McGrath feeling the hunger once more

If Derek McGrath came equipped with a fuel gauge then the red warning light would have been flashing at a worrying rate by the time he finally stepped away from his role as Waterford hurling manager after five years last summer.

He admits as much now.

McGrath didn’t feel as though he had taken Waterford as far as they could go when he called time.

He spoke instead this week of a need to rediscover a better balance in his life between family, work as a teacher and hurling.

He knew the break was needed and yet he wrestled with the decision to walk long after shutting the door behind him.

Tipperary’s ghost goal in Munster, the crippling injury list, his sense that the year as a whole was nothing much more than a blip: these all ate away at him.

That sense of loss is greater now that the scent of summer is in the air.

He misses the planning side to the gig now as Waterford build on their training camp in Portugal and rues the lost chance to experiment in a league that had shed the fear and straitjacket of relegation.

“That kicks in,” he admitted. “That’s human nature, to doubt your decision.”

If part of him struggled to let go then there is another side to the man that can’t but help look to the future: to his future in the game.

This dichotomy manifested itself in a very obvious manner through the spring and will again through the summer.

He has avoided his old charges so far this year. There was no contact sought with a panel of players with whom he enjoyed such a special bond until he sent a few texts on the morning of the league final.

And he made a conscious decision not to take in any of their games.

Media duties for TV and print kept him busy and fed the beast that is his analytical mind, but he will watch his native county in action for the first time since stepping down when they welcome Clare to Walsh Park on Sunday week.

“For their sake, you want leadership to percolate down in the right way,” he explained this week.

And, for it to be as seamless as it has been, you have to keep your distance. You can’t be hanging over the whole thing.

Paraic Fanning, his successor, is only four miles down the road. They met before Fanning decided to go for the job and still bump into each other, but here again McGrath is mindful that he gives the new man space to do his own thing.

It is time to plough his own furrow now. Or, it will be soon, at least.

If the energy levels were dangerously low last summer, the effervescence is back now.

He needed almost a thousand words to answer one question here, the response jumping from talk of Limerick’s strength in depth to Clare and on to Cork and Waterford before wrapping up.

Derek McGrath will be back on the inter-county scene. That much is clear.

He is too passionate, too invested and too demented by hurling to stay away forever and he has the support of his wife Sarah — John Mullane’s sister — to go again.

When he does jump in, it will be from a height. There will be no dipping his toes back into the water.

Some advisory roles have been dangled in front of him already but none held an appeal.

You don’t get some of Derek McGrath some of the time, you get the whole package.

He’s prepared to give it a year or two. To decompress a bit more and keep learning away from the sidelines and the spotlight.

There will be no shortage of phone calls until he accepts someone’s offer, though it’s hard to see too many Munster boards looking for his number.

“I wouldn’t rule anything out,” is his own take on that. “Traditionally, a lot of the Munster counties don’t go outside the county for a manager.

"I’m not here to audition for a managerial job, but I wouldn’t rule anything out because I love it like. I love it, I love it.

“The only thing that perhaps might be an issue is that whole tactical kind of pigeon-holing of me perhaps.

"Like, if I put 10 GAA men up there in front of me, seven would tell me that’s the guy who plays the sweeper. You know what I mean?”

There’s no annoyance in his voice when he shares this.

It isn’t that the perception of him might be unfair so much as inaccurate and he initiates his counter by pointing out that they played through 2015 and 2016 with just extra midfielders and with Tadhg De Burca sitting back.

There was, he insisted, no sweeper then.

This is the truth. People think I’m disingenuous when I say this.

The first day he played a sweeper was an All-Ireland qualifier against Offaly in Tullamore when they hit 1-34 and conceded just 14 points.

And they stuck with it through the four games that took them to that year’s final in September.

“It’s not a forum for trying to explain yourself, but that’s the truth. I would say we were very flexible, you know?

"I heard the discussions around Austin (Gleeson) getting a roving role and all that kind of stuff, as if he had never had a roving role before.

“On Friday evening I looked back at the league final and I see Austin back in his own 21, so I think all teams are very tactical, flexible now.

"Planning is a huge part of it. I think people are beginning to see that instinct and planning can coexist, can merge. It can be fluid.”

His next step will be as intriguing as the last.