Are Galway better now than they were in 2018? I think so.
Are Limerick? Overall yes but we’re down Casey, English and Dowling. We’ve gotten by without them so far but no team can lose three players of that caliber and not be affected.
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Lots of teams hit bad wides. Limerick hit some awful wides in the 2018 final against Galway.
I am not sure they are better than they were then. I think they were very lucky to win last weekend, they got an amount of aimless ball and had very little game plan.
And won. You were making out Limerick’s approach was wrong against Kilkenny. It wasn’t, it was enough to win, it was our execution was off.
You seem to have very little understanding of the game bar if we scored all our wides we’d have won.
The simple facts are limerick were vastly superior team to kk but when Kilkenny snuffed out plan a limerick had no answers really only to keep hammering away with plan a. They nearly got away with
It but that was as much down to Kilkenny being so poor than anything else. Limerick had no plan b on the day.
From a Limerick perspective I’d be worried about @balbec losing the respect of his troops. He looks like a Micheál Martin lame duck leader at this stage. You had @EstebanSexface shooting his mouth off last night like Marc MacSharry at a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting. I just think discipline could become a problem.
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One wide.
Esteban played a blinder last night.
@balbec asked us all for our logins last night. A few posts could be subject to a hasty edit if they are deemed out of line
Oooft!
We have 2,200 post buffer on this thread as of this morning. It’ll be used up by 10pm I’d say.
I even shaved for the occasion
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The ladyboys are rattled
We scored 2-17 in the second half last night which is the same as we scored in the whole of the 2017 final.
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The record under Derek was mixed. Credit for getting to an All Ireland Final in 2017, Waterford don’t get to too many of those and overcoming the biggest psychological barrier of Kilkenny along the way for the first time since 1959 after a run of 9 consecutive championship defeats. The benefit of burying those particular demons in 2017 was evident in the second half last night.
Over 5 seasons at the helm, Derek won 3 out of 11 championship matches in Munster. 2017 was the only real run at it they had outside of Munster over those 5 years. Derek’s system is good to post a score of about 1-20, usually a match winning total against the likes of Dublin and Wexford in a quarter final. When they came up against the biggest beasts, they didn’t have the scoring power. Derek’s system matched up particularly badly against Tipperary, a bit more attacking intent might possibly have snuck the 2017 final against a tentative enough Galway and a drawn semi final against Kilkenny in 2016 should have been won, but retreated into their defensive shell and got caught by a late Walter Walsh goal.
Derek’s system seemed to be premised on the basis that Waterford didn’t have the forward talent and there was a vulnerability at full back in Barry Coughlan if he was exposed so he had to be provided with extra cover.
Derek had the best crop of underage hurlers Waterford have ever produced at his disposal, the All Ireland minor winning team of 2013, which cantered to an U21 All Ireland win in 2016. The forward play of Shane and Stephen Bennett and Patrick Curran was sensational in that U21 win in 2016. Derek couldn’t get anything out of Stephen Bennett or Patrick Curran, or maybe it was a case that he didn’t give them a proper chance. Stephen Bennett was left sitting on the bench for all of the 2017 All Ireland Final when they were crying out for scoring power up front. Shane Bennett, possibly the most talented forward of the lot was run into the ground for 50 minutes every day, before getting taken off and was completely burned out. Its an awful shame that Shane Bennett is not involved this year. Look at the forward play now under Cahill and Bevans compared to how the forwards were going under Derek.
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2-16 of that 2-17 in the second half was from play.
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Yeah this run isn’t too dissimilar to 2017 at all. It’s not a major surprise to see them beat Cork, Clare and Kilkenny. I’m still amazed at their scoring statistics because on paper that didn’t look like a team that would rack up 3-27 and 2-27 in AI Quarters and Semi’s. Stephen Bennett has been a revelation.
The kilkenny civil war of 2020 / 2021