Waterford GAA Discussion Thread 2013- Mod Warning Post #1

Mountainlad

That was absolutely fascinating, thanks Sid.

sid wallace

gavwaldo wrote: »

sid wallace, that was some post. was surprised to find out that de la salle was considered to be a royalist school since the 1916 rising leader Thomas Ashe spent two years there training to be a teacher. very enjoyable read.

By De La Salle I meant De La Salle Stephen Street. I don't think the secondary school came into existence until the teacher training college was shut down in the 1930s.

hurler on de ditch

bruschi wrote: »

or Cork and Clare?

but in all fairness they are successful hurling counties,we have won one more All Ireland than London,Laois,and Kerry

Mountainlad

hurler on de ditch wrote: »

but in all fairness they are successful hurling counties,we have won one more All Ireland than London,Laois,and Kerry

Clare have won two more all irelands than us, courtesy of the the last 20 years.

Slobbery

sid wallace wrote: »

I think you are glossing over a lot of history there to be honest.

For what it's worth, my read on our history was that up until the 1920s, large parts of the City were hostile to the Gaelic Revival, the Sinn Fein movement, and the like. I'm sure the GAA in the City was equally disadvantaged. The City was a Redmondite hotbed and reports of the violence around the 1918 bye election give a good flavour of the atmosphere in the City. If you read the reports of the Bureau of Military history, it is notable that Sinn Feiners were afraid to walk out on their own as they were afraid of being attacked. De Valera didn't win a seat here either in the next general election and is said to have remarked that he wouldn't rest until there was grass growing on the Quay in Waterford City.

Willie Walsh after whom the Sportsfield is named, the famous referee, was officer in command of the local IRA, I am sure that a large portion of the City's population would have felt alienated from the GAA as well. And there was a ruckus over usage of the Sportsfield by other sports around 1912 which I think led Kilkenny and Wexford teams to boycott the ground.

At this time there is no major evidence of any GAA presence among the population of the City and the dominant club in the county at this time were Meaghers who hailed from out Ballygunner, Gaultier way.

So the city I don't think had much of a GAA tradition and while hurling was played on the borders with Cork and Tipperary in places like Mocollop and Ballyduff, football would have been more dominant in the rest of county as evidenced by a Dungarvan team winning our sole Munster football title in 1898.

I am inclined to believe that that background largely explains our pitiful performance in the years up to independence. Until 1926 the only team we had beaten in Munster hurling was Kerry and in that year we defeated Clare and qualified for our first Munster final. We were hammered by Tipperary.

The key turning point in the City was I think the arrival of Brother Malone at Mount Sion, though I suspect there was a plan to Gaelicise the City anyway. Mount Sion started to churn out brilliant hurlers, first Locky Byrne, then John Keane. By repute Mount Sion became the school that Gaels sent the boys to and De La Salle remained the school for Royalists. Anyway by 1929 Waterford had improved enough to win the minor All Ireland and by 1931 were good enough to draw with Cork in Clonmel in the 1931 Munster SHC Final. Locky Byrne played in both the minor and senior final that day. That was the great Cork team that defeated Kilkenny in the second replay of the Final that year.

By 1934 we had won two All Ireland juniors, no mean feat and by 1938 we won our first Munster senior helped by the Jimmy Cooney controversy that did for Tipperary. We should have added the All Ireland, but that came on a great day in 1948 where we did the senior and minor double. That was an old team though and we fell back again until the mid 50s when a team backboned by Harty Cup winners from Mount Sion stormed the hurling world. In fairness that team should have won more than one All Ireland but it had a really long tail and was competitive until at least 1967.

Bear in mind that at about the time this team drew to a close Waterford FC was the utterly dominant soccer team in the land at a time when Irish people went to Irish soccer matches. Although I was a hurling nut I remember all the talk around the town amongst the youngsters was about European Cup games against Honved and Manchester United and very little of it was about hurling. I think the first soccer match in Lansdowne road was when Waterford played United who were European champions at the time.

At the same time the dominance of Erin's Own and then Mount Sion had I think sucked the life out of the championship here. Then as happened with similar schools all over the country, Mount Sion went into terminal decline in the 1970s and this combined with many of the most athletic chaps in the city preferring soccer turned off the tap of hurlers from the school. The school actually won a schools soccer All Ireland in the 80s.

