Waterford GAA Thread - Mod note post #1

Totally wrong terminology to use. “Badly handicapped” is a much better turn of phrase.

Cahill never said that. He said that he believes that winning brings confidence and that a team should try and win the league and that the confidence of winning games sets a team up for championship. And then he said we'll see if he is right when the championship comes.

Can i take away from the justified negativity for a second and highlight the great turnout, i think there was more waterford than tipp at the match, clearly there's a great appetite for success and the county is there behind them , i wish davy would stop playacting but full credit to everyone who turned out

Absolutely. You're putting words in his mouth. He talked about whether he got it wrong and nothing about the waterford players on the that issue. He also said he had incredible respect for the Waterford players.

1hr 59 minutes in:

GAA Beo - Tiobraid Árann v Port Láirge | Player | Irish Television Channel, Súil Eile (tg4.ie)

Sheedy like a hyperactive child on the Sunday game after beating us

2023 Waterford minor panel - anyone have much insight what this crop is like or any names worth keeping an eye on?

Joxer O'Connor is over them so you'd hopefully expect they will be well drilled. They're out against Limerick in Dungarvan next Tuesday (21st).

I'm just hoping the lads are allowed to play hurling. Some (not all) of our minor teams have been overburdened by tactics and structure in recent years. I understand it at senior level but I'd like the minors to be able to show more instinct and adventure.

Does this rule out Patrick and Mark Fitzgerald for the senior panel ??

Were you at the Munster League Game in Mallow in January? I was surprised by the aggression Waterford brought that night and especially Stephen Bennett who got it back in spades on Saturday night. You could argue that Waterford showed their hand to Tipp last year in the league game in Walsh Park but it mattered not a joy in the championship because Waterford were the better team. Point is this showing your hand is a cliche nothing more. You try to win every game you can and anyone surprised that a Liam Cahill coached Tipp team is bringing aggression to their game clearly hasn’t a clue.

I was wondering what happened to him. I used to like the GAA hour podcasts. I'm not paying a fiver a month for it though.

The reaction here to Waterford’s defeat on Saturday night has been a bit OTT. The fact is that, despite the absence of a discernible game plan and inane tactics, after 54 minutes Waterford were a point ahead, despite having hit 12 (mostly terrible) wides at that stage. If we had converted even half of those wides, Waterford would have been comfortably ahead – especially if even one of the goal chances had gone in.

The whole game then changed when, in a three-minute spell, Tipperary scored two goals from chances yielded up by defensive errors, and Jamie Barron got sent off. In fact, by my reckoning, Tipperary scored 2-7 in total from basic Waterford errors. Waterford were rather unlucky not to get one or two goals themselves from a number of opportunities that presented themselves. While one doesn’t wish to discourage players from chasing goals, in total Waterford passed up six tap-over points in fruitless attempts to raise a green flag.

I thought this was one of James Owens’s worst ever refereeing performances (although is officials must take some of the blame for either not seeing, or not reporting, some of the stuff that Tipperary were up to). While the TV recording showed up a lot of incidents that I did not see from the stands, it also missed several that I did see myself. The booking of Colin Dunford in the 49th minute made no sense at all. As far as I could see, he was simply backing up to make space for Cárthach Daly who had possession when he made contact with his rear end with Noel McGrath, who was getting up off the ground. This booking really got up Jamie Barron’s nose, and probably contributed to his red card a few minutes later.

Worse was to come in the 60th minute when Seamus Kennedy clotheslined a Waterford player with an arm around the neck. Owens immediately pulled out his little black book with the presumed intention of issuing the merited yellow card, but when he saw that Kennedy already had a yellow card, he bafflingly decided to take no action.

As regards tactics, over the course of the game Billy Nolan hit 21 long contested puckouts, of which Waterford won just six. In the first half he hit eleven long puckouts in a row, of which Waterford won just three. Then before half-time he hit three short puckouts, which yielded two points. In the third quarter he stuck to the short puckouts, which continued to work well as Waterford got back into the lead. After the Jame Barron sending off, Nolan reverted to long puckouts, hitting six in a row of which Tipperary won five.

