IN EARLY MARCH in Walsh Park, the game appeared delicately poised with 15 minutes of the second-half action having elapsed.
Waterford and Tipperary were meeting in a dress rehearsal for their opening championship encounter, just a point separating the teams in that low-key league setting.
It looked a match destined to go to the wire but instead Waterford blew their opponents away, outscoring them 0-10 to 0-1 to cruise to victory.
The scoring statistics revealed the main power source that fired them to victory. Stephen Bennett stood up to supply seven points in that time frame, including a pair of booming efforts. It capped off a game that was a personal success story for Bennett as he amassed 1-16 overall, 1-3 of that tally from play.
Six weeks on, Waterford and Tipperary will renew acquaintances on Sunday. The stakes are raised, the pressure will consequentially soar higher as their Munster campaigns commence.
In the interim there has been more evidence to suggest how critical Bennett’s role has become to this Waterford team and how critical his input will be to determining the outcome on Sunday afternoon.
Injury restricted Bennett’s involvement for Waterford’s next two league games against Kilkenny and Wexford, but he returned to bolster their challenge for the league final, ransacking the Cork defence for 2-11, firing 2-2 from play.
It marks the continuation of Bennett’s red-hot scoring form, a run that can be traced back to the start of the 2020 league.
Since the installation of Liam Cahill as Waterford manager in September 2019, Bennett has made 25 appearances across league and championship for the Waterford senior hurlers.
He has posted 15-210 in that time frame, split between 12-118 in the 15 league games and 3-92 in ten championship matches.
Placed balls account for the bulk of his scores, but he has still hit 8-25 from play in the league games and 2-27 from play in championship.
Stephen Bennett Waterford scoring stats 2020-22
- 2020 league – 3-24 (3-6 from play) – 5 games.
- 2020 championship – 1-54 (1-10 from play) – 5 games.
- 2021 league – 1-43 (1-10 from play) – 5 games.
- 2021 championship – 2-38 (1-7 from play) – 5 games.
- 2022 league – 8-51 (4-9 from play) – 5 games.
Total = 15-210 – 25 games.
Bennett was an All-Star winner in 2020, his first such individual accolade, and a nominee again last year. He was man-of-the-match last Saturday week in Thurles, careering away from the Cork defence to clinically find the net in either half, and the scoring star as Waterford won only the fourth league crown in the county’s history.
He is the Deise attacking talisman at the age of 26, October will mark his 27th birthday, and yet has witnessed the flipside of inter-county life. Between 2015 and 2018, Waterford had 19 senior championship games across those four seasons. Bennett only started five of them and came on as a substitute in another nine. In his 14 appearances, he was held scoreless on nine occasions and his scoring total only rose to 0-8 from play in five games.
What has changed?
The raw materials were always there. In the Bennett family the passion for hurling is deep-rooted, his father Pat has filled a variety of coaching roles, the latest seeing him with the Kerry senior setup this year alongside Stephen Molumphy. Stephen’s brothers, Kieran and Shane, are also centrally involved in Cahill’s Waterford senior squad.
Walsh Park was also the site of his announcement as a county hurler. The Waterford minors won a Munster semi-final after extra-time in 2011, Bennett rifling home 3-2 against a Limerick team that contained Dan Morrissey, David Reidy and Shane Dowling.
That was the exact same tally that Bennett also post in the 2013 Munster minor final replay, Waterford losing out on that occasion to a Limerick team, that had a teamsheet which reads as a roll call of current senior lynchpins – Finn, English, O’Donovan, Lynch, Morrissey and Nash.
But by the close of 2013, Bennett was celebrating an All-Ireland minor win, bagging 0-4 in that final against Galway, and he added an U21 medal to his collection in 2016, another victory over Galway and two goals despatched on that evening in Thurles.
If he was anointed then as a future senior stalwart, it required patience before that came to pass. Injuries hit him hard. By the age of 20, he had to undergo two double-hip operations.
Those setbacks stalled his progress but did not derail him off the track. Trying to force his way in as a regular in the forward line of a team that contested All-Ireland semi-finals in 2015 and ’16, before their final appearance in ’17, was not straightforward either.
The spring of 2019 appeared to represent a turning point. He featured in every league game and assumed the free-taking responsibilities as Pauric Mahony was busy with Ballygunner’s All-Ireland bid.
In eight games, Bennett chalked up 4-85, of that 2-17 came from play. Waterford were incapable of stifling Limerick in the Croke Park final, yet Bennett had come strong repeatedly during that league. He posted 0-16 twice, with his free-taking exceptional, most notably in the 14 dead balls he converted in the quarter-final against Clare.
The summer championship under Paraic Fanning was short lived, Waterford routed after four games, yet Bennett did post 0-11 against Clare and 1-8 against Cork. In that period and the burst of league activity in 2020 before Covid struck in March, Bennett and Mahony dovetailed as free-takers.
But the luckless Mahony was impacted by a cruciate tear in October 2020, only returned to action the following September, and a good portion of his recent winter was spent masterminding Ballygunner’s march to All-Ireland glory.
Bennett has become the main man up front, thriving with that responsibility. He is reliable from frees and has a capacity to nail shots from distance. His work-rate around the middle third is in keeping with what Cahill demands of his teams. His scoring contributions have improved from open play, that goalscoring weapon from his underage days is now deployed on the senior stage. The surging runs against Cork, which were crowned by splendid finish, was redolent of his effort in the 2020 All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny.
And perhaps the explosion in Bennett’s form, along with his prolific displays in front of goal, have been aided by the investment in faith by Cahill as manager.
“I’d say I had ten wides last week (against Antrim) between frees and play,” remarked Bennett after the March Tipperary game.
“I had a dreadful game. In fairness to them, they just stuck with it and said to get it right today.
“When you’ve got confidence from the management like that, it’s good as well.”
Bennett’s performance graph continues to travel in an upward curve. In a wider sense, it occurs at a time of change in the set of leading forwards nationally. The quartet of Canning, Callanan, Reid and Horgan dominated the landscape for so long, but Galway’s talisman has retired and Tipperary’s leader is out injured.
At the outset of the 2022 championship, the attacking mantle is there to be grasped.
Bennett looks in a perfect position to step forward.
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