IN ALL FAIRNESS - Predictably Unpredictable

One thing about predicting, it makes fools of us all from time to time and this year’s hurling championship so far is a case in point.

So far, Clare have been the story so far, rising from one of the also-rans in many peoples view, to being in a Munster Final with a game to spare. However, the interesting aspect of the championship so far is the teams that are struggling.

Two of the sides that were impressive in the league, Waterford and Wexford, could both be out of the championship come Sunday. Just two months ago, both Liam Cahill and Darragh Egan were being lauded for the jobs they were doing in their respective counties, now they are on the receiving end of heavy criticism as results and performances have started to go awry.

Waterford’s is the most perplexing considering they were seen as the closest to challenging Limerick, and their performance, even in defeat to the Shannonsiders last month, backed that up. Now, following a loss to Cork, their fate of remaining in the All-Ireland race beyond Munster is out of their hands as if the rebels beat Tipperary on Sunday, it doesn’t matter what Waterford do against Clare.

Has the pressure gotten to Waterford, or did they peak too early? You could argue both has happened. Firstly, off the back Liam Cahill declining overtures from Tipperary, Ballygunner winning the All-Ireland Club title, and Waterford going onto win the National League, everything seeing to be running smoothly. However, when Cahill commented following the league win over Tipperary in early March, he stressed the amount of work Waterford had put in through the winter and you could see that in their league performances as they seemed to be well ahead of everyone else.

The aim of that workload was to ensure Waterford would have the stamina come the latter stages of the championship. However, in modern strength & conditioning, there is a lull in the middle and that was the risk of Waterford’s plan that they’d have enough for the Munster Championship to still be alive for the All-Ireland Series, which now looks in major peril.

As improved and intense as Cork were last Sunday in Walsh Park, Waterford were flat and not related to the league performances. Stephen Bennett’s form has fallen off a cliff, Tadhg de Burca isn’t commanding the half back line, and but for Austin Gleeson, they would be in awful shape altogether, even for all his disciplinary issues, he is still the one constant in this Waterford side.

When Liam Cahill made the call for Waterford fans to pack out Walsh Park last Sunday, that was a warning sign straight away that despite their positive campaign to date, things weren’t going smoothly, and maybe the pressure got to them, knowing if they failed to beat Cork, they would have to go to Ennis to win to stay alive, and even that might not be enough for them.

Wexford’s struggles aren’t in the same class, but they will be equally as frustrating for Darragh Egan. There is always a new-manager bounce in any team, and Egan got it in the league where they won the first five games, however, the hammering they suffered in the league semi-final set them back a long way.

In the previous five years under Davy Fitzgerald, Wexford set up first and foremost to be hard to beat. Under Egan, they are looking to play a more expansive style and with forwards or the calibre of Rory O’Connor, Lee Chin, and Conor McDonald, why wouldn’t you, but they have been left exposed a little defensively.

For all the criticism Egan has endured in recent days following the draw with Westmeath, he isn’t to blame for his players shooting 21 wides while his goalkeeper let in two howlers of goals. That smacks of a team not fully focused on the task at hand, and ultimately that comes down to the manager.

However, things can change quickly as we have already seen this year and Egan will go from pariah to hero next Saturday if he can take Wexford into Nowlan Park and beat Kilkenny which should see them into a Leinster final, provided Dublin fail to beat Galway in Pearse Stadium, and that is a result that is hard to see happening, but who thought Cork would beat Waterford last Sunday.

This is the beauty of sport, we can predict til the cows come home but ultimately it is about what happens on the pitch in that seventy-plus minutes of action, and in each game there are variables between injuries, sending’s off, refereeing decisions etc… that can change the course of a match. You’d likely think there will be some drama in the final round of Leinster and Munster this weekend, and wouldn’t it be something if the most extreme of the scenarios which is the category Tipperary fall into, works out in their favour!