Fitting a quart into a gallon pot

I hope Dermot Keyes doesn’t think I’m picking on him for using a couple of his tweets as the hooks for this post. I do so, Dermot, because I’m a parasite. I mean, because I care. Yes, definitely the latter. Anyway, the release of the Waterford team for Saturday’s big game – very big game, it seems – had me thinking in the general and the particular. In general, it’s refreshing to see Michael Ryan announce a team in advance that we can be confident reflects his thinking on how Waterford are going to line out. Recently we’ve seen Liam Dunne put out mock teams, leading Dermot to observe:

Enough of the fake team selections please. It's juvenile. #GAA @sportsdes #SundayGame

— Dermot Keyes (@DermotKeyes) June 16, 2013

‘Juvenile’ is the perfect word for it. Liam Dunne’s rant reminded me of an Aprés Match sketch where Risteard Cooper summed up the philosophy of Jack Charlton: “I’ll play who I like, when I like. And if I don’t want to pick a guy, I will, because I can, if I like. I think”. Someone should ask Dunne how many points his exercises in acting-the-maggot are worth to his team because it didn’t seem to do them any good last weekend. The idea that the opposition will be blindsided by a lineup stroke so brilliant that it can be the difference between winning and losing is ridiculous. Pick your 15 and adjust them according to circumstances on the day.

In particular, and as for our starting 15, Dermot had some exciting news:

Genuinely not going to state any more on the Deise other than I've heard something potentially very interesting. Time will tell!

— Dermot Keyes (@DermotKeyes) June 14, 2013

How intriguing! What stroke was Michael Ryan going to pull that would have us all talking?

Oh. Maybe I’m missing something here, but either they have backed away from a truly radical selection or they never intended to put one into place to start with.

The only selection here that is a surprise is that of Stephen O’Keeffe in goal. What did Ian O’Regan do so wrong in the Clare game that it invalidated the decision to select him for that game? There is no coherent strategy in this position, and Ian O’Regan really must love his county (© John Mullane) to put up with these slings and arrows and never rise up against them. As for the rest of the team, there can’t be many quibbles. Shane Fives is fit, so he comes in and we can be certain Darragh Fives won’t be faffing around in the corner.  Jamie Nagle is fit and will probably be fit to burst now that his status as a Championship hurler of choice has finally been cemented. So the injury news is positive in the backs, but further up the field it’s all negatives. Anyone who watched the Clare game in isolation would think it makes perfect sense for Maurice Shanahan to replace Pauric Mahony in at full-forward, but they’d want to be very isolated not to hear the howls of frustration that echoed around the county when Shane Walsh picked up another injury last Sunday. You can argue the toss over whether Brian O’Halloran or O’Sullivan is a better choice, but we are definitely weaker for the absence of Walsh.

Not that the absence of O’Halloran is insignificant, because it shows how we’re running on empty. It’s hard to see where Michael Ryan could have been radical, even if he were inclined that way. Pick Gavin O’Brien, perhaps? The team is picking itself for the most part, and the hope must be that, as Tomás McCarthy suggested in his Clare report, that we were a lot closer to victory that day than the final quarter suggested. If we’re not, I fear the knives are going to be out.

The magical mystery tour

If cleaboy boy over on boards.ie is correct, and the lack of any RTÉ/TV3 logo among the match details on the GAA’s website suggests he is, the revolution against Offaly will not be televised. In what I am assuming is an email from someone in Montrose, they spell it out:

we will NOT be covering the game live.

The GAA decided before the last contract to reduce the number of LIVE games we are permitted to show.

One of the ten games we are now not PERMITTED is Preliminary Hurling Qualifier.
Live coverage on radio and extended highlights on Sunday night.

Thanks

I once got an email from no less a person than Ryle Nugent when I accused him of focusing on a brawl at a GAA match while ignoring a similar spat at an Ulster rugby match. His response was far more polite than I deserved, so credit to RTÉ for being responsive on this level, and it’s important to emphasis that RTÉ have nothing to do with the match not being televised. The GAA have decided live coverage is likely to reduce attendances, so unless something spectacular happens in the next week, I’ll be following the game on the radio.

Ugh. I hate following games on the radio.

Is this a good idea? I think we can all agree that bigger crowds at matches would be a good thing. But will taking away live television lead to a boost in numbers at the game? The problem is that there are so many variables. Crowds are down for all manner of reasons:

• the back door reducing too many games to a phony war
• Kilkenny’s dominance is sucking away people’s interest
• prices are too high during a recession
• poor venue choices are making it harder than it need be to get to games

If we wanted to find out what the main problem is, we’d change one of these variables and hold the others steady. Like we’d ever be that rational about change in the GAA. Even if we could do it in each case – making Henry Shefflin play with skates rather than boots, perhaps? – the temptation to tinker with everything is immense, and I don’t exclude myself from the ranks of the, uh, tinkers.

With respect to this latest attempt to meddle with what we’re not sure whether it’s working or not, the GAA have gotten it arse-over-tit, as Julia Gillard’s opponents might put it. Offaly are a good example of the folly of the current dispensation. Their supporters could anticipate seeing them get walloped by the Cats in stunning HD, and even if they had pulled off the shock to beat all shocks their satisfaction at having seen it or being able to luxuriate in watching it back would have been tempered by the knowledge that they hadn’t finished the job. Now we have a match where they have a real prospect of success, one that would allow them to puff their chest out (I like to think we’re a bit of a scalp) and look forward to a long summer, and it’s not on the telly. It gets worse in football, where some novel and exciting clashes in the qualifiers will be ignored while turkey shoots in the provincial championships like the recent game between Kerry and Tipperary are churned out year after year. You can retain the provincial championships without pretending that they’re still the jewel in the crown.

