DEREK MCGRATH SAYS Waterford will celebrate their impressive league victory but no one’s getting ahead of themselves just yet.
Waterford ran out 10-point winners over Munster rivals Cork at Thurles yesterday.
The teams will meet again in the provincial championship in five week’s time.
“I don’t think we can park league final appearances, or trophies, so our need was probably that bit greater. That was displayed in terms of tackling, etc,” the Déise boss said.
“Nobody does better than lying in the grass than Cork, and nobody does ambushes better than Cork. My guess is if you go into Paddy Power, Cork are probably still favourites. We might have narrowed. We’ll celebrate this tonight and tomorrow, they’ve put a huge effort into it and they deserve it.”
McGrath, in his second season at the helm, has turned the young Waterford side into a team that could well go deep into the summer.
“What’s gratifying is to sustain it,” he says of the intensity that Waterford displayed at Semple.
“You’re always just waiting for the dip, and it hasn’t happened yet. A team that’s been back relatively early yet to be as motivated as they are and as hard-working as they are. You’re always just waiting for a flat day and you’re fearful that that would happen today.
“Definitely there was more emotion in our build-up today, even in family environments. The lads acknowledged that as a group and we felt if we could transfer the emotion and the energy we’d be in a good place. That’s probably what happened, and it’s hard for any group to bring that emotiveness of home onto the field. That was a big factor.
“It was a big challenge because after the last day, the Tipp game, I remarked that they were giddy. They were the opposite today, they were very quiet in the dressing-room. We probably wanted it that bit more, and that was the promise we made in the dressing-room, that we need it. Cork won the Munster championship last year and bar Donal O’Donovan’s point two years ago they’d have been All-Ireland champions.
“It wasn’t a siege mentality approach, it was more ‘this is the direction that we feel we have to take to be successful’. It’s great when that bears fruition. It’s equally rewarding when you can make decisions and have them working with you, not for you. You might not get the result… Even after 61, 62 minutes we aren’t the sort of team that can relax and we weren’t relaxed on the line so I think we’ll probably learn a bit from that.”
Waterford are now the only unbeaten side in the country; how much damage can they do this year?
“I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say we’re ready to win a Munster Championship,” says McGrath. “There are huge improvements to be made. I’ll reference the first point I made, which was when will that flat day or when the demotivation comes. How we react to that will tell and that’s looking ahead. I think it’s a classic case of the Clare-Cork scenario from two years ago when Cork were waiting for Clare two years ago in Limerick; that’s what we face in five weeks’ time.
“I’m not sure [if we're Munster contenders]. I’ll have to stand back. I won’t be pessimistic — I’m not pessimistic — but we have to improve and that’s my honest assessment. We were just hungrier and more intense — you’d have to be blind not to see that. Come back to me in five weeks time and we’ll see what we have to see.”
McGrath revealed that his young son wasn’t in Thurles to witness the victory.
“I was in the stands one day when Dan was taken off and the fella beside me stood up and applauded so I would have been naturally sceptical, a bit paranoid, about how harsh it is for people (players and management) who have family in the stand,” he said when talking about the panel’s relationship with the supporters.
“We’ve just embraced the fans and tried to get them on board. They’re turning for us and victories help. Even personally, my own son is nine-years-of-age and he left the Kilkenny game last year after 45 minutes when we were 17 or 18 points down, such was the level of, not abuse, but insensitivity. He hasn’t been at a match this year so if Fionn can stay away for the rest of the year, it’d be ideal! I talked to him on the phone and he’s delighted.”
As for himself, McGrath plans to head behind enemy lines for some R&R before the championship clash in June.
“My wife got a voucher for me for Fota there at Christmas and we didn’t use it yet so I might just take a trip down there for a while, chill out. I actually went down there last Sunday and Rob Heffernan was there and I got a picture of my son with Rob Heffernan. There’s a fine pitch but we got a look at the pitches, we were thinking of going down there but five weeks’ time is a massive challenge. I think physchologically we were trying our best at the end to quell any emotion we have but it’s very hard because we’re Waterford, we don’t have trophies hanging out of us, so we’re going to celebrate it tonight, we’re going to celebrate it tomorrow and we’re not going to make any apologies for that to anybody.”