Soccer then went into terminal decline after the advent of Match of the Day, and there were a few stirrings on the hurling front in the 80s, but there were a couple of events in the 1990s that turned hurling on its head again. First and obviously were the crop of underage hurlers and particularly the ones from the West. Mount Sion had no representative on the minor team (managed by Jim Greene coincidentally, which might give conspiracy theorists here pause for thought) and Tony Browne was the only one on the under 21. Again the influence of a Christian Brother was vital, this time Brother Dormer in Lismore.

The other key thing that happened in the 1990s was that Ballygunner now having a huge population threw down the gauntlet to Mount Sion. Mount Sion had become very complacent (allied to the difficulty with the school) and hadn't won a minor from 1969 to 1989 and an under 21 from 1974 to 1985 and were riven by the Roanmore split, but could still tip away and win a championship every other year. That certainty disappeared when Ballygunner relied on the bye law and took the 1992 final to Dungarvan and beat Mount Sion. By the end of the decade there was real poison between the two and each upped their game to get the better of each other.

Eventually other clubs realised they could get in on the act. Ultimately I think that the arrival of the crop of 1992, together with the reinvigoration of the club championship had as much impact on the county team as the arrival of Gerald McCarthy. Remember we ran Tipperary very close in Walsh Park in 1996 under Tony Mansfield. On the other hand Gerald did bring in a level of professionalism that we hadn't seen before. But equally I think Paddy Joe Ryan deserves a bit of the credit for having a bit of vision.

Like the 1959 team the 1998 team had a long tail, as well and we are dealing with the aftermath of that now. Our history dictates a couple of things. We got off to a slow start in the GAA and we'll never win 34 All Irelands, but once we got the hang of hurling we have shown a tendency to bounce back after a decline and produce great teams again. Those teams aren't outliers. They are the product of a production line of young hurlers. Occasionally our production line broke down but we always fix it.

Great post, I know I glossed over a lot but my point was that our previous unsuccessful years, like this year, were not due to club politics as previous poster suggested

Like you say when I started to waterford games the team was made up from mt sion and ballygunnar supplying 13 players between them and lismore maybe having 2 to make up the 15, large parts of the county, including clubs that had supplied players in previous successful eras were after totally fallen of the map - dungarvan, cappoquin, abbeyside were all intermediate, a large population of the west.

Thank god things have changed and not only have things improved in all the areas above but hurlers are emerging from the brickeys, modeligo, bonmahon etc and they now have all Ireland medals in their clubs to show for it.

Clubs all over the county have never been as efficient at producing hurlers than they are now, for the first time I believe hurling has a foothold all over the county, club politics aren't holding us back - the work clubs are putting in will see us fulfil the dream

Alf Tupper

sid wallace wrote: »

I think you are glossing over a lot of history there to be honest.

For what it's worth, my read on our history was that up until the 1920s, large parts of the City were hostile to the Gaelic Revival, the Sinn Fein movement, and the like. I'm sure the GAA in the City was equally disadvantaged. The City was a Redmondite hotbed and reports of the violence around the 1918 bye election give a good flavour of the atmosphere in the City. If you read the reports of the Bureau of Military history, it is notable that Sinn Feiners were afraid to walk out on their own as they were afraid of being attacked. De Valera didn't win a seat here either in the next general election and is said to have remarked that he wouldn't rest until there was grass growing on the Quay in Waterford City.

Willie Walsh after whom the Sportsfield is named, the famous referee, was officer in command of the local IRA, I am sure that a large portion of the City's population would have felt alienated from the GAA as well. And there was a ruckus over usage of the Sportsfield by other sports around 1912 which I think led Kilkenny and Wexford teams to boycott the ground.

At this time there is no major evidence of any GAA presence among the population of the City and the dominant club in the county at this time were Meaghers who hailed from out Ballygunner, Gaultier way.

So the city I don't think had much of a GAA tradition and while hurling was played on the borders with Cork and Tipperary in places like Mocollop and Ballyduff, football would have been more dominant in the rest of county as evidenced by a Dungarvan team winning our sole Munster football title in 1898.

I am inclined to believe that that background largely explains our pitiful performance in the years up to independence. Until 1926 the only team we had beaten in Munster hurling was Kerry and in that year we defeated Clare and qualified for our first Munster final. We were hammered by Tipperary.

The key turning point in the City was I think the arrival of Brother Malone at Mount Sion, though I suspect there was a plan to Gaelicise the City anyway. Mount Sion started to churn out brilliant hurlers, first Locky Byrne, then John Keane. By repute Mount Sion became the school that Gaels sent the boys to and De La Salle remained the school for Royalists. Anyway by 1929 Waterford had improved enough to win the minor All Ireland and by 1931 were good enough to draw with Cork in Clonmel in the 1931 Munster SHC Final. Locky Byrne played in both the minor and senior final that day. That was the great Cork team that defeated Kilkenny in the second replay of the Final that year.

