If Waterford beat Limerick this Sunday, two things will happen.
The overwhelming favourites to win the All-Ireland, the history chasing five in-a-row team, will be out of the championship before the month of June has begun and secondly Cork, for me, will now become the team to beat in the race to win Liam MacCarthy.
A week is a long time in politics and it's an even longer time in the hurling world. This time last week it was all still in Tipp's hands and now people are asking the questions of who the manager will be next year, what needs to change, do the players want it enough or quite simply are we good enough right now to compete?
The answers to these questions are very difficult to find, and it will be a long winter in Tipp trying to find them, but I do believe the right answers will be found eventually. Tipp will be back, it’s just the when and how long that will take that I am not sure of right now.
What’s even more intriguing in the immediate future is what team will take to the field or get the chance to take to the field on Sunday against Clare? A changing of the guard maybe and the chance for the likes of Andrew Ormonde, Sean Hayes, Sean Ryan and Paddy Cadell to say throw us in, give us a chance and see what we have got, because what’s left to lose?
Nothing, and really it is about building for the future now. I’d be throwing these guys in and giving them the experience of playing a top team and seeing first-hand this is what it takes both physically and hurling-wise to compete, and let these guys see that up close and personal in the white heat of battle, rather than watching on from afar or hearing about how physical it was. We will either win or we will learn. Most likely we will learn.
Anyways let’s stick with those who are still fighting for survival this week and let’s start with Leinster for a change.
Regrets are defined as feeling sad or disappointed over something that one has failed to do. In terms of regrets in Leinster, Galway could be the team with the biggest after this weekend. What they have failed to do is quite simply hurl. A team with that much talent in their dressing room have yet to actually play well yet in championship this year.
Who’s missing? Nobody really, in fact it’s quite the opposite whereby they have got experienced players back in the form of David Burke and Johnny Glynn. Go through the games – beat Carlow, drew with a severely depleted Kilkenny in Salthill, got hammered by 14-man Wexford and eventually beat Antrim after their opponents went down to 14 men, because up to that it was all Antrim.
So where to now for Galway? It’s time to say right we want to be in this past Sunday because in Dublin they are facing a team who have proven against Kilkenny that they are a good team, playing with a gusto we didn’t see last year with their best players now playing in their best positions also.
And Dublin will not fear playing Galway, you only have to go back to last year in Croke Park where they drew with them and should have won it and I feel that this time around it is Dublin who are proving to be the team in better form and Galway are the ones wondering when is this going to click. So can Dublin get this done and get back to a Leinster final?
I’m going to say they can, maybe some might disagree and I could be wrong because the consequences for Galway are massive, out of the championship, the end perhaps for some players, for the manager? A lot is riding on Sunday and whatever is in that Galway dressing room must come out this weekend because if it doesn’t, like in Tipp, the questions will start to flow afterwards around Pearse Stadium.
In Nowlan Park, it’s winner takes all in regards to a spot in the Leinster final. I have said over the last few weeks that there are two Wexfords and over the past two games we have seen the really good Wexford, putting both Galway and Carlow to the sword with two big performances. So can they round it off with a victory over their biggest nemesis in their home patch?
Two years ago they did it, last year they did it when the pressure was highest, but can they make it a three in-a-row over Kilkenny in the championship? The Wexford council might have to consider granting planning permission for a statue of Lee Chin somewhere if they do.
Kilkenny are getting better game by game and are getting back to their best 15 on the field but they scraped over the line in Parnell Park last week thanks to the brilliance of John Donnelly. I don’t think that performance will be enough against this Wexford side and the form they are in since Corrigan Park.
Kilkenny will try to shut down Lee Chin but Rory O’Connor has shown us that he’s here to play now too over the past two games. Wexford will make sure John Donnelly doesn’t raise seven white flags again but I feel the game for Eoin Cody will stand to him and that he will be the go-to man for Kilkenny this weekend.
I just think Derek Lyng will be saying to the Kilkenny lads this week we are not going to be the Kilkenny team that got beaten three times in a row by Wexford, that they will be talking about for all the wrong reasons for years to come and to let it happen at home in Nowlan Park.
Wexford will bring blood and thunder but I feel Kilkenny have so much scar tissue from the past two years in this fixture that very little motivation will be needed to fire these boys up for Sunday. I think TJ Reid and co will get the victory and get back to a Leinster final where they are very quietly going about their business of winning five in-a-row in Leinster.
