-point lead a fortnight ago or that it was the other crowd who got the last score of the game. Remember instead that a team with a new manager and with five players making their first championship start had been good enough to get themselves nine points ahead of last year’s All-Ireland finalists in the first place. That’s the place to put the emphasis. The half-full, not the half-empty.

As an opening statement by a bunch aspiring to win the MacCarthy Cup in 2014 it failed to convince, but it wasn’t intended to convince, because it wasn’t framed in those terms.

As an opening statement by a bunch aspiring to win the MacCarthy Cup in, say, 2016, it was immensely encouraging.

Silverware? That isn’t what 2014 is about for Waterford. Everything they do under Derek McGrath is not about this year but about the years to come, which on the most recent evidence seem far from a waste of breath.

They are hurling, to paraphrase Tolkien, under the shadow of the future. Last Sunday week they hurled considerably better than could reasonably have been expected in the circumstances.

It was a preview of Limerick/Tipp in so many aspects. One team visibly sharper, hungrier, more convincing and with more conviction. The one difference with Limerick/Tipp was that that team only managed to draw.

If we were a tad surprised by Waterford’s performance, we shouldn’t have been. McGrath may have been venturing into the unknown as an inter-county manager but he ventured into the unknown with De La Salle a few years back and returned from the jungle with Harty Cups and All-Ireland titles.

Like Limerick, Waterford were aware of exactly what kind of game they were trying to play; teams aren’t always. Operating without a conventional full-forward line puts a premium on the length and line of deliveries from out the field, one area in which the underdogs particularly impressed. Other than one aimless ball from Austin Gleeson that overshot the runway, they didn’t make the mistake of putting the sliotar too far beyond their inside men, a perpetual occupational hazard if you’re employing a two-man full-forward line or have the wind or both.

About the only thing to condemn them for, other than Brian O’Sullivan panicking near the end and essaying a handpass to Seamus Prendergast instead of carrying on himself, was the nine first-half wides. Yet that isn’t an open-and-shut case either. Bad decision-making, blah blah? Look: a shot only becomes a bad decision when it goes wide. Of those nine chances, Waterford were entitled to let fly with at least six of them. The heartening part was that they weren’t afraid to.

Gleeson? Terrific. Not merely because of the goal, unforgettable though it was, not to mention the point from the lineball. No, what impressed most about last year’s minor star was his sheer lust for battle. Some debutants try to run around opponents; some debutants run away from opponents. Gleeson ran straight at ‘em and into ‘em. He appears to have the right dash of bouldness — a dollop of the Mullanes, let’s call it — about him. That’s what Waterford need more than anyone: a forward who can displace water and carry the battle to the enemy.

And after all of that, Gleeson was still only the second most effective newcomer on the field.

Alan Cadogan. Four points from play. Fouled for four more and was blatantly upended within scoring range by Shane Fives near the end, an incident Brian Gavin somehow managed to ignore. Would have had a goal but for Stephen O’Keeffe’s speed off his line in the second half. Couldn’t be faulted either for taking his point after Barry Coughlan’s faux pas in the first half. This was a young man on his championship debut, not Eddie Brennan or Gerd Muller or someone. Next time he’ll go for goal.

Can a team ever have enough skilful, handy forwards? Probably yes, as the Tipperary of the mid-noughties and the Kilkenny of the couple of years immediately pre-BC would testify. But Cadogan possesses the additional item every lightweight, ballplaying forward needs in his armoury: the fast-twitch reaction out of the blocks to get away from his marker.

(Why, you may enquire in sarcastic parenthesis, did Joe Deane manage to prosper for the guts of a decade despite not possessing this instant 0-60mph, and the wrong grip to boot? Good question. Brains? Balance? Because he was Joe Deane? All of the above).

Some other observations.

After years of being one of the Native Americans, Patrick Horgan has built on last year’s progress to become a chief. The smoothness and fluency of his swing may soon win him an award of some sort. It will be handed over by a panel consisting of Michael Cleary, Johnny Dooley, DJ Carey and Joe Canning.

Aidan Walsh was imposing, impressive and imprecise all at the same time. A few more outings will file down the imprecision.

Tadhg De Burca’s poise was reminiscent of the impression Eoin Murphy made on his first start — same opponents, same venue — 12 years ago. Pauric Mahony did more from play than he usually does and will need to do the same again tomorrow; Horgan is his new exemplar in that regard. But Eddie Barrett’s misfortune took Waterford’s injury list into the realms of the farcical.

It should be Cork. Seamus Harnedy will hardly be as irrelevant, Conor Lehane hardly as inaccurate and Shane O’Neill categorically not as dozy. And as a collective the Leesiders simply cannot again resemble a group so patently under the impression they’re playing a challenge match.

Having closed to within a point 10 minutes from time, their failure to kick on from there and win by three or four was disconcerting. But Cork, like Kilkenny and unlike Tipperary, have won All-Irelands from this position before. They can dream about another this year. Waterford can dream about All-Irelands in the years to come.