For Derek McGrath, the feeling of leading his young side to an All-Ireland final almost had him stooped over in his chair afterwards trying to find the right words. An English teacher takes the formation of sentences a bit more seriously than others, of course. So when we asked what the final will mean to the people of Waterford, he thought before spilling out a gorgeous, humble ode to his hometown.
“It’s going to be brilliant. The general theme in Waterford is that we have suffered in general, even politically. We needed a lift, the town and the county needed some sort of uplifting surge in terms of their pursuit of the Cath Lab [in the local hospital] or things that are central to Waterford people’s emotions.
“This will give everybody a pep in their step. This group prides themselves on their humility and the modesty of their approach. That will see us in good form ahead of the game. If we can just get the balance. Everything for me is centred on one word, and that’s balance in terms of their approach.
"And you'll probably get a different song on Up For The Match, which is a bonus."
In the midst of the Waterford carnival, some party-pooping had to be done. None of the Waterford management saw the incidents with Conor or Austin Gleeson – or if they did, they let us think they didn't, which was most likely a sensible way to go. Dan Shanahan even invoked Arsene Wenger before saying they'd go as far as they could to get everyone cleared for the final.
“I didn’t genuinely see [Conor Gleeson’s red card]. We’ll have a look at it. He’s distraught so he is, absolutely distraught. Again, we have said we’ll do what we have to do to get him back.
“What he is lads is a man marker, boys, he’s been man marked himself before in the football. He knows what it takes. He’s a good corner-forward in football, he’s after being man marked by men in football and he knows how to mark fellas. He’s leggy, he’s saucy, he’s everything you don’t want to be on. And that’s what he’s about. Look, if Conor is not there, and please God he will be, but Tadhg will be back and we’ll just drive on again.”
Miss out
If they have to do without Austin Gleeson too, they will miss out on the erratic genius of a hurling wizard. He wasn’t in the game very much until he very much was. Shanahan was waiting on him, just like everyone else.
“Oh, 100 per cent, lads. Austin called me onto the field. He said, ‘Just get me the ball’. The next ball he got he just went in on goal. Austin would frustrate you sometimes lads, believe you me, but I’d rather have him on the field than sitting in the stand. He can work the magic. He’s just a gifted young fella. Today wasn’t his best day but yet he got 1-2 or 1-3, I’d take that from Austin every day if he could get that.”
The Cork management took little enough solace from either the injustice of the final margin or the fact that the year turned out better than predicted. They were in with a shot of making a final and left it behind them. Everything else is irrelevant.
“We can all speculate and write and say what we like but at the end of the day it was always going to be tough coming up here, playing a team for the fourth time in eight months and we had beaten them twice already. We knew that. That’s no secret. You have to give credit to Waterford, this is the fourth semi-final in three years, including the draw, so they’ve had a lot of disappointments in the last couple of years and I said that to them inside,” said Kieran Kingston.
“They’ve felt a few times like we do now but I thought our lads, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge firstly our lads and what they gave us this year. At the start of the year we were totally written off, we won a Munster League, we won a Munster Championship. Good league campaign. That’s not where we felt we wanted to stop. We wanted to go on from today. We’re hugely disappointed we didn’t.”
