Waterford 1-30 Galway 3-20
While the old maxim of a substantial lead being nothing in hurling has proven true in recent weeks in the Championship, it was nearly proven again in this fast-moving clash at Semple Stadium this afternoon (Saturday ). However, for Galway, they fell just a little short of the perfect comeback having left themselves with too much work to do after a poor second quarter in which they were heavily outscored by the Deise. As a result, they crashed out of the Championship with a second successive defeat, and the postmortems into this will run long into the autumn.
Galway fans came into this game with the belief that their team would not play as poorly as they had against Dublin, but it was Waterford who seemed to have the greater urgency from the off, getting first to every ball and laying it off to a pacy side-runner as the Tribesmen struggled to get into the pace of it and lost duels all over the park. However, despite this, Galway steadied the ship and courtesy of the hardworking Conor Whelan, were just two points adrift at the first waterbreak, and seemed well set to work themselves back into the game.
However, the next period proved tortuous for Galway with Hogan and Barron calling the shots and it was no surprise when Jack Fagan snuck in behind the Galway defence to goal, before Austin Gleeson took over with two fine scores. Galway were at sixes and sevens and the interval seemed to bring little respite, butl they were given a lifeline when referee Sean Stack red-carded Waterford’s Conor Gleeson for an off the ball incident which had happened just before the break.
You would think this would provide the impetus for a Galway revival, but Waterford, with a man less, took up where they left off, and Galway found themselves an astonishing sixteen points down as the game entered its final quarter.
Cathal Mannion went in to play in front of goal and it paid off, as he soon rattled the net. Points from Canning and Niland kept the momentum going. More scores from Canning, Flynn and Concannon cut the deficit to six as the game neared the final whistle, but then Flynn broke free, collected a pass from Canning and blasted to the net.
Just three points down, they were given a further boost when an additional seven minutes of injury time were announced. Surely, the comeback was on. Waterford were a man down and it began to show, but just when you expected them to capitulate, they didn’t. Kiely and Bennett added three further scores to get the lead back to six, before Flynn got his second goal. The gap was three again, but Stephen Bennett capped a fine display with a wondrous point from play that made it four again — and that was that.
Canning’s nine points made him the Championship’s all-time top scorer, but he would have swapped it all for the elusive victory. The reaching of this personal accolade however was a moment of history witnessed by 4,000 thrilled fans inside a sunny Semple Stadium
Afterwards, clearly disappointed manager Shane O’Neill paid tribute to the players but admitted they had left themselves with just too much work to do.
“We left ourselves with too much to do after the first half and being so far behind at one stage, other teams would have thrown the towel in, but the boys kept going and kept asking until the end. It looked like we were going to snatch it at the end, but it wasn’t going to be. Waterford’s late two or three points stemmed the tide when it seemed that we had all the momentum.
“It is very disappointing not to win but I am very proud of the lads, the way they kept battling until the end. They were 15 or 16 points down and they came right back and it was a true test of their character, but they left themselves with just too much to do.
“We didn’t have a rhythm but not so much at the start, but in the quarter after that. We were just two points down at the end of the first quarter, but in the next quarter, they seemed to run away from us.
“We didn’t panic at half time. We knew we were still in the game even though we were a nice bit down, fifteen at one stage, but there was still no panic and they kept trying to do the right things.
He said that the defeat by Dublin had skewed the plans they had for the summer.
“You would hope that you would get victory in the first game in the Leinster Championship as that sets you up for the year. But we didn’t and so we’re in the knockout.
O’Neill said that the team did not take full advantage of the numerical advantage, and that this was not helped by the fact that it happened at the interval, and not beforehand when it could have been tactically discussed.
“If the red card had happened before half time we would have had 15 minutes to talk about it but we would be expecting to adapt on the pitch, and it took us a while to get that.
“Waterford were a lot stronger on the breaking ball from their puckouts. We were a lot better when we went shorter and we were able to work it out and then deliver good ball into the full forward line.
“We didn’t do that in the first half as there were a lot of bodies in the middle third and they seemed to be coming out with most of the breaks,” he concluded.
All in all, this was a defeat that will hurt many of the players and there is is a strong feeling that it might lead to a changing of the guard over the rest of the year as a rebuild of the senior squad commences.
Scorers for Waterford: Stephen Bennett 0-10 (7f, ’65 ), Jack Fagan 1-2, Jamie Barron 0-4, Austin Gleeson 0-3 (1 sideline ), Calum Lyons, Kieran Bennett, Jack Prendergast, Patrick Curran all 0-2, Michael Kiely, Peter Hogan, Shane Bennett all 0-1.
Scorers for Galway: Joe Canning 0-9 (8f ), Jason Flynn 2-1, Conor Whelan 0-3, Cathal Mannion 1-0, Evan Niland 0-2, Joseph Cooney, Conor Cooney, Brian Concannon, Johnny Coen, Adrian Tuohy all 0-1.
WATERFORD: Shaun O’Brien; Conor Gleeson, Conor Prunty, Ian Kenny; Calum Lyons, Shane Bennett, Kieran Bennett; Jamie Barron, Peter Hogan; Jack Fagan, Jack Prendergast, Stephen Bennett; Dessie Hutchinson, Austin Gleeson, Patrick Curran. Subs: Michael Kiely for Patrick Curran (59 ), Darragh Lyons for Peter Hogan (60 ), Billy Power for Jack Prendergast (64 ), Colin Dunford for Jack Fagan (68 ), Shane McNulty for Dessie Hutchinson (74 )
GALWAY: Darach Fahy; Shane Cooney, Gearóid McInerney, Darren Morrissey; Padraic Mannion, Daithí Burke, Aidan Harte; Seán Loftus, Cathal Mannion; Joseph Cooney, Conor Whelan, Conor Cooney; Seán Linnane, Joe Canning, Brian Concannon. Subs: Johnny Coen for Sean Loftus (26 ), Adrian Tuohey for Sean Linnane (30 ), Evan Niland for Conor Cooney (46 ), Jack Fitzpatrick for Darren Morrissey (51 ), Jason Flynn for Joseph Cooney (58 )
Ref: Sean Stack (Dublin )