The Antrim and Carlow game was the one people would have earmarked as the relegation battle from the outset and to be fair to both teams perhaps they should be getting a crack at the bottom team in Munster before being sentenced to the Joe McDonagh next year, maybe something the GAA will look at in the future with the big results both teams had this year.
Home advantage has been one they have both utilised this year and Antrim have that in their favour for Sunday. They will be gutted with the way the second half played out against Galway after doing most of the hurling up to that red card for Ryan McGarry three minutes into the second half, when Antrim were leading by a point at the time, but the penalty afterwards just knocked the wind out of them and they couldn’t recover.
So they will take the confidence from the performance up to that point from their big guns like Gerard Walsh ( the new Joe Canning of sidelines) Keelan Molloy and James McNaughton. Can they rise to it once more to beat Carlow who have proven against Kilkenny that they can use the ball, keep calm under pressure and that they have the ballers around the field too to match Antrim both physically and skillfully?
This is a really tough one to call but on the basis of home venue and the way Antrim hurled the last day they have proved to others and most importantly to themselves that they are here to compete and the day of moral victories are well over and for that reason I think there is one more big performance from the Saffrons and that they will get the job done on Sunday in Belfast.
Now to Munster, the jewel in the crown, we’ll take out Thurles as it didn’t represent the greatness of this championship. Ennis gave us a small bit of drama, where an umpire defied the law of physics by being able to see through human bodies and make the call for a 65.
If it was a guess, which it clearly was, he made the right guess and while Waterford felt aggrieved, which we all understand too, at the end of the day it was a 65 and they had just gotten a fairly soft penalty decision in their favour beforehand.
I also think Clare were the better team and their wayward shooting in the second half led to that needless drama for them at the end as they should have been well out of sight. Future note for Clare – three weeks off is too much for them. Credit to Waterford they stuck in there and clawed their way back into that game where others might have given up the ghost, a great sign of the group and the resilience they have shown this year.
There is a storm coming in the Gaelic Grounds in the form of a Limerick performance this weekend. We have seen glimpses of it this year but never the full package. They have given teams leads and clawed it back, but they look tired against Cork, Barry Nash going down with cramp, Diarmuid Byrnes being targeted by Cork, midfield being dominated by Cork, Gillane being held scoreless from play, Paul Kinnerk getting booked, things we rarely if ever see with Limerick. For all these things and with the safety net now being pulled I feel there is a hurt there with this group and they will feel, even after all the group have done year after year, that they now need to go out and prove to themselves more than anyone that we are not gone, we are not finished, we are not gone soft because of all we have won and that John Kiely won’t have to say too much this week because those players will lead this, they will drive this and I feel they are going to give their best performance this year so far because they know if they don’t the game could be over.
Where can Waterford go after this?
Like Cork they may look at just running at Limerick and taking them to a place where they are not comfortable. They may target Fergal O’Connor, should he start and just isolate him inside with Dessie Hutchinson but if they are getting turned over out the field this will lead to Dessie just drifting out like he ended up doing against Clare due to the lack of supply and that will suit Limerick fine.
Waterford are hurling the best and most consistently we have seen in a few years and ever in terms of the round robin series but it will have to be their best performance and more to try and get this job done on Sunday in the Gaelic Grounds.
They will need heroic performances from Jamie Barron, De Burca, Dessie and Calum Lyons and hope then that the rest can just break even but the thing is the rest will be marking the likes of Cian Lynch, Kyle Hayes, Aaron Gillane and an in-form Seamie Flanagan. So for me it will be another victory for the Green Giant and they will march on into another Munster final. A Waterford victory would have to be up there with one of their greatest victories ever in championship hurling with all the consequences of the win.
Shane O’Donnell said they are so happy that all this is still in their hands and for that reason and getting the dirty diesel out of the tank against Waterford last week I think this Clare group are just too good right now, with every player nearly available for selection, to slip up in Thurles on Sunday and they will get themselves back into a Munster final once again with redemption on their minds too.
So to sum it all up, I’m going for a Leinster final of Dublin and Kilkenny with Wexford taking third spot, while in Munster I think we will be gearing up for a Munster final replay of last year between Limerick and Clare, and Cork getting third, where the Rebels year could really take off.
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