Waterford are notoriously bad travellers when they’ve to go up the N24 through Tipp Town to Limerick/Ennis/Galway.
Last week was a psychological killer in Nowlan Park too so i think there was an inevitability about that today.
They’ll need to find something from somewhere now to put in a performance next week against Tipp or they’ll be going into the Championship on a real downer again. Tipp are under pressure too.
Good to see TDB back.
Very magnanimous Fagan. Thought it was a strange enough encounter and typical of a dirty day in early March.
Galway can take a bit out of it and we were decent. The evolution of a new side and playing style under MD continues. I couldn’t really figure what Waterford were trying to do though. Maybe PQ has eyes only on Munster, it certainly looked like it today. Really listless stuff.
Galway didn’t play particularly well and should have won by more than the 8.
We were listless after a decent early start. Such a disjointed display. Players constantly changing position to the extend that any game plan just broke down. We went between a running game or leaving it in long and as a result nothing worked. I don’t know how many times it was over played or passed backwards in the defence and it played us in to any amount of trouble. Galway has us sussed out early on. Thye turned us over numerous times. At one stage we got caught playing out to a 3 v 1. And only for Billy Nolan’s save it would have been a third soft goal.
They were much better with their use of the ball. Able to create space really well and pick off some lovely scores. We seemed to have extra man at the back but space was every where. When we went long it was 2 v 1 to Galway. And they won most battles then. We spent a lot of the game fouling and dragging off players. One lads who was subbed committed at least 5 fouls,
We went into the game last week with a good free taker in form. We come out of a second game a week later with no free taker and relegation a likely possibility.
That’s about the size of it.
The highlights on the Sunday game were not pretty viewing for Waterford. It was like a montage of the very worst parts of Kinnerk ball.
What players have Waterford to return? The BG boys are only just back?
Waterford have a major problem in that their dominant club team have no superstars and are a bunch of military medium automatons who excel at playing their own system but can’t seem to function outside of it. None of the 4 who started yesterday looked like they could thrive at inter county level. Aaron O’Neill at corner back was probably the best of them. Paddle Leavey and Ian Kenny were poor. But what’s to be said about Kevin Mahony. More or less the man of the match in the club All Ireland final, scoring 4 points from play, here he literally couldn’t hit the ball out of his way, that is on the rare occasion that he deigned to show for it.
The solution was to replace him with Paddy Curran, a player who gives the appearance of being afraid of his own shadow for over a decade now, and lorry high balls on top of him.
We will be relegated and we deserve to be.
Kevin Mahony had a Tour De France in the All Ireland Club Final and is a great bit of stuff but he is too one paced for Senior Intercounty.
He also usually ends up marking a club teams fifth best defender (after Hutchinson, Fitzgerald, Hogan and Pauric have been picked up) which gives him more time and space to wreak havoc than he’s ever going to get at Senior Intercounty.
The fixtures haven’t really been kind to Waterford in this League playing 6 games in 7 weekends.
We lost by 6 effort stats, 87 to 81 according to Ray Boyne.
Christ he is some try hard. Jettisoned by Lyng but still doing makey up stats and slow-mo videos in a last gasp attempt in the hope someone will pick him up for the season.
TFK had his number a long time ago. The Dubs were mad about him
Sure gilroy ran him 15 years ago.
Wexford should be pushing for Nowlan Park as the venue for the 1B final v Clare especially with Kent elavated to the top position in the Politburo.
Brought in initially by Caffery?
He was with Jim for a couple of years.
Think he fell on his sword after the Donegal 2014 debacle.
You wouldn’t think he’d have it in him to headbutt Tommy Freeman but there you go.
1st Place has home advantage in finals this year
Ok didnt hear that… same for 1A ?
No sign of Derek McGrath or Shane Dowling on the pundit circuit anymore?
Derek lost his examiner weekly column too it seems.
Some lads only get columns for the Championship.
Its a very competitive cottage industry in fariness. If you can get the Holy Trinity of TV, a Podcast and a Newspaper column, it must be worth 30k or 40k a year.
If you can take a club team then too, it could be worth another 10k-15k
Seamus Flanagan is very much the next cab off the rank this year, with Off The Ball, GAAGO and Boherahon Dualla on his roster.
Ah looks like it’s changed now