By 1934 we had won two All Ireland juniors, no mean feat and by 1938 we won our first Munster senior helped by the Jimmy Cooney controversy that did for Tipperary. We should have added the All Ireland, but that came on a great day in 1948 where we did the senior and minor double. That was an old team though and we fell back again until the mid 50s when a team backboned by Harty Cup winners from Mount Sion stormed the hurling world. In fairness that team should have won more than one All Ireland but it had a really long tail and was competitive until at least 1967.

Bear in mind that at about the time this team drew to a close Waterford FC was the utterly dominant soccer team in the land at a time when Irish people went to Irish soccer matches. Although I was a hurling nut I remember all the talk around the town amongst the youngsters was about European Cup games against Honved and Manchester United and very little of it was about hurling. I think the first soccer match in Lansdowne road was when Waterford played United who were European champions at the time.

At the same time the dominance of Erin's Own and then Mount Sion had I think sucked the life out of the championship here. Then as happened with similar schools all over the country, Mount Sion went into terminal decline in the 1970s and this combined with many of the most athletic chaps in the city preferring soccer turned off the tap of hurlers from the school. The school actually won a schools soccer All Ireland in the 80s.

Soccer then went into terminal decline after the advent of Match of the Day, and there were a few stirrings on the hurling front in the 80s, but there were a couple of events in the 1990s that turned hurling on its head again. First and obviously were the crop of underage hurlers and particularly the ones from the West. Mount Sion had no representative on the minor team (managed by Jim Greene coincidentally, which might give conspiracy theorists here pause for thought) and Tony Browne was the only one on the under 21. Again the influence of a Christian Brother was vital, this time Brother Dormer in Lismore.

The other key thing that happened in the 1990s was that Ballygunner now having a huge population threw down the gauntlet to Mount Sion. Mount Sion had become very complacent (allied to the difficulty with the school) and hadn't won a minor from 1969 to 1989 and an under 21 from 1974 to 1985 and were riven by the Roanmore split, but could still tip away and win a championship every other year. That certainty disappeared when Ballygunner relied on the bye law and took the 1992 final to Dungarvan and beat Mount Sion. By the end of the decade there was real poison between the two and each upped their game to get the better of each other.

Eventually other clubs realised they could get in on the act. Ultimately I think that the arrival of the crop of 1992, together with the reinvigoration of the club championship had as much impact on the county team as the arrival of Gerald McCarthy. Remember we ran Tipperary very close in Walsh Park in 1996 under Tony Mansfield. On the other hand Gerald did bring in a level of professionalism that we hadn't seen before. But equally I think Paddy Joe Ryan deserves a bit of the credit for having a bit of vision.

Like the 1959 team the 1998 team had a long tail, as well and we are dealing with the aftermath of that now. Our history dictates a couple of things. We got off to a slow start in the GAA and we'll never win 34 All Irelands, but once we got the hang of hurling we have shown a tendency to bounce back after a decline and produce great teams again. Those teams aren't outliers. They are the product of a production line of young hurlers. Occasionally our production line broke down but we always fix it.

Brilliant post Sid.

Right up there with your halcyon days on An Fear Rua.

Hope this is a sign that you have come out of retirement!

Tramore84

Great post there sid. David Smith's book 'The Unconquerable Keane' gives a good insight into hurling in the City in the late 20's and the 30's.

sid wallace

Tramore84 wrote: »

Great post there sid. David Smith's book 'The Unconquerable Keane' gives a good insight into hurling in the City in the late 20's and the 30's.

Yes it's a great book. I read it again recently.

Limestone1

Slobbery wrote: »

Great post, I know I glossed over a lot but my point was that our previous unsuccessful years, like this year, were not due to club politics as previous poster suggested

Like you say when I started to waterford games the team was made up from mt sion and ballygunnar supplying 13 players between them and lismore maybe having 2 to make up the 15, large parts of the county, including clubs that had supplied players in previous successful eras were after totally fallen of the map - dungarvan, cappoquin, abbeyside were all intermediate, a large population of the west.

Thank god things have changed and not only have things improved in all the areas above but hurlers are emerging from the brickeys, modeligo, bonmahon etc and they now have all Ireland medals in their clubs to show for it.