So I think the GAA have got their priorities wrong. Still, you have to marvel at the assumption that live coverage of every match is the divine right of every Gael. I can remember a time when we had two hurling matches a year on the telly. But we were happy! Actually no, we weren’t, it was mental that the only team we could ever be sure of seeing was Galway. But the sky didn’t fall in and the game did not wither on the vine for the lack of exposure. We like to tell ourselves that the worst hurling match is better than the best match from any other sport, and to the committed that is mostly true. But there have been plenty of matches shown over the years that were a dreadful advert for the game and one of the best of recent times, the Waterford-Limerick match in 2003, had its status enhanced by not being endlessly pored over by the Loughnanes of this world. Walter Bagehot wrote of the British monarchy that “we must not let in daylight upon magic”. Establishing a principle that the default way to watch hurling is by being at the game rather than on your couch might be a good place from which to start restoring some of the mystique.

Confessions of a Newbie Blue

Fogra: this article was originally published in the Waterford United programme for the Salthill Devon game on 8th June 2013. I’m sure you’ve all read it already, so this is placed here purely for archival purposes.

It started with abuse. Never thought that it would come to this. Not coming from a ‘soccer’ household didn’t stop me falling head-over-heels in love with Liverpool FC, and it was that love which saw me spend five years in the city in the mid-Noughties, picking up a season ticket-owning wife along the way. So it was that my in-laws were in town when I was offered tickets for the match against Roy Keane’s Ipswich Town. I was tickled by the idea of my father-in-law, a man who had stood on the Kop when Liverpool famously defeated St-Etienne in the 1977 European Cup, seeing what it was like at the coal face of the game.  I posted a rather dismissive article about the experience on my blog, and even though I brought my brother-in-law to see the Blues play a proper fixture against Limerick in the league a few weeks later – how would a veteran of those two Champions League semi-final triumphs over Chelsea view such an event? – this didn’t necessarily indicate a sudden yearning to worship at the cathedral that is the RSC.

Then I noticed a few comments on the Ipswich post. Very abusive comments. It seemed improbable that these people just happened upon the blog simultaneously, so I did some digging and found someone had posted a link on a fan forum where the comments about me made those posted on the blog look like the work of Ban Ki-moon. There was one chap who exhorted people to give me a break, that at least I had shown an interest in the Blues and had taken the time to express an opinion on the experience. But for everyone else . . . oh boy.  As far as they were concerned the ninth circle of Hell was reserved for barstoolers like me.

It is probably to the credit of my lone defender on the forum that my reaction was not to wash my hands of the whole affair, but instead to adopt a stubborn attitude that I’d show the rest of them what it was to be a Waterford man, godammit! I went along to see the Blues play UCD and lo! bumped into an old school friend who only too happy to show me the ropes with respect to the League of Ireland scene, something I hadn’t been clued into since the days of Tommy Lynch, and I’ve been a frequent (if not regular) visitor to the RSC ever since.

The reason I go through all this biographical detail is not out of a sense of narcissism. Okay, not entirely out of a sense of narcissism. It’s to show how tricky it is to get into the world of the League of Ireland supporter. Supporting Liverpool was a doddle, and that wasn’t because they were winning all round them at the time. And no, I’m not going to beat myself up about that. I’m sure most committed supporters of the domestic game also follow events cross-channel. I was once on a flight back from Liverpool and one of my fellow passengers could claim over 300 visits to Anfield. Clearly a good Red, but also a good Blue as demonstrated by his continued presence in the RSC. The reason I bring up how I came to be a proper supporter is that there were so many places where I could have said it’s not worth the bother. The Ipswich game was deathly dull. The Facebook app that allowed you to show what sports grounds you’d been to might not have existed (that’s the reason my brother-in-law was happy to accompany me to the Limerick game). The friendly forumite might not have been round to give me a vision of a welcoming RSC as opposed to unthinking keyboard warriors. I might not have even met that old school friend who was able to give me something familiar upon which to cling while I acclimatised myself to this slightly intimidating new world. In short, there are so many places that it could have gone wrong. One wonders how many people have set out on the journey only to fall into a similar pothole along the way.

It’s easy supporting a team in the English Premier League. There are millions of people around the world claiming undying love of Liverpool who have never even been to Europe, let alone Anfield. It’s hard to follow the local game. If someone were to ask me why they should go, I’d struggle to come up with a good sales pitch. I enjoy the live game, but you could just as easily go to a junior game for free if all you wanted was to see a good kick-around. €10 represents excellent value for an evening’s entertainment, but the moment it comes out of your mouth you feel like underselling it (“it’s only the price of a few pints”). The commitment of the players to winning even a dead rubber and their honest endeavour at all times is a sight to behold, but despite the abuse heaped on multi-millionaire footballers and their remoteness from the fans, there’s very few of them of whom it can’t be said they give their best too. Don’t ever ask me to be a salesman.

What keeps me coming back is a renewed sense of that which is the last refuge of the scoundrel – patriotism. Waterford city has suffered grievously in recent years, whether it be the depredations of unemployment or even the stripping of the very city status that has been at the heart of its identity for the best part of a millennium. I’m not going to win any converts to the cause in this programme. Something gives me an inkling that everyone reading it is onside already. Either that or looking for a cure for insomnia. In the end though, we have to hang together. The alternative doesn’t even bear thinking about.

Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!

