Talking Points: Bigger postmortem to be held in Waterford than Tipperary
22 May 2022; Waterford manager Liam Cahill before the Munster GAA Hurling Senior Championship Round 5 match between Clare and Waterford at Cusack Park in Ennis, Clare. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile
After he was mugged by a combination of Liam Fennelly and Matt Ruth for the dubious goal that decided the 1982 Leinster final Damien Martin, the Offaly goalkeeper, sighed that he was going home to “keep the rooks out of the corn for the summer”. Whatever way the quote might be reformatted for the 21st century, Colm Bonnar and Liam Cahill will empathise with Martin’s combination of resignation and realism. To paraphrase the poet: “This is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. And, worse still, on the 22nd of May.”
Some straws in the wind provide a hint of things to come. We now know that Tipperary’s defeat by Kerry back in early January portended dark skies for the losers – and, to be fair, we probably suspected as much at the time. Other straws in the wind provide no such hints. April began with Waterford producing coruscating hurling to dispose of Cork in the National League showpiece and shaping up as Limerick’s biggest threat. That night it was easy to imagine Tipp failing to make it out of Munster and impossible to imagine Waterford following suit. If there is to be a sweeping postmortem it should be held in Waterford rather than Tipperary. The latter are where they are because of the natural ebb and flow of the cycle; regardless of the identity of the manager they were always going to struggle this season. Why, and how alarmingly quickly, the wheels came off the Cahillmobile is a bigger and far more complicated matter. (Had they trailed by 20 points at half-time yesterday it wouldn’t have been unfair.) Should enquiries reveal that they used up too much of their petrol during the league, so be it – as long as lessons are learned for 2023.
He’s the Redemption Man on what could turn out to be the Redemption Team.
After Cork lost to Tipperary in a qualifier back in November 2020, Conor Lehane appeared to have played his last game for his county. He was adjudged to have not performed in their Munster championship defeat to Waterford, been underwhelming in his couple of cameos coming off the bench in the qualifiers, and ultimately having failed to delivered both an All Ireland and on his promise after so many years. That winter made the hard call, literally and figuratively, and informed Lehane his services would no longer be required in 2021.
Yet there was Lehane yesterday, back playing against Tipperary in championship and scoring seven points from play off them. He had the resilience in 2021 to go back to his club, control what he could and guide them to a county championship. And Kingston had the humility and good sense to recall him. The Cork manager has also displayed those same qualities in the past month in how he has altered the personnel, personality and playing approach of this Cork team, including reintroducing Lehane into the starting lineup. Together they’ve helped keep Cork’s season alive – and could bring them all the way back to Croke Park.
No insult to Patrick Curran – credit to him for keeping going till the final whistle, indeed – but it would have been handier for the purposes of this item had his very late effort at Cusack Park not found its way over the goalline. That way we’d have been able to note that after winning the first half by 13 points Clare had won the second half too.
In other words, they hadn’t rested on their laurels, they’d been as brisk and hungry after the interval as they had been before it, their manager had ensured no slippage in standards and so forth. And in truth all these things came to pass. Waterford needed an early goal on the resumption; David Fitzgerald got it and that was that. Clare kept their noses to the grindstone from start to finish. Playing under one of the county’s Mount Rushmore figures tends to have that kind of effect. Three wins, seven points from eight, a place in the Munster final and All Ireland series, game time for everyone: the provincial round robin has gone better for the Banner than they would have dared to hope. Right now nobody has more momentum. Given that there is no obligation on us, unlike on them, “to take it one match at a time”, it can reasonably be posited that the worst-case scenario of an All-Ireland quarter-final against whoever makes it through the preliminaries would hold no terrors for them. Yet come the Munster final only one objective will exist for them. Brian Lohan will make certain of that.
It’s less than a month since Limerick minor manager Kevin O’Hagan took stock after the side’s eight-point loss to Waterford that had evicted them from the Munster Championship and declared that “one bad day doesn’t break the thing”.
The 'thing' was the renowned academy that has filtered a roll call of players and coaches into the county’s representative system. His U20 counterpart, Diarmuid Mullins, was less blunt after their All-Ireland final loss to Kilkenny yesterday but the message was similar.
Mullins knows all too well that silverware at underage level doesn’t translate neatly into senior success given he was a member of the Laois minor footballers who claimed a second successive All-Ireland football Championship for the county in 1997. The midlanders did manage to win a rare senior provincial title under Mick O'Dwyer six years later but the county’s structures gradually broke down and a long decline has followed at all grades.
“A day like today is about winning the game but there has been development as well,” said the Portlaoise man after their one-point loss in Thurles. “Players have come through and, as I said to them inside, they need to keep working at that and push on. It’s into the bearpit of senior now. You fight your way onto that, it’s open to everyone at that level.”
Plenty was made of how Darragh Egan might develop Wexford tactically when he stepped into Davy Fitgerald's shoes last winter. He spoke of favouring a 'hybrid' approach, a mixture of the old Davy Fitz intricate, short-passing stuff and a more traditional long-ball game. Less, however, was spoken about the requirement to develop a more competitive panel and to ultimately increase the options at his disposal. Fitzgerald favoured a tight, cohesive unit during his reign and in his first league campaign as Wexford manager, in 2017, had seven players who started all six league games that season. In all, Fitzgerald fielded 28 different players in that campaign. In the 2018 league, Fitzgerald only used 25 players. Egan, in turn, used 31 players in his first league campaign and, crucially, just two of them - Damien Reck and Diarmuid O'Keeffe - started all the matches, suggesting more opportunities and more game time for more players. It paid off on Saturday evening because the first three players that Egan brought on - Connal Flood, Mikie Dwyer and Cathal Dunbar - all scored. They were exceptionally important points too, all coming during the late blitz when Wexford outscored Kilkenny by 0-6 to 0-2. "We're trying to really, really build a panel," said Egan. "You saw Oisin Foley, Charlie McGuckin, how vital they were to us. They've never worn a Wexford jersey in a Championship match before this year."
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