Clubs all over the county have never been as efficient at producing hurlers than they are now, for the first time I believe hurling has a foothold all over the county, club politics aren't holding us back - the work clubs are putting in will see us fulfil the dream

Lets hope we have a management team that can be multiclubist

hurler on de ditch

Mountainlad wrote: »

Clare have won two more all irelands than us, courtesy of the the last 20 years.

exactly,how many all Irelands did we win in last 20 years

Mountainlad

hurler on de ditch wrote: »

exactly,how many all Irelands did we win in last 20 years

Give it a rest will ya

PTH2009

There not showing the nxt weeks minor match on rte they said coverage starts nxt Sunday at 2.45 just checked it there tg4 are showing it

Mountainlad

PTH2009 wrote: »

There not showing the nxt weeks minor match on rte they said coverage starts nxt Sunday at 2.45 just checked it there tg4 are showing it

Yeah that was part of the change to the tv deal.

Sliabh gCua1

TGV wrote: »

the biggest disappointment for me was the u21 we should have being going out to win that this year at that level i though we would have been competitive...

For that to happen the players have to train as a group before a championship game.

The idea made after the Under 21 game whereby the same management team looks after the under 21 team as well as the seniors, and maybe even the Intermediates. I know that this might be a lot of work for the selectors, but they could be split up, where selector 1 and 2 would work with the under 21's and selector 3 is with the Intermediates, with members of what appears to be a huge senior backroom team also taking up positions with the Under 21's and Intermediates.

It may not be popular to say amongst some, but if we are not going to take under 21 and Intermediate serious and let the players train and play together, we might be better off not entering a team in the compeition.

Giveitfong

The fact is that down through the years Waterford were rarely competitive at minor or under 21 so there was no assembly line of talent such as was produced by Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary. Every now and then a good enough group of senior hurlers would emerge at the same time and we would be competitive at that level for a few years. I am thinking of 1957-1967 (an unusually lengthy period of being competitive based on an exceptional group of players), 1972-74, 1981-83, 1989-1992. However, we never had enough depth or follow-through in the last three groups to seriously challenge for titles or sustain the effort.

What changed things big time in Waterford (and not mentioned by Sid Wallace) was the introduction of professional coaches into the primary schools in the 1980s and the subsequent expansion of the coaching scheme. The excellent work of Bord na nÓg was also important here. This meant that not only were players coming into the secondary schools with better skills, but the range of schools producing good players greatly expanded. In particular, players from small junior clubs were getting some recognition for the first time.

The increasing success of our secondary schools (at least in Dungarvan and Lismore) was based on their ability to draw on a better depth of players from a wider range of feeder schools as a result. The Waterford minor team beaten by a last minute goal by Tipperary in 1997 was drawn from 15 different clubs. This would never have happened in years gone by when players from non-senior clubs rarely got a look-in. The Dungarvan Colleges team that won the All-Ireland last year had star players from Ardmore, Modeligo, Bonmahon, Clashmore and Brickey Rangers. These players are now going on to third level colleges where there skills will be developed further.

This is why I believe the outlook for Waterford hurling has changed profoundly from what went before. We now have the assembly line, as seen in the county's success at second level schools and minor level. However, the danger is that this could eventually be dissipated by the shambolic organisation of the GAA in the county at adult level. We have very poor competitive structures, made worse by the crazy division into eastern and western boards. Financial management is a disaster. There is no Director of Coaching and proper coaching development structures, including a coaching Centre of Excellence. Performances at under 21 and intermediate intercounty level have been dismal.

And just when we need a coach capable of assimilating the up and coming talent with the existing established players around a cogent and coherent plan for the future, we get Derek McGrath. I am reminded of how the emerging underage talent of 1992 was stunted and dissipated by the disastrous appointment of Georgie Leahy on a three-year contract in that year. From what I hear, a lot of this year's senior panel won't be around next year due to retirements, opt-outs and people going abroad - most of them based on the view that the effort isn't worth it with the current management setup.

Another case of Waterford snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

deiseach

Apropos of nothing, between winning the Munster Under-21 title in 1974 and the All-Ireland winning year in 1992, we won three matches at Under-21 level, all against Kerry. And we managed to lose to the Kingdom in 1979. We have a long way to go before we plumb those depths.

PTH2009

anyone going to the minor match sunday ???

got 2 tickets for the upper cusack stand section 708.

