Waterford’s Derek McGrath fears dangerous Dublin

Waterford manager Derek McGrath fears the team’s supporters are not giving enough credit to their All-Ireland quarter-final opponents Dublin.

For the first time this summer, the Division 1 champions and Munster runners-up have the favourites’ tag, ahead of Sunday’s clash in Thurles.

McGrath recognises Dublin as a team two years further down the development line than Waterford and is slightly uneasy about the confidence among fans.

“We’re facing a team that, if they win, will be in their third semi-final in five years. Our motivational approach is solely based on getting to Croke Park. We’ll put all our eggs in the basket on that one, we’d really love to get to an All-Ireland semi-final there. We’re playing a team that have won a national league, won a Leinster championship and competed in two All-Ireland semi-finals, whereas over the last four years we haven’t done any of those things bar win the league this year.

“There’s a different trajectory for the two teams and the people of Waterford have to be wary of that. It’s four seasons since we’ve been in Croke Park so that opportunity is massive. The motivation every day is to be better again. I think people need to be careful about sizing up the team that’s ahead of us. They’re a couple of years ahead of us in terms of the graph.”

Nine days ago, Waterford’s U21s were heavily fancied to knock out reigning three-time All-Ireland champions Clare only to be beaten in Ennis. McGrath recognises his county as one that isn’t yet comfortable with the favourites’ tag.

“It was obviously a disappointment for the lads who were involved in the U21s. ‘Fancied themselves’ is not the right phrase but a lot of people in Waterford believed they would be highly competitive. We didn’t bring the U21s back in until last Saturday morning. We didn’t want to be in their ear on the Thursday or Friday. They have to kind of wallow in their own disappointment and find their own way left to their own devices.

“They’re good, solid lads. They were beaten by Clare because Clare were marginally better on the night. We were beaten in the senior by Tipperary because they were marginally better on the day. If we’re beaten by Dublin, it’ll be on the day. I don’t think it will be mental fatigue. We have no crutch to lean on. We’re going all out.”

McGrath has also spoken about the negativity in the county, highlighting how even his own father had mentioned they had at least an All-Ireland quarter-final to look forward to, having reached the Munster final.

“Everybody takes Kilkenny and Tipperary as the teams they aspire to being parallel with. Kilkenny have established a platform for success but in our county, it’s a little different. There’s a kind of leaning back to ‘well, it was at least a good summer anyway’.

“We did our absolute best to keep that out and I think I pointed out beforehand that the only time we’d be thinking about a quarter or a semi-final would be 5.30 on the evening of the Munster final. I wasn’t being contradictory when I spoke about it afterwards as it’s a separate competition.

“Our approach to the Munster final was the very same as the league final in that we haven’t a huge amount of league or Munster titles in comparison to Tipperary or Cork etc. We had to give it everything and that was us giving it everything. There was no realisation with 15 or 20 minutes to go that ‘oh, at least we have a quarter-final’. There was in the aftermath having experienced the defeat.”

The De La Salle man is satisfied Waterford go into Sunday’s game with little harm done to his players in Semple Stadium last Sunday week. “The one thing we’ve done this year is preempted defeats. There are going to be a few bumps along the road and there are going to be difficult times and there are going to be more difficult times ahead of us.

“We’ve just tried to create that culture where within our group when difficult times come that we try and recover as best we can by sticking to what we know best and working as hard as we can for each other. No different to most teams I imagine. Dealing with the occasion from the point of view of Patrick Curran, Tom Devine, Stephen Bennett, Shane Bennett, Colin Dunford. All were involved in their first Munster final and all did relatively well with the occasion in terms of over 40,000 people there. A fella can get stage fright.

“We had a lot of possession just before and after half-time we didn’t convert into scores. That was the key area of getting ahead of Tipperary but there were positives. We came out of it injury-free and I don’t think there’s a mental scare there. We found it hard to recover from the Kilkenny and Clare league games last year. There is no baggage attached to the Munster final.”