McGlinchey happy as home support begins to build

It’s a cliche to say that a county needs a win, but that was truer than usual Saturday night in Dungarvan.

As over 1,000 home spectators gathered for the McGrath Cup final they were also discussing the news filtering through from St. Saviour’s club in the city.

The Waterford city outfit had its clubhouse burnt out over the weekend during a spate of arson attacks in the area, and county board officials were clear at Saturday night’s game that they would back the club strongly if it went to Croke Park for financial support in rebuilding its facilities.

With that in mind, the victory for the county footballers over UCC was doubly welcome. Waterford boss Tom McGlinchey was certainly happy with the support in Dungarvan.

“We had 337 in Clashmore last week, so that’s what, 300 per cent of an increase — if we got another 300 per cent increase next week, it’d be great. It’s great to have that support, there’s a great pocket of football supporters here in Waterford. It’s like Tipperary, or the pocket of hurling-only support in Kerry. Without being biased, I think we played good football, and if we got those people to come back they’d see good football.”

They might see another goal from an unlikely source, too. Centre-back and captain Maurice O’Gorman is a well-respected defender, but he was long odds to raise a green flag on Saturday night, surely.

“Are you saying I should be working on his shooting? We’ll do that, he got a great goal — and a miss towards the end! It’s no secret that I want to play attacking football, and if a corner-back finds himself in a position to shoot up front, then he should be able to do the business. We were lucky we had Maurice on hand there to do the business.

The Cork native wasn’t downplaying the importance of a trophy, but he wasn’t avoiding the significance of their league opener either.

“Every team starts out trying to win as many games as they can in it, and like a lot of competitions, the more you go on in it, the more you want to win it, especially these secondary competitions.

“The league still is [the focus], hugely so. The league is still the bread and butter.

” This was great preparation, obviously, but you even heard Thomas (O’Gorman, team captain) say it off the podium — it’s all about next Saturday. Again, we don’t want to put too much pressure on them but they want to get out of the division.”

The run of games will surely help, though. That’s four weekends in a row Waterford have had sharp, competitive games.

“It’s great, but if we lost next Saturday it’d be disappointing.

“For teams like Waterford, getting that momentum is very important — but then every team would say that, Kilkenny, Cork, they all like to have games under their belts. Players love to have games rather than training, certainly,” said McGlinchey.