I would rather not have gotten Offaly at this stage of the qualifiers. After the weekend’s games they look the best of the teams among those we know are in the qualifiers, and while there’s something to be said for the idea that we’re going to have to beat the likes of Offaly if we want to progress, I’d still rather build up to them than have to meet them straight out of the traps. Anyone who wants to win the French Open is going to have to beat Rafael Nadal but that doesn’t mean you want to meet him in the first round. And no, I’m not saying Offaly are the equivalent of Nadal in the All-Ireland, they look the equivalent among the other teams currently in the qualifiers, okay?

However, what is it with the rampant pessimism that seems to characterise Waterford supporters? I know we were well beaten in the end by Clare, and I know Offaly exceeded expectations against Kilkenny, but you can be certain that the same Cassandras would be out in force had we been knocked out of Munster in a one-point thriller and Offaly been handed their arse by the Cats. I’m already bracing myself for maudlin previews in the Munster Express and News & Star about how we must be wary of the Offalymen and this is a 50:50 game. Both might be true, but you’d have read identikit previews had we been playing London, Westmeath or Carlow. I don’t know how Offaly papers will react to the draw, but if the anecdotal evidence I have from their neighbours in Laois is anything to go by, where two of my siblings can testify to the brazenly cocky articles that precede every game, then we can expect rousing calls to arms rather than timid fatalism. And Offaly have had a lot more to be brazen about in my lifetime than Laois.

Talking us down doesn’t do us any good. Indeed I’d argue it does us harm. I’ve noted in the past (twice) how Larry O’Gorman/Murphy was quoted after Wexford’s win over us in 2003 that teams always feel they have a chance against Waterford. In fairness that was a better Wexford team than the current crop. They would be good enough to beat Kilkenny the following year, something of which no Waterford players of recent vintage can boast. But the essential truth that everyone thinks that they have Waterford’s number is chilling.

We are favourites for this game. Offaly may be on the way up and we may be on the way down, but one brave performance against Kilkenny does not suggest we’ve crossed paths just yet. If we lose to Offaly, so be it. Let’s not look back and regret that we were beaten before a ball was even thrown in.

All I want for Christmas is two home draws

That Santa is being a right git.

Preliminary Round – played Saturday 22 June 2013
A Offaly vs Waterford
B Wexford/Dublin vs Antrim
C London vs Westmeath

Phase 1 – played Saturday 29 June 2013
Team B vs Carlow
Team C vs Team A

As the first team has home advantage, it means we’ll have to play Offaly in Tullamore. Should we win that, we’d play London/Westmeath in Ruislip (gulp)/Mullingar. I’m not too upset about the prospect of playing Offaly. If we’re going to progress in this competition we’re going to have to beat the likes of Offaly at some stage. The away draw is irritating though. There’s no chance of me making it to any away games so I might well have seen my last Senior inter-county hurling in 2013. Thank goodness for Tramore, eh?

Waterford 1-15 (18) Clare 2-20 (26)

Here comes the summer! We’d all like to see crowds of 50,000 in Thurles on a Munster championship Sunday, but it has its costs. Where’s the pleasure in parking out by Thurles Golf Club, wading your way through rivers of vomit, taking a seat in a completely different part of the stadium to other members of your family, and being stuck in amongst a group of people who don’t know the game/incessantly bellow for the opposition/both? Last year I saw something deeply wrong with a relatively poor attendance. This year? How could you feel churlish when we felt confident enough to leave jackets in the car? Here comes the summer!

All the pre-match speculation about the lineup of the teams proved to be accurate as Waterford rejigged positions with Maurice Shanahan going in full-forward and Paudie Prendergast popping up in the corner. For Clare, both Cian Dillon and Darech Honan had made miraculous recoveries. Someone really should tell Davy that a surprise is something that no one sees coming. A good example would be him keeping his cool over a free given against his team only ninety seconds in as the referee missed Jamie Barron picking the ball off the ground. Had Davy waited even a picosecond longer he would have seen the linesman agreed with him and was furiously waving his flag to that effect and the ref, to his credit, admitted his mistake and changed the decision. What are the chances of Davy ever doing that?

What was surprising was how quickly Clare were out of the blocks. When my wife asked me beforehand what I thought would happen, I had opined that if anyone was going to run away with it, it was Clare (if this feels like preparation for a spot of reverse ferreting after my intemperate comments before the game, you’re probably right) because they were clearly a less well-known quantity than Waterford. But you wouldn’t expect such a new team, with so few Munster championship wins to their name,  to take flight as easily as they did as Clare raced into a four-point lead. A 65 from Colin Ryan, awarded after his free from Barron’s foul went out off a Waterford back, opened the scoring. There followed two quick fire points from John Conlon, the first after he had pilfered the ball from between two Waterford players who managed to get in each others way, and the second from the subsequent puckout as he eased onto the ball and slotted it between the posts. Colm Galvin then had the freedom of the park to give Clare a four-point lead after only five minutes and you began to wonder whether Davy had produced alchemy of a type that would have had Isaac Newton bowing in admiration.

Everything looked awful, right down to a short puckout to Jamie Nagle who, with all due respect (and there’d be plenty due over the next hour or so), hasn’t got the most monstrous puck himself, thus leaving Waterford no further up the field than most poc fada goalies could manage. What we needed was a moment of carelessness from a Clare back to soften their collective cough. So props to the Clare back who hit a hospital ball to a teammate that was pounced upon by Jake Dillon. With the entire Clare defence on the front foot there was only thing on his mind even at a good 45 metres out from goal, and he got into position and struck a delightful bouncing bomb into the far corner. Had this happened at the other end, we’d have been passing out the sick bags. Great stuff.

