Is there a better place to hide in plain sight? The long grass is where everybody really wants to be, truth be told, and it’s certainly where Waterford are as we hurtle towards what promises to be an extremely draining few weeks of Munster hurling action.
Whether Waterford’s retreat into the more substantial foliage is by accident or design, only a certain man from Sixmilebridge can answer. From there they have given themselves the chance to prepare in private, to brood over a dreadful league campaign, to fester over every last one the chastening words that have been thrown at them, to get some of their most important players back. Thus, within the accusations, the implications and the shame, there lies the opportunity.
The Waterford dressing room wall must barely have space for a clothes hook considering the existential crisis they seemingly face. Their underage teams are giving them no real cause for optimism, they will operate outside of the top tier of league hurling next spring, and in four attempts they have failed to fight their way out of the Munster bear pit, even if there was an All-Ireland final appearance and a National League title to enjoy too.
It even seems as though the Waterford public have turned their backs on, well if not their hurlers, then the man in charge of them. It would be interesting to know what the players think. Whatever you feel about Davy Fitzgerald’s tactics and antics, one constant about his managerial career is the bond that he creates with his players. In his time with LIT, Waterford, Clare and Wexford, I can’t remember any scathing character assassinations from his playing personnel that have made their way into the public domain.
Make no mistake about it, the Waterford that Cork will face in Walsh Park this weekend will be much more akin to the one that came so close to taking down the Big Green Machine in Thurles last April than it will be to the one that surrendered so meekly to Cork a week later. Davy has been on the road for a hell of a long time, and if this is to be his last hurrah on the sidelines for a spell, then we can be sure that he will be bowing with scream as opposed to a whimper. And that scream will be fuelled as much by their undoubted quality as it will be by raw emotion.
With all of that said, one cannot say that Cork is exactly walking into an ambush on Sunday. A point of common ground existed between Pat Ryan and Fitzgerald across a numbingly pointless league campaign in that both men preached the same Gospel; that all that matters is this this game. The sense of everything that has happened up until this point will only be made when Michael Kennedy calls time on affairs late on Sunday evening.
With all of that said, I would have always thought that if a team are to be entrapped, then they must have done something to warrant being caught out.
However, it’s not as if it’s a rampant Cork machine that is heading East this weekend, is it?
When the dust settled on Cork’s summer last May there was enough in the performances to plant a small seed of cruel hope in our long-stricken souls. That hope was based on the assumption that in year two under Ryan more players from our successful underage teams would break through and that the level of performance from last year would improve and become more consistent.
Nevertheless, Cork’s league campaign left us with far more questions than answers. One of the major questions was how Cork players kept succumbing to injury after injury after injury. Robbie O’Flynn departed as soon as he returned, Ben Cunningham didn’t get a break at all, injury robbed Seán Twomey of the chance of building on a breakout performance against Kilkenny, Mark Coleman was the victim of outrageous fortune while Ethan Twomey only shone briefly before being struck down again. That is only a small taster of what happened. Going into the weekend only Cathal McCarthy and Shane Kingston are definitely out, but the fear of knowing the true extent of the shadow that injury has cast over the squad is enough to add to the anxiety.
Then there was that night against Kilkenny where the opening twenty minutes or so were as bad as anything we’ve seen throughout our famine. Yes, the response to that was what you’d expect, but then the fade-outs against both Clare and Waterford were stark reminders of the gap that exists between Cork’s highs and lows.
There were positives as the league progressed, namely the ease with which Cork disposed of both Offaly and Wexford. Nobody here would be silly enough to read too much into those results, but it was more a case of being reasonably impressed with how Cork went about their business than the results themselves.
Of course, Alan Connolly was the standout performer in those two games. Enough has been said about the Blackrock man’s goal scoring exploits, what I’d like to focus on is the free he slapped over after coming on against Waterford. It was no gimme, it was under pressure, and it was his first puck of a ball in competitive inter-county hurling since that shambolic defeat to Galway in 2022. And over she went. It’s a side of his game that was glaringly apparent when the Rockies won the county in 2020, and that score was a timely reminder of that particular string to his bow.
Whether or not he will be called on to fulfil free-taking duties won’t be known until Friday night. Patrick Horgan has been as good as we’ve seen in the red jersey, but the great man can’t last forever, and I don’t think it’s heretical to imagine that he may not have 280 minutes of action in him over the next five weekends. Ditto for Conor Lehane and Séamus Harnedy. All men will have key roles to play, but one would hope that some new men will be able to demand the leading roles.
And in that we have the biggest thing that Cork have going for them. Their squad. Trying to pick a 26 for Sunday requires some very tough decisions, never mind the starting 15. However, this will only become an advantage if the players make it one. With the nature of what’s at stake in what is possibly the best competition on this island, you would hope that the inner drive of all involved will bring them to new heights. If we are to make that great leap forward, it will have to be.
Because we have just as much to prove as Waterford this weekend.
John Coleman
The Little All-Ireland 