The passing thing is interesting. Wasn’t overly conscious of it at the time, but one moment of the 98-08 team has always stayed in my mind. In the 04 semi final, we got off to a disastrous start and had given up three goals in the first twenty minutes. Somehow we stuck into the game and we still had an outside chance at half time. In the second half Paul Flynn was on fire and we came roaring back into the game. We got the margin down to 3 and Kilkenny were on the ropes. Seamus Prendergast made a great catch about 60 yards out and bore down on the Kilkenny goal. Eoin McGrath took a line outside him and was completely unmarked speeding towards the goal, screaming for a pass. The pass didn’t come. Prendergast caught the ball 3 times and from the free Kilkenny went down the field and scored. The siege was lifted and the game was over. It was like Kevin Morans notorious wide in the 17 final. A complete momentum shifter.
In saying all of that there is every likelihood that if Prendergast has passed the ball Eoin McGrath would have made a bollix of it. But we will never know.
Thanks. I remember that incident clearly as well. A real hinge, as you say.
Kilkenny should not have won that day, really – and maybe would have been better off if they’d lost, if only because experience of the final would have been massive for Waterford, one way or another. Kilkenny learned nothing except what deep fatigue feels like. Anyway, too many mistakes were made in earlier games. They didn’t really deserve to get to the AIF. Henry’s eye injury obscured – no pun intended – this truth.
SP’s oversight was almost undoubtedly clumsiness. A great bit of stuff on his day but a bit panicky in possession. Same time, too many of the Waterford forwards, for all their individual brilliance, were too selfish to pass when a pass was 110% the correct option. You cannot butcher good goal chances at the level required to win an AI. While Taggy Fogarty mightn’t have got on the Waterford team, he would graft and pass.
A member of the Waterford panel 2002 onwards said to me the forwards were playing for an All Star too much of the time. Even later, the same was true. Brian Hogan retired after 2014 and wrote a season’s worth of columns for gaa.ie. One column highlighted a Waterford forward who kept going for points in an AI semi final when a goal was required to offer any chance of recovery. BH kept schtum but I know he meant John Mullane.
Then again, JM got his five All Stars. He might well argue he took the right option. Would JM be on radio and in the Indo otherwise?
There was a better one in one of the Munster Finals later, possibly 2010. One of the forwards had backed himself to get the first goal. Half the county had got wind of this and were on it as well. Sure enough we got a free after about 3 minutes 30 yards out and yer man steps up to take it and goes for goal. He eschews a few more chances for points trying to get the first goal before finally succeeding about 15 minutes in and then he reverted to tapping over frees for points.
With rogues like that on board we were never going to win the All Ireland.
Another thing was that certain forwards could never get the measure of opposing backs. Mullane never got so much as a puck of the ball off Brian Murphy. Ditto Big Dan on JJ. So in the really big games we were always hobbled. Tommy Walsh spooked us so much that we once started Eoin McGrath on him to try and start a fight with him and get both sent off, the notion being Kilkennys loss would be much greater than ours. Tommy laughed it off and destroyed us as usual.
I was sat five rows from the Eoin McGrath Walsh ‘fracas’ in the Hogan Stand. It was comical. Walsh was laughing at him during it. Walsh sorted him out. Sorted him out good and proper.
Waterford missed the boat in a big way in 1998 when they failed to put away a genuinely poor Kilkenny team in the semi and would have had a real chance against Offaly in the final.
After they finally won Munster in 2002 there was an expectation both in the county and outside that it was only a matter of time before they’d win the All Ireland. That expectation weighed heavily on the players, some more than others and really became apparent in knockout games. It was telling in hindsight that our best days came in non knockout games and our worst in knockout games. So we were brilliant in the Munster finals of 02,04 and 07 and against Clare in 04. But we seized up completely against Clare in 02 and Wexford in 03 and we only hurled against Kilkenny in 04 when the game was as good as over. In any other circumstance Kens last second free in the 1 point loss to Cork in the 06 semi that Donal Og blocked down from over the bar would have been a certain point but there was a bit of a mishit. We only got a draw against Cork in the 07 quarter through the intervention of Brian Gavin after Eoin McGrath bizarrely went for a goal when we needed a point to draw. The Limerick game in 07 speaks for itself. We smashed them in the Munster Final but we looked disorientated for the first 25 minutes and never got our poise. When we finally got to the final in 08 we were probably a 7-10 point worse team than Kk if we’d stood up and played but the stage fright took hold and it was a calamity the emblematic moment being the first goal. Ken mishit a free 60 yards out from his own goal straight to a kk half back who lobbed it back in over him to the unmarked Eddie Brennan who goaled.
In the 21 years that we have had decent teams no manager, Gerald, Justin, Davy, Scully or Derek managed to correct that flaw in our psyche so I don’t think any of them could categorize their tenure as a success.
The goalkeeping situation in the 2004 semi final didn’t help. It was a tough call though. Stephen Brenner had been increasingly jittery for a while and the goal he conceded to Garvan McCarthy in the Munster Final was a shocker. Quite apart from not enough of the top players ever really hitting form on the same day in Croke Park, there was too much of a tail in that Waterford team once you got past the top 7 or 8 players.
2001 Munster semi final to Limerick in Cork was a real giveaway from 9 or 10 points up. Brian Begley really did the damage on Sean Cullinane that day. Ultimately there was a handy All Ireland up for grabs in 2001.
As soon as Donal Og blocked it and sat on it, it was the wrong shot. 99 out of 100 referees would have given a throw in on the 21 at that point and the game would have been over. Brian Gavin had a soft spot for Waterford and gave us a free.