Ship steadied, we now began to motor. Dillon could have had another goal when he had the room behind from an error by a Clare back in which to move but he had already decided he was going to flick the ball up and bat it over the bar and that’s what he did to level matters. A free from Ryan after Honan had been fouled put them ahead again but he also sent one from further wide. Still, that wasn’t an easy one and you could only wince as Pauric Mahony mis-hit a free from inside the 45 to drop it into the lap of the Clare goalie. It was not an auspicious day for the art of the dead ball as Waterford cleared a dreadful sideline cut from Ryan to Seamus Prendergast who scored to take the edge off Mahony’s earlier miss.

A soft free allowed Ryan to restore Clare’s lead but the remainder of the half would belong to us. Kevin Moran teed up Pauric Mahony for a fine score to level matters again, then Shane O’Sullivan and Jamie Nagle combined to romp down the right wing and give Maurice Shanahan the chance to put Waterford ahead for the first team. Unfortunately Pauric Mahony’s score had not eased his stage fright as he missed another relatively easy free but it didn’t seem to matter that much, so on top were the Waterford half-backs and midfield. One run from Kevin Moran saw him flick the ball over a Clare player and release Mahony who was fouled to give Maurice Shanahan the chance (ahem) to stretch the lead to two from the free. Another botched sideline cut from Ryan was given the a proper punishment by Waterford as we swept up the field and Mahony earned another free to give Shanahan the chance to put us a full goal ahead. The backs were winning oceans of possession and using it well, and even when Clare were getting in behind us we saw Honan being pushed shepherded out wide where he could only drift a shot wide of the posts. An over-the-shoulder effort from Jake Dillon saw us go four points and Clare felt sufficiently spooked to bring on Peter Duggan. Right from the start he was clearly in the mould of a fixer, sent to lift the crowd and soften up the Waterford players. His first contribution was to pluck the ball salmon-like from the air . . . then be hustled out of it by four Waterford players. Spare us all from hurling’s Great White Dopes.

Through all of this Waterford’s wide count was beginning to stack up, Jamie Barron having slashed at a decent chance and Shanahan hitting a free from a goodly distance out wide, but the dominance of the backs and the precise nature of  their play, all effortless creation of space and precise balls into space was music that was lulling my senses. O’Sullivan and Nagle in particular were outstanding, easily matching and even exceeding the efforts of Moran and Walsh, and there can be no higher praise than that. Even a drag by O’Sullivan on an advancing Clare forward to give away a free from which Ryan scored to trim the gap to three felt planned – don’t give them a sniff of a goal chance. When Shanahan failed to get a free for an obvious drag and was instead penalised for overcarrying, it felt like justice when the free dropped short and Tony Kelly failed to take advantage of a decent chance when Ian O’Regan’s clearance was blocked. A long-range effort from Moran went for another wide but any sense of frustration was quickly nipped in the bud as he strode onto a careless puckout and smashed it straight between the posts to get us all punching the air with delight. There was a mild moment of panic at the other end when Curran made space for the Clare forwards with his mullocking ways but Kelly ending up taking the point, and the half ended with Shanahan knocking over another free after he had been clothes-lined to leave us with an eight-point swing at half-time from those scary opening five minutes.

It’s very important to emphasise at this stage how satisfied everyone was with what had unfolded. The Waterford team got a standing ovation as they came off. The full-back line had stood firm in all cases and the half-backs and midfield were cleaning up. Yes, the forwards had been a bit wasteful but six different players had scored from play and with Shanahan firmly in the free-taking saddle it was looking very good indeed. They looked so well coached. If they kept playing like this and stuck to the game plan, what could possibly go wrong?

In retrospect, the game would be lost in the first ten minutes of the second half and there were moments that, even at the time, you could see would lead to the quailing of the stoutest of hearts. An early snatched-at effort by Barron was followed up by an even more dispiriting effort by Mahony, his effort coming on the back of a quite brilliant piece of play by Nagle where he deftly batted the ball off the hurley of an advancing Clare player and played Mahony in for what should have been a tub-thumping score. A third awful wide of the first eight minutes of the second half, this time a hasty effort from Seamus Prendergast of all people, had me making a despairing contemporaneous note – MULLANE. Had we made hay in those opening minutes of the half, gotten seven/eight points clear, forced them to start going for goals, our heads kept in the air . . . who knows?

We didn’t though, and maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference because the turnaround we were about to see was total. A great score on the run by Tony Kelly showed the Waterford forwards how it was done – eight minutes in and the first score of the half – and the gap was halved when Ryan stroked over a free after Paudie Prendergast had despairingly fouled Shane O’Donnell to prevent something worse happening. Shanahan looked to have stopped the rot with a fine long distance effort after a pirouetting Moran had been clipped by his opposite number. It looked nasty and surely hurt like hell, but the ref correctly recognised there hadn’t been a shred of malice in it and no card was issued. Overall, Mr McGrath had a very good game. Meanwhile Waterford were now firmly on the back foot, exemplified when Jake Dillon was giving away frees in scoring range for Clare. Ryan popped this one over the bar, and when the ref mysteriously whistled up for some off-the-ball action in the Waterford right-corner – terrible officiating! – Ryan had the simple task of taking the score and reducing the gap to one. Nagle was harshly penalised for a push on Duggan and yet again Ryan was on hand to level matters. Clare seemingly could only score in five minutes spurts.

