A case of no tomorrow for under par Déise

In the past, against all odds, Cahill has made no attempt to sugarcoat or smooth the cracks. Immediately after games, he tends to shoot straight. It shouldn’t have been any different last Sunday. But last Sunday brought a darker realization than any time in his reign that the end may be near. In fact, it could end up in Ennis this afternoon.

Last year, after reaching the All-Ireland final the previous season, the team fell flat to Clare in the opening game of the Munster Championship. For a long time they were second best, lacking vitality, and when they found strain of form and fluidity, it was too late to save themselves.

“I have to throw everything at it now,” Cahill said afterwards, looking ahead to qualifying. “I’m going to look at it very hard and rigorously because in the end too many guys failed today.”

In these times of warm hugs, greater empathy, and political correctness, such straight talk can seem cold and risky. Managers lost the dressing room by talking outside too much. Cahill may feel safe enough to say what he thinks is right, and that always seemed to be his way.

Against Clare last year he was missing Stephen O’Keeffe from the All Ireland Finals team, the keeper sidelined for a year while Tadhg De Burca was injured, along with short-term casualties Jamie Barron and Conor Prunty. So they were down on a few key players, but that didn’t offer any mitigation in his view.

“I will reward every player who plays a qualifier in the next fortnight or three weeks because at that point I have nothing to lose,” he said.

That was on June 27th. On July 17, they faced Laois in qualifying and won by five points. Nothing hectic. A week later they defeated Galway and the next weekend they defeated Tipp in the All-Ireland Quarterfinals. Then they lost