Davy Fitzgerald is already feeling the heat just 70 minutes into his side’s 2009 Championship campaign and you feel his players need to give someone a hiding if they are to maintain a Liam McCarthy challenge in 2009.
Waterford’s weak second half showing in their eventual draw with Limerick in what really was a Munster Championship damp squib last Sunday allowed their opponents back in and left the former Clare goalkeeper admitting he was relieved that his players were still in the provincial competition.
Such was the turnaround after a dominant first half showing to a second-half collapse (with just 0-2 scored) that Davy, never a man that has pleased everyone, was happy to go to a replay and nine months on from their darkest hour in Croke Park last year the men on the field for the Deise find themselves questioned again.
Back in September, it could have been anyone out on that field with Kilkenny. Tipperary, Cork, Galway, the Harlem Globetrotters; the mood the Cats were in they would have blown away anyone. Waterford were just unlucky that they were the ones on the end of that 23-point mauling and despite what will have been said in public they will have been haunted by that day since.
That is why it was no surprise to see them race into an early three-point lead against Limerick on Sunday. No team can have waited so impatiently for their next Championship game as those lads from the Crystal county will have since they were clawed to oblivion by the Cats last year and you felt sure they would hit the ground running.
They did that to the extent of having a 0-9 to 0-3 lead over their old mentor Justin McCarthy’s men, but taking the fact that they held a six-point lead away from it that in itself was a low score and there was not a great deal really to shout about.
Only regular scoring mainstays Eoin Kelly and John Mullane were close to firing, having taken eight of those nine points, Kelly’s all from frees and Mullane’s the benefit of the early settled on tactic of targeting out of position debutant Stephen Walsh, something Justin McCarthy rectified at half-time after clearly regretting moving the dual player around.
Limerick, despite having the wily old McCarthy in charge, had looked as if they had no ideas and little interest and while a six-point lead might have looked healthy, a really dominant team up against them should have had twice that and in the end those six points proved not as healthy as they should have been.
Because Waterford did not adapt to a revitalised Limerick after the break - where as in the first half they did not have to defend a great deal, the second saw them got at time and time again, James Ryan in particular starring on a day when the likes of Andrew O’Shaughnessy and Ollie Moran – both so brilliant when Limerick reached the All-Ireland final in 2007, were simply flat.
Limerick hit too many wides but they were getting plenty of chances to do that because Waterford had nothing left. They had taken over the Treatyites’ status from the first half of having nothing much to offer and their second half tally of two was even worse than that earned by the men in green in the first.
So all in all it led to a disappointing affair, the lowest shootout in Munster since the mid-eighties and left plenty of questions to be answered by both managers, though you feel in particular by Fitzgerald.
McCarthy was seeing his players in Championship action for the first time and while there remains a huge rawness about them the Cork man will have been pleased by their heart and never-say-die approach, something still lingering from the Richie Bennis reign. And while his side probably have less out-and-out talent than their replay opponents on Saturday, their manager knows how to get the best out of a team and knows all the tricks of the trade. His team will be in the better mood after last Sunday’s turnaround.
For Davy, the man that finally led Waterford to that All-Ireland final that Justin had been gearing them towards for so long – before his acrimonious departure – the big question is are his players still haunted by last September? The big answere looks to be Yes.
A more soul destroying defeat for any team in any sport can hardly be recalled and while they beat the Cats in the league it is hard to see even the most optimistic among them having the strong belief that they could get the upper hand on Brian Cody’s Cats were the two sides to meet again for Liam McCarthy in three months’ time.
But that is how they must feel if they are to go on. Davy is no coward in management. He did not shirk in leaving out Tony Browne and Dan Shanahan the last day, nor in taking Ken McGrath off when the Deise legend was having a bit of a stinker. He led his team past Tipperary last year when they were not expected to beat them and as someone who never ran away from a challenge between the sticks for Clare, he will face what lies in front of him head on again.
The side is evolving. Jamie Nagle is becoming a very important player in midfield, Mullane - still important – is scoring more regularly and some of the old guard are no longer treated as first choice. Davy will continue to show his courage in changing what needs to be changed.
But after saying how happy he was not to have been beaten by Limerick in the end the last day, he now knows his side have to really do it in the replay and really go at his predecessor’s new charges. Waterford must use this replay to show their very best hurling, to exorcise anything that is haunting them.
Because until we see a performance to prove that last September is really out of their system they just look like another challenger Kilkenny can cross off their extremely short list.