Darragh Fives gave Waterford some relief with a rampaging run which ended in him being fouled to give us back the lead from Shanahan’s free but it didn’t last long as Honan got the freedom of the park to level matters. You can see another seven letter word on my notes at this point – FITNESS. People who climb mountains may only be good at climbing mountains, but Clare had really scaled the one we had put in front of them in the first half. All the dominance we had shown in the half-back line was now a distant memory as Clare rammed every ball back down our collective throat. A great run by Ryan ended in another none-shall-pass foul and it spoke volumes that this time Clare felt sufficiently pumped up that Kelly decided to go for a goal. Personally I think you’re asking for trouble with this kind of gambit. With about ten backs between you and the goal the odds are pretty low and should the opposition clear it then it can be a tremendous boost for morale, effectively a very bad wide. And thus it initially proved as someone in the square got a stick to it and Kevin Moran went to clear. However, note the words of Rod Laver. He said that a break in tennis wasn’t truly a break until you had held your serve. This was much the same scenario as Moran’s clearance was blocked by Duggan – damn these mullockers – and the ball pinged to Shane O’Donnell who couldn’t miss from point-blank range.

What a disaster. Waterford were completely rattled, Mahony demonstrating this with a crazy pull out on the 65 that was never going anywhere near the posts. A similar effort from O’Sullivan reinforced how badly Waterford were struggling, the deft creating of space by half-back and midfield before leaving the ball was ancient history. Clare were having no such problems, first to every ball and finding space with ease, Honan getting a fine score with no Waterford player within five yards of him. O’Sullivan showed there was some individual life in the Waterford dog, drawing a foul and allowing Shanahan to keep the deficit down to a single score, but collectively we were clearly a beaten team. When Seamus Prendergast tripped his marker as he emerged with the ball, it proved how the Waterford players were a step behind the mountain climbers, and the subsequent free-out was galloped onto by Conor McGrath and he had no problem batting the ball past the exposed O’Regan. Game as good as over.

Gavin O’Brien had come on for Jamie Barron and showed the benefit of fresh legs in these circumstances with a nice score, but the strength of the Clare players was overwhelming, Tony Kelly reacting with his third point of the game straight from the puckout. Jake Dillon managed to get a decent score on the run although in the circumstances he might have been better off putting the head down and going for goal. We weren’t going to win this picking off points and when Shanahan was given a charitable free about 30 metres out he was probably in two minds about whether to try and drill the ball towards the goal. Whatever it was, he flicked the ball up and completely missed striking it. It surely should have been a free out when he stabbed the ball along the ground towards goal  - if not, what’s to stop a player gingerly lofting the ball several yards in front of them then striking it as it came down? – but the play carried on and could have been a crazy goal which might have undeservedly revived our fortunes. Instead O’Brien’s Seamus Prendergast’s pull seemed to be deflected over the bar and the chance was gone.

It was to be our last score of the game. It pains me to say it, but for the last seven minutes we were a rabble. I’m not saying they didn’t try, but heads were firmly between knees at this stage. Colin Ryan could have had a goal of Mickey Sheehy/Paddy Cullen standing when Ian O’Regan’s clearance having gone walkabout dropped into his lap but his shot drifted wide. Fergal Lynch also could have had a goal but took a point to guarantee himself on the scoresheet. Colm Galvin scored a tremendous point from distance and Ryan added another free, then another score from Galvin with nary a Waterford player in sight truly twisted the knife right on the final whistle. Those last few scores breezed by in a blur – that’s the polite way of saying I hadn’t clue at this stage, please don’t treat my scorers as gospel. Given the extent to which Waterford had been on top for large periods, those scores flattered Clare – but not by much.

I’m not angry or bitter at Waterford for what happened. The feeling is one of resignation. I don’t think I was being unreasonable for questioning where the evidence of Clare’s progress under Davy Fitz was to be found. I have to admit that those who read between the lines got it right. He has some very talented players and has whipped them into shape in the way he does best. For Michael Ryan, the drawing board must look more like the writing on the wall. The backs gave the forwards a platform to win this and they failed to take it. The best that can be said now is that the back door might give them an opportunity to put it right.

Waterford: Ian O’Regan, Darragh Fives, Liam Lawlor, Noel Connors, Jamie Nagle, Michael Walsh, Paudie Prendergast, Shane O’Sullivan, Kevin Moran (capt, 0-1), Maurice Shanahan (0-7, 0-6f), Seamus Prendergast (0-2), Brian O’Halloran (Ray Barry), Jamie Barron (0-1; Gavin O’Brien, 0-1), Pauric Mahony (0-1; Martin O’Neill), Jake Dillon (1-2)

Clare: Patrick Kelly, Domhnall O’Donovan, David McInerney, Cian Dillon, Brendan Bugler, Patrick Donnellan (capt), Patrick O’Connor, Colm Galvin (0-3), Seadna Morey (Peter Duggan; Fergal Lynch, 0-1), John Conlon (0-2), Tony Kelly (0-3), Colin Ryan (0-8, 0-7f, 0-1 65), Darach Honan (0-3), Shane O’Donnell (1-0; Padraic Collins), Conor McGrath (1-0)

HT: Waterford 1-9 (12) Clare 0-8 (8)

Referee: James McGrath (Westmeath)

Waterford v Clare, 2 June 2013

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All the players that are fit to play

I think it’s a good idea to nail your colours to the mast before the first Championship as to what team you think should take to the field so that I can’t be accused of being wise after the event should the team that does line out bellyflop in a spectacular manner, and that’s what I was planning to do. Imagine my surprise when Michael Ryan gazumped me by releasing the team on Tuesday rather than the Friday before the game that seems to be the norm these days. This is a good thing. Spare us the mind game nonsense and allow us to have a natter about the choices made before the event.