Hope we put up a good performance Kilkenny will be a hard team to beat but we done it last year so anything is possible

Tramore84

Big congrats to Niamh Briggs and the Irish women's rugby team today on their victory. Up the deise. I think Niamh is a sister of Shane who plays for the footballers.

STIG83

Tramore84 wrote: »

Big congrats to Niamh Briggs and the Irish women's rugby team today on their victory. Up the deise. I think Niamh is a sister of Shane who plays for the footballers.

That's correct on Niamh been a brother of Shane.

tomwaterford

PTH2009 wrote: »

anyone going to the minor match sunday ???

got 2 tickets for the upper cusack stand section 708.

Hope we put up a good performance Kilkenny will be a hard team to beat but we done it last year so anything is possible

what price are the tickets??

seananigans

Tramore84 wrote: »

Big congrats to Niamh Briggs and the Irish women's rugby team today on their victory. Up the deise. I think Niamh is a sister of Shane who plays for the footballers.

you lost ?

STIG83

seananigans wrote: »

you lost ?

No,they won, they beat New Zealand

Speak Now

tomwaterford wrote: »

what price are the tickets??

€40 for stands.

seananigans

STIG83 wrote: »

No,they won, they beat New Zealand

wrong forum methinks

Alf Tupper

Tramore84 wrote: »

Big congrats to Niamh Briggs and the Irish women's rugby team today on their victory. Up the deise. I think Niamh is a sister of Shane who plays for the footballers.

Heartiest congrats to the Ireland ladies.

Watched the game and they were brilliant, none more so than Niamh, she was outstanding.

STIG83

seananigans wrote: »

wrong forum methinks

How exactly? He was mentioning Niamh Briggs cos she is sister of WATERFORD footballer Shane Briggs.

So it not wrong forum.

chinguetti

Got my ticket today for Sunday, Upper Cusack was the best they had in the GAA office in Dorset Street so I took that. However they were mad busy with half of Dublin collecting tickets for Saturday's football so someone wondering in looking for hurling tickets threw them for a few seconds.

waterfordgirl

Niamh Briggs has also played for the waterford ladies in the past I think

Edit: just checked there, she definitely did.

Cake Man

How are the minors shaping up for Sunday,any injury concerns etc? I know Patrick Curran wasn’t 100% for the Dublin game,is he back to full fitness?

blueflame

Having just returned from holidays where i tried for over two weeks to forget the nightmare that was once again Nolan Park, I have no desire to raise old stories but have to make my feelings and observations known:

1. To me in his post match reaction in the papers Derek McGrath has more or less said our players are not good enough at the moment and supporters should accept this.

2. Stephen Bennett, a young lad just out of minor who has little or no hurling done for the last 4 months is parachuted in as a sub, while we are carrying a panel of 30 players who have trained and prepared for nearly eight months!!!!!.

3. At times during the game when we focused on proper tactics with a more direct style of hurling we outplayed Wexford completely before returning to our defensiveness possession tactics rubbish which saw us score one point in the last 15 minutes i thin while employing Seamus in his role as the lone ranger within 40 yards of the Wexford goal.

4. Liam Lawlor had a nightmare (as happens to every player) our management sat and watched him fumble ball after ball, get a yellow card and could quite possibly have been sent off before we decided to replace him. Talk about astute planning and management.


Several people that night made a point that we do not have the players who are willing to stand up and battle, and that we have no bottle or character - to me that is one of the biggest failings of this management team. Players like Brick, Lawlor, Connors, and Molomphy are leaders they are not bottlers. Darragh Fives was another who had a nightmare on the night and this i believe is down to the lack of confidence and belief in the management and their strategy.

Derek likes to play on this "we are a panel and every man counts" - well ask the 10 subs who were overlooked when bringing in Stephen Bennett how they felt. Would anyone on this forum be prepared to make to commitment that these players have been asked for the last eight months, knowing full well that your chances of playing any part are minimal at best.

In one short year this management team has apparently shattered the confidence of experienced and young players alike, has adopted a negative approach that has helped to turn us into the potential whipping boys of League and Championship, and has alienated the vast majority of supporters, particularly long-standing and loyal ones.

To add insult to injury, the subsequent result of the U21 Muster Final has shown us that our performance against Cork was a shambles and unacceptable.

Both sets of Management need to be removed immediately before the damage done becomes to great to repair.

On a positive note, thank God for our Minors - as i said i was away but i believe they battled really hard against a top class Limerick outfit before running out of steam and then came back all guns blazing against Dublin only 5 days later. Best of luck to them on Sunday, thankfully I will be there to cheer them on. (God willing)