Emphatic Waterford win leaves Tipperary hurlers in no doubt about magnitude of task facing them

Any doubts about what Tipperary face on Sunday week at Walsh Park were set in stark outline at the Stadium on Saturday evening last. Waterford’s four-goal blitz of Cork in the league final was an emphatic statement that won’t have gone unnoticed hereabouts.
It’s importance to Waterford is obvious. In his third year in charge Liam Cahill and colleagues needed silverware of some sort as endorsement for their efforts so far. Having already lost Munster and All-Ireland finals in his term, losing another national decider was to be avoided at all costs. In that context they can be well pleased.
Let’s not forget that it was only Waterford’s fourth ever league win in a competition that began almost 100 years ago – 1925 to be precise. National titles are scarce in a hurling-mad county like Waterford but the present panel can now boast of a medal that escaped Tipperary during its most recent spell of prominence.
On the other side, spare a thought for Pat Horgan. He’s been part of the Cork panel since 2008 but his career has coincided with the county’s worst ever famine. Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of their last league win in 1998 and they haven’t won the All-Ireland championship since 2005.
On Saturday last Horgan experienced defeat in his seventh national final, a figure which features three All-Ireland deciders (including the 2013 replay) and four league finals. Perhaps only Mayo’s footballers can match that run of misery.
The nature of this defeat will be particularly troubling for Cork. On Saturday night John Gardiner tweeted, “I can’t sleep over the way Cork conceded those goals!” For a hardy defender like Gardiner, it must have been especially painful to watch.
The goals were the thing. Every time Cork appeared to be gaining some traction they got hit with another major breach. The defending was atrocious and it was a collective rather than an individual malfunction. Between marking space rather than opponents and ball-watching instead of man-tracking, the errors were juvenile.
One of the basic tenets of defending, for example, is that a player careering through must be engaged – someone has to go to him and the others cover off his passing options. Yet look at how easily Stephen Bennett waltzed through to eyeball Patrick Collins before hitting his second goal. Again, the same story when Carthach Daly went through the middle and laid off to Dessie Hutchinson for a simple tap-in for the fourth major, with no marker even close.
The ease of those scores, I’m sure, won’t have been lost on Liam Cahill who’ll realise that others – Limerick for instance – will be a lot less accommodating.
Nonetheless, Cork’s limitations aside, you have to admire Waterford’s performance. The finishing of the goal chances was textbook in quality, all the shots kept low to the floor, away from the goalie and hit with pace. It’s how it should be done.
Interestingly there wasn’t a single foul blown on Saturday evening for a thrown ball, even though the match featured many of them including Mikey Kiely’s pass for the opening goal. During the league we had this token gesture towards policing the hand pass but, by now, that effort has faded out and we can expect wholesale throwing in the championship.
For those who are sceptical about Conor O’Donovan’s solution - and there are many - could I encourage you to watch Waterford’s second goal on Saturday. Neil Montgomery was being shadowed by two defenders yet he laid off a perfect handpass to Stephen Bennett, tossing up the ball with his left hand and then effortlessly switching to palm it with his right. There’s the solution to the blight of ball-throwing, it’s workable and it needs to be introduced.
Anyway, Waterford are in a good place two weeks out from the championship start. Ballygunner’s breakthrough All-Ireland club win has now been franked by a league title so the momentum is with the Deise.
One of the aspects that impressed me on Saturday was their relatively muted response to the win. In the past, in the John Mullane era, any win was greeted with endless crest-kissing and showboating, but this was altogether calmer. Even Conor Prunty’s speech was toned down, which is exactly as it should be. This is merely the league; the bigger stuff is fast approaching and the focus has to be right.
Too often in the past they’d have got carried away with a win like this but now everything is more measured in the Cahill era, which is why I suspect the manager won’t be too happy with some of the Derek McGrath comments. The last thing they want at this stage is to be hyped up.
They’re in a strong position. Players including Austin Gleeson, Jamie Barron and Iarlaith Daly have yet to return. The younger guys like Cathrach Daly and Mikey Kiely are showing great promise. Jack Fagan has adjusted well to half back. The pieces are slotting together neatly. The only shadow on the horizon is Limerick.

Above: Jamie Barron will be a big addition to Waterford when he returns

For Cork it’s another disastrous display. With Austin Gleeson out I thought in advance the scales might tip their way. Yet once again they’ve shown their brittle side. It will be difficult to rebound from this.
Elsewhere the stand-off between the GAA and the GPA continues, with the Munster championship launch one of the events to fall victim to the dispute. It’s an unseemly spat initiated by the players’ body, who have backed themselves into a corner with no off-ramp - to borrow a phrase that has become popular nowadays.
It’s difficult to see the GPA winning a PR battle over this issue because there’s already quite a residual resentment of this group within the association. It’s seen as syphoning off millions from Croke Park’s coffers every year to facilitate a tiny elite.
Among the claims made during the week by representatives was that some county boards insist on paying players from their home address rather than from where they work or attend college. That’s the allegation, though I haven’t seen any proof produced. In any case it’s apparently not an issue in Tipperary.
Of course, there’s lots of anecdotal evidence too of other practices on the players’ side which don’t help their cause. It’s widely believed that the whole system of payments to players is quite lax in its implementation. There’s no shortage of stories, for example, about players pooling their cars to travel to training and then each player claiming the mileage expenses. Or in some cases players using a company car but still claiming the expenses. A blind eye is paid to some of these practises at the moment but if things get nasty you could well see a major tightening of the system.
Under the present arrangement players get 65 cent per mile for four sessions, training or match, per week. There’s also free gear and a nutritional allowance of €20 per session. This money comes mainly from central funds and payments for any other sessions must be negotiated locally. The GPA is campaigning to have the payments extended to an unlimited number of sessions per week, despite expert advice that players should be reducing their time given to the games rather than increasing it.
It should be remembered that the GPA gets millions from Croke Park each year to fund this system, which benefits the few.
This is money that is then not available to fund other activities at provincial, county or club level, the very infrastructure that has nurtured these players in the first place.
The inter-county players are central to the association in many ways and the general view is that they deserve to be treated generously, albeit within the confines of amateur sport. However, there is a limit to that generosity and once players are seen to overstep that limit, they risk losing public backing.
Finally, an update on the latest developments in the transfer saga involving the O’Dwyer brothers, who wish to move from Rosegreen to Boherlahan Dualla.
Already their request had been turned down by the county CCC and then, on appeal, the county hearings committee. That left the players with no other option other than going to Croke Park and the DRA, as happened in last year’s case involving four players from the Kickhams club who applied for transfers to Cashel KC.
Well, this year’s saga continues, with the players taking their case to the DRA where it was due to be heard this week but is now deferred until next Thursday. I suspect the county board didn’t anticipate a re-run of last year’s events following a tightening of the county by-laws in the meantime. Yet here we go again.
The success of the players at the DRA last year may have encouraged this move, though the cases are quite different. Last year the players sought the transfers on the basis of irreconcilable differences with their home club but this time the basis of the requests is the residence of the players.
How the DRA responds will be interesting. There is a dichotomy within the association where some counties have quite an inflexible parish rule and others have none. It might then depend upon where the DRA personnel come from, which was definitely a significant part of last year’s decision. Watch this space.

Tipperary minor hurlers get Munster championship campaign off to a flying start