Although you could argue that there wasn’t much in the way of ‘choice’ available to Michael Ryan and co. The most obvious place where he had to make an either/or decision was in goal, where we see Ian O’Regan make a Lazarus-style return to Championship hurling after a nine-year absence. I’m normally one for saying that the only objective measure of performance is how you did in the League. This isn’t because I think the League is a crucible in which legends are forged – it clearly isn’t – but because there’s no other measure that makes any sense when dealing with unseasoned players. Stephen O’Keeffe has only played two more Championship games than O’Regan and is hardly an undisputed choice (nor would Adrian Power be if he were still in the mix), so why not stick with the incumbent who kept two clean sheets in the last two games after O’Keeffe has been to blame for the loss to Kilkenny? To which I respond that I find it hard to believe that those two games were enough to answer the questions that have always clung to ‘Iggy’ since that wretched day against Kilkenny in 2004. If we are going to maximise our potential, it has to be with players who have the capacity to be good rather than good enough, and I still think O’Keeffe is the former and O’Regan the latter.

At least in this case Michael Ryan had a choice, because the rest of the team has the alarming appearance of being output of a check on who were the last men standing.

The spine of the team looks good.  Liam Lawlor has staked a decisive claim at full-back and what a relief it is to be able to say that after all these years (no disrespect intended to Declan Prendergast). Brick Walsh is the best centre-back in the country, Shane O’Sullivan and Kevin Moran are a top midfield pair, and Seamus Prendergast is a reliable ball winner who also invariably weighs in a couple of scores in each game.

For the rest of the team though, it’s a question of looking at who is not there. The lack of goals was a feature of Waterford’s play throughout the League and a lot of the satisfaction from our performances would have been underpinned by the idea that Shane Walsh was likely to make a return for the Championship, scorer of 3-11 in his last six outings. Yeah, this was good but it was going to be better come the summer! How deluded can you be? The presence of Pauric Mahony in the full-forward line does not inspire confidence. I don’t know which thought is more depressing – that he might not start there and the team sheet is purely notional, or that they’re going to give him a few minutes to see how he gets on. In Championship terms this is an entirely new full-forward line. A lot seems to be riding on Jamie Barron and Jake Dillon making a smooth transition to the biggest stage. Maybe they will, but it’s going to be a white-knuckle ride for all concerned.

At least the absence of Shane Walsh is not a surprise. More alarming is the impact the recent injury to Shane Fives has had on the team. Thanks to his excellent form, it all looked very neat after the League with him in one corner, Noel Connors in the other, and any permutation from Moran, Jamie Nagle, Darragh Fives and *genuflects* Tony Browne as wing-backs. Then Shane Fives comes a cropper and suddenly it all goes wrong. Darragh Fives is slated to go into the corner, and you have to admire his stoicism in the face of once again being asked to make do (he could probably get some pointers on this from Declan Prendergast) but remove one piece from the Jenga tower and suddenly it looks precarious. Again, you wonder whether that’s how they’ll line out – Prendergast in the corner instead? – though the best that can be said for such jiggery-pokery is that they hope it might confuse Clare. Good luck with that.

We have had rotten luck with injuries – you can add Stephen Daniels to the tale of woe as well – and any county would struggle to cope with the loss of players of the calibre of Stephen Molumphy and John Mullane. We saw against Cork last year how shallow the pool of talent is, and it hasn’t gotten any deeper in the intervening period. So I’m very nervous about Sunday.

For all of that, what is it with Clare? I know they’ve got a number of underage titles from recent years but it’s a long time since they did anything worth talking about at Senior. The notorious 1998 Munster final was the last time they won anything at this level yet you’d swear it was only yesterday, the way some pundits are blowing smoke up their collective arse. You might argue that Davy Fitz will make all the difference, but based on what? Promotion from Division 1B and a mediocre run through the Championship last year, and coming within a whisker of getting relegated this year? It’s strange how Davy Fitz’s management style was seen as an impediment to Waterford yet is such a perfect match for Clare. The predictions seem to be based on alchemy, surely a meaningless metric by which to measure excellence as opposed to ‘results’. Maybe we’ll see some of that alchemy from Waterford on Sunday. Jamie Barron and Jake Dillon to be the bestest corner-forward pair since Cúchulainn and Fionn Mac Cumhaill took on a team of Scottish giants at hurling/shinty. Their team captain? Tony Browne. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Tramore 2-14 (20) Portlaw 4-20 (32)

After a less-than-auspicious start to my new practice of going to Tramore hurling matches it seemed only fair to give them, and the lowest rung of our beloved sport, another chance. So it was that we (I’ll get back to the ‘we’ in a moment) found ourselves in Portlaw on Sunday morning for the clash between Tramore and Portlaw in (it says here) the Eastern Hurling League Group 1. I emphasise this because I’m right confused as to what the EHL is. Initially I assumed this was Tramore’s second team playing Portlaw’s second team, but a friend of my older brother was there and he explained that this was mostly Tramore’s main team playing mostly Portlaw’s main team. I’d probably head over to the Waterford GAA thread on boards.ie and ask how exactly the club scene works, but after my recent bollocking I’m probably persona non grata, so if some kindly soul reading this could explain it to a prodigal GAA son then I’d be most grateful.