The people doing the commentary on TG4 couldn’t believe that Waterford were persisting in hitting long puckouts down on top of a Tipperary half-back line which was very strong in the air. Maybe we should ask them to take over the coaching from Davy Fitzgerald who has been persisting with these long puckouts from the start of the year, despite the glaringly obvious evidence that they don’t work for Waterford.

Meanwhile, Waterford have the best corner forward in the game and there is no ball going into him. On three occasions in the first half, Waterford players hit terrible wides from the middle of the field. On the first two occasions, Dessie was one-on-one with his marker on the edge of the square with nobody else within fifty metres. On the third occasion Patrick Curran was in a similar situation. Surely a nice ball hopping on the 20-metre line would have offered a much better chance of yielding a score than hitting Hail Mary shots from 80 metres. Where is the coaching here?

What kills me altogether is that when Eoin Kelly was in his pomp at right corner forward for Tipperary, a continuous stream of diagonal ball was sent into his corner from the Tipperary left half back and left midfield positions. While Tipperary hit eight diagonal balls of this kind last Saturday night, the only diagonal ball sent into the Waterford full forward line was from an early Austin Gleeson free. You would have to ask what Kelly is doing on the coaching ticket if he cannot draw on his own experience to see that Dessie Hutchinson gets a decent supply of ball. Last Saturday Dessie had to come way out the field looking for possession, a sight which I am sure was regarded with delight by the Tipperary full backs.

Ultimately, one is left hoping that the inherent skill in the Waterford panel will somehow trump out over the management and coaching inadequacies of the group that is currently in charge. This, in turn, will depend on us keeping 15 players on the field during games, which doesn’t look too likely right now.

There were some positives from the game. Despite all the above, Waterford did play a lot of good hurling during the game. We had another all-action performance from Calum Lyons (19 possessions and four points) while Neil Montgomery also put in a good shift. Colin Dunford had possibly his best ever performance in a Waterford jersey and Jack Prendergast was terrific. Patrick Fitzgerald appears to have put on a stone of muscle in his legs and hips since I last saw him, and you could see how he is being compared with Paul Flynn with his dipping shot which scraped the crossbar in the closing stages.

One final point. During the course of the game, Tipperary players fielded eight balls under pressure in the air compared with just one for Waterford. Inability to win ball in the air has always been a feature of Tipperary hurling and a Waterford weakness. This in my view is a matter of coaching rather than DNA. Whoever is in charge of underage coaching in Waterford (if there is somebody with this responsibility) might like to give development of this skill some priority.

For those of you with season tickets, is the Kilkenny match showing on your account? I don't have it showing though I'm sure it had been there previously

I don't think the reactions are over the top. In the league, we're not so worried about the results. It's more about the performance and signs of a team coming together and building momentum. You mention that there was an absence of a discernible game plan and inane tactics. This is exactly what concerns me. We won/drew our opening league games and I was just as concerned. As blueflame mentioned, we seem to be totally relying on the long range efforts going over. These are low percentage options that will make you look great one day and shockingly bad the next. When they don't go over, it saps all the energy from the team and the crowd. It's what we did under Derek McGrath. Our obsession with attempting to run through brick walls is infuriating but it's not a new thing (also going back to McGrath but way worse now). Our defenders seem to have free reign to solo up the field and then we're conceding goals willy nilly. It's an absolute mess.

Saying all that, I back Davy and believe he will get it right come championship. He's never failed to make a team competitive.

Apologies if already posted but I only got round to listening to Davy's post match interview. He said both Bennett and Dunford were short of fitness going into the game last weekend and it hadn't been intended to give either more than 55 minutes. Hopefully Bennett in particular gets the full 70 this weekend as without him firing in the championship we won't get out of Munster.

My understanding is that they can still play both (but not within 7 days of each other. )