“I have to say I’m glad I played hurling when I did,” Ken McGrath tweeted on Sunday night. Anyone present in Semple Stadium that afternoon or watching on television can only have empathised.
The lowest scoring National League final since 1999. More wides in normal time (36) than points (30). Only one shot on goal and that, struck from an angle by Conor McGrath, easily saved by Stephen O’Keeffe. That the standard improved after the first half was undeniable. That it couldn’t have got any worse was equally undeniable.
One can understand Ken McGrath’s angst. He was the most talented and instinctive hurler on Waterford’s talented and instinctive team of the Noughties. As fluent off his left as off his right, his game was crystalline in its purity. Get the ball and hit it, sometimes without even the inconvenience of taking it to hand. Of course his free spirit would have rebelled against the exhaustively coached, remorselessly structured nature of Sunday’s fare. McGrath and his colleagues were free jazz; this was Bach.
But here’s the rub. Deplore the performances of both Waterford and Clare as we might, with all the righteous indignation at our disposal, we cannot do so without acknowledging that times have changed and tides have shifted. The Waterford manager, Derek McGrath (all these unrelated McGraths), can only work with the material at hand. That material does not include a Ken McGrath or a John Mullane, a Dan Shanahan or a Paul Flynn. No more mavericks, no more extroverts. Romantic hurling’s dead and gone.
So Derek McGrath has a bunch of hardworking, conscientious youngsters at his disposal and they’re doing what they can. They’re incredibly fit and immensely motivated and they believe in the gameplan – a solid, logical gameplan that has screamingly obvious limitations when it comes to putting scores on the board.
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Yet always bear in mind that Waterford are on a journey and realise it. They may or may not seriously be expecting to win the All Ireland this year; they’re definitely expecting to win it in 2017 or 2018. And McGrath has long classed himself as a John the Baptist figure. Not the messiah – the manager who’ll bring the MacCarthy Cup back to Suirside for the first time since 1959 – but the man who straightens the road for him.
Looking at it in those terms, for Waterford to have come within seconds of creating history by winning successive league titles, is an achievement not to be overlooked. Lack of style there may be. Lack of substance there most certainly isn’t.
What undid them on Sunday was not those gameplan limitations but simple, old-fashioned inaccuracy.
Waterford’s game is predicated on economy. They don’t usually get all that many scoring chances due to the absence of an orthodox, six-man forward line; the bodies are elsewhere on the field. That being the case, spillage must be minimal. Six or seven wides per game is the maximum they can afford. Twelve of them in the space of one half, with two more attempts dropped short to Pa Kelly? In the circumstances the only wonder is that they didn’t lose.
This wasn’t a systems failure. The fact is that the gameplan worked. Waterford created a plethora of opportunities but failed to take them. It wasn’t even that Austin Gleeson and Patrick Curran, who drove eight wides between them in the first half, were under pressure when striking. These were clear shots at goal with no Clare man near by.
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The sequence of wides carried an uncomfortable echo of Waterford’s inaccuracy on the opening day of the competition. Valentine’s Day at Walsh Park. Kilkenny the visitors. The hosts dominated but drove 18 wides and ended up winning by four points when they should have won by 12 or more. Shooting practice will be the order of the day on the training field between now and next Sunday.
“No more mavericks, no more extroverts. Romantic hurling’s dead and gone
The closing moments found them in a new position, hanging on at the end of a big game rather than – as had been the case against Tipperary and Kilkenny last summer – chasing a lost cause. Clearly they should have closed it out. They’ll derive particular angst from the identity of the man fouled by Tadhg De Búrca for Conor McGrath’s equalising free in the fourth minute of injury time: Cathal O’Connell, the smallest man on the field, who was travelling up the touchline and posed no immediate danger.
Michael Fennelly charging through the centre of the defence a la Robocop this emphatically wasn’t. All Waterford needed was to stand off and force O’Connell into making a decision, as he had to do sooner or later. Instead they were foolish enough to make his decision for him. A harsh lesson. They’ll learn from it. They’d better.
It isn’t the Noughties and it never will be again. Waterford are playing their hand as best they can. Last Sunday showed how they can play it better.