As I noted earlier, the plural in ‘we’ was significant as it included my two nephews. Trying to keep a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old under control meant that I could never be 100% sure of the score, and it duly appears that I was wrong (see accompanying image), missing a Portlaw point early on. I mention all this because maybe it was possible that I was right and the referee was wrong . . . no, not a chance. Having seen a referee undergo a minor nervous breakdown a couple of weeks ago, it was refreshing to see Robert Dunne engage in an exercise in how it should be done. Constantly up with the play, understanding of the difference between filthy play and the merely careless (without giving such carelessness a free pass), and happy to explain his decisions without attempting to be all chummy with the players in the mode of Dickie Murphy, it was a relief to see that good officiating exists at the lower ends of the GAA. And while the GAA Scoreboard might be a great app – certainly an improvement on the inside of a packet of Major cigarettes, the choice of the discerning scorekeeping spectator in days of yore due to its non-glossy paper – there’s no substitute for, uh, giving the game your full attention.

For there was a game here, and unlike the Tramore-Bonmahon game it was played in the right spirit from the off. It may seem incongruous to reference the Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund the previous evening, but both games showed how important the mindset of the respective teams is in creating an entertaining spectacle, for just like the soccer game this was surprisingly enjoyable fare. It’s probably just as well that Eamon Dunphy didn’t see it though as Portlaw cut Tramore to ribbons in the opening stages. At one stage I wondered whether Tramore were playing with 14 men, appearing to be physically one short in the full-forward line and mentally one short in every other line as Portlaw got to every ball first and were able to offload with ease. A quick count told me the awful truth – Tramore were simply terrible, and the scoreline of 3-11 to 0-2 after about 20 minutes was ample testimony to that.

Then something strange happened. Tramore’s tiny corner-forward, the same chap who got cleaned out in the previous match that caused the referee to walk off the pitch, or if not him then this twin brother, scored a marvellous Mullanesque over-the-shoulder score and Tramore suddenly went nap, rattling over three further scores without reply to take the bare look off the scoreboard by half-time. You could also see how Tramore’s spirits were lifted by a stunning save by the goalkeeper right at the start of the second half, and the moving of Tramore’s number 6 yielded almost immediate dividends when he pounced on a mis-hit free for a goal. It was soon evident that he was the star of the show for Tramore as his possessing of excellent ball-winning ability and the vision to pick out a teammate in space allowed Tramore to at least keep up with Portlaw on a point-for-point basis. Thus when the Portlaw goalie made a horrible blunder in dropping a routine catch right on his own line – who’d be a goalkeeper? – to gift Tramore a second goal, the gap was trimmed to nine points and for one brief moment you wondered whether we could pull off an astonishing comeback.

What’s this ‘we’ business, pale face? When it looked like Tramore might be good it becomes ‘we’, eh? And, alas, ‘we’ weren’t having these thoughts for long as a fourth Portlaw goal put the kibosh on them. The game petered out after this, an off-the-ball incident which had the Tramore bench in an uproar and led to what looked like a conference between the various parties on how to deal with it being the most noteworthy incident – another sign of the difficulty of having only one official at a game, and this was a much more civilised way of dealing with it.

Overall, it was a great experience. I expected to feel kinda pleased with myself for making a contribution, however small, to grassroots of the GAA rather than just turning up in Thurles and Croke Park a couple of times of year. No less a figure than John Galvin was an umpire on the day, so to be following in the footsteps of as legendary a Waterford Gael as himself was very satisfying indeed. What I couldn’t have hoped for, or at least demanded, was that it would be such an entertaining sixty minutes of sport. I wasn’t being facetious when comparing it to the Champions League final. Two teams evenly(ish) matched, keeping it clean, and attacking at every opportunity is a recipe for a good spectacle, and if the stakes weren’t quite so high nor the stage as cathedral-like as Wembley, it was still worthwhile. Did Homer not make the Iliad from such a  local row?

There was also an unexpected bonus. I’ve often wondered whether I was a small bit thick that I couldn’t read the game in the way someone like Giveitfong can do. I put it down to getting too caught up in the intensity of Waterford matches to take time to analyse the game properly. That, and being a small bit thick. This may still be true but watching this game, in so far as I could with having to keep an eye on Ernie and Bert (NB not their real names), was most revealing. Not only were we close enough to literally touch the players if you had a hurley in hand, but the slower pace at this level meant you could understand so much more. Gaps in lines became obvious. The players who were on top stuck out, as did the players who were struggling badly. So this is where you learn about the game! You learn a new thing every day . . . many more lessons needed.

The politics of politics and sport

One of the perverse consequences of the internet is that contributions placed on it are simultaneously ephemeral and timeless. You can post something topical and have it superseded in hours or forgotten about because it was placed onto the web just as the target audience was going to sleep. On the other hand, the magic of Google means that it can take on a whole new life months after the event.

And so it was that my post on the proposal to merge Waterford City and County, and my view that it was a product of malign intent emanating from the polity that is Kilkenny, came back at me when I thought it was so much virtual fish-and-chip wrapping. There’s a lot of (ahem) disagreement on that boards.ie thread about what I said, so rather than engage in a slanging match I thought I’d address a few of the objections here where I can control the narrative be a bit more considered in my reaction. Remember Niall, this is for the ages.

Let’s start with the title, “They hate us, they really hate us!” This is a reference to Sally Field’s notorious Oscar-winning speech where she was misquoted (the legend is better than the truth) as saying “You like me, you really like me!” I would have thought that the jaunty exclamation mark at the end would have suggested that it wasn’t to be taken too seriously, but even Ian Noctor was quick to take up on the venomous nature of it, so I should have been less provocative. I’ll know better next time – note the bland title for this post.

It was suggested in the thread that the post was ‘gutter journalism’. This is gratuitously offensive. Calling someone a journalist! That’s below the belt, it really is. Seriously, it’s an ad hominem attack and it’s best to ignore those, so I will.

Let’s get into the meat of the objections. It was felt that this blog was an inappropriate venue for such a politically-charged piece. If you feel that way please don’t read my original contribution on the subject, luxuriating as it does in the oh-so-subtle title of “Take it down from the mast, Déise traitors“. I have sympathy with this argument. I’ve tried to keep this blog lighthearted over the years, eschewing attacks on referees (eventually) and always looking on the bright side of what I sincerely consider a glorious time to be a follower of Waterford hurling. Angry rants about the thin white/blue/black/amber line between Waterford and Kilkenny are a jarring contrast to that lightheartedness. If people give up on the blog because of it, that would be completely understandable.

However, I happen to think that the abolition of the City Council is important, seeing it as an assault on my identity as a Waterford man. And it’s because of the blurring in both heart and mind between that identity expressed through the history of the city and the GAA that I think it’s impossible to keep the two separate. The essence of most of the objections on the thread is that we need to keep the shite that is politics separate from the hands-across-the-ocean splendour that is sport. Well, that’s all lovely if you don’t come from a place where sport infects the politics of the day, but the reality is that they mix on the Waterford and Kilkenny border and you can’t wish it away.

I’ll get back to why I think the two mix in this particular instance later on, but I’d like to stick with the general concept that sport and politics shouldn’t mix. No one specifically mentions it in the thread, but so many people view it as axiomatic and therefore doesn’t need to be mentioned. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, tripe. If you’re going to adopt a posture that says the sport and politics shouldn’t mix, then what was your position when the nations of the world rose up to boycott apartheid South Africa? Now, please don’t characterise this as a suggestion that I think that the relationship between Waterford and Kilkenny are akin to those between white and black South Africa. I’m saying that the principle that sport and politics shouldn’t be allowed mix covers both scenarios equally well. If you’re going to ask me to leave the politics at the door when it comes to discussing matters GAA, then you are allying yourself with the exact same people who said that it was inappropriate in the case of apartheid South Africa. The issue should not be “sport and politics shouldn’t mix”. It should be “we should try to keep sport and politics apart, but when they do you try and make the best of it”.

This brings us back to the Waterford-Kilkenny situation. I would love it if sport and politics didn’t mix in this case because then we could have decisions based on what is best for the people living in the areas affected rather than public policy being decided by arcane concepts of tribalism. You can argue that the decisions being taken now are not influenced by the supposed attitudes of those in Kilkenny GAA, but I argue that they are and would like to introduce into evidence the words of no less a personage than Ned Quinn. The one thing I would definitely change about my piece would have been the specific references to him. I should have said “a senior Kilkenny County Board official” and left it at that, but seeing as the anecdote I used wasn’t aggressive I thought there was no harm in mentioning his name. In retrospect, this was naive as the rest of the article was aggressive so you couldn’t split one from the other. However, it’s there now and Google will probably cache it forever so changing it now would be bad form. So it might come across as ironic that I am now going to quote Ned Quinn to demonstrate that, as far as the Kilkenny County Board are concerned, the political and the sporting are inseparable. Enda McEvoy had an article in the Sunday Tribune back in 2005 about the proposal to move the border of Waterford city into south Kilkenny. In the article, Ned Quinn explicitly expresses his opposition to the ‘land grab’ on the basis of the loss of hurling talent:

“Our success rate in inter-county hurling probably masks that. But the loss of 5,000 people would certainly have detrimental effects, especially in the longer term.”

This would be fair enough if that was the upshot of the loss of territory. But that is not what was being proposed. 5,000 people may well move into the environs of Waterford city, and they could look forward to joined-up planning decisions that would have avoided the debacle of the shopping centre in Ferrybank. There is no way they would have been forced to play their hurling for Waterford, any more than Carrickbeg being administratively in County Tipperary means that St Mollerans can no longer play in the Waterford county championship or their inter-county hurling for Waterford. But even the possibility of a diluting of the identity of Kilkenny in that area meant that matters political were influenced by matters sporting.

Wind forward eight years and that’s the reality in which the merger of Waterford City and Council finds itself in. The same thing is being done with Limerick City and Council but, as Mary Roche has noted, while there is specific provision to “establish appropriate joint arrangements with Clare County Council under local Government law to ensure the most effective discharge of functions in the areas which the Local Government Committee recommended for transfer to the new Limerick Authority”, no such provisions are established for ‘joint arrangements’ between the new Waterford authority and Kilkenny County Council. If people can think of some decent reason why these two situations are being treated differently, I’d love to hear it. But until then, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to view it through the prism of Phil Hogan’s desire to solidify the boundary between Ferrybank and south Kilkenny.

I don’t hate Kilkenny. I’ve written admiring articles in the past about them (I got called a “Cat arse licker” for this one). When it comes to anger about what is going down, I reserve most of my fury for our local politicians. Legend has it that Austin Deasy threatened to resign from the cabinet should the South-Eastern Health Board regional hospital be situated anywhere other than Ardkeen. Contrast such spunk in defence of our interests with his son, recently seen tickling Phil Hogan’s tummy in the Dáil. But the issue of the City Council is important to me. I’ve always been interested in the history of the city, an interest reinforced when my wife first clapped eyes on the place eleven years ago and was bowled over by the legacy of that history that is all around us in a way that is surely unique in these islands. Yet a large part of that legacy is being chucked in the bin, motivated by crass populism, and nobody seems to give a damn. If my cri de coeur oversteps the mark,  I’d rather by accused of that rather than be asked by future generations why I said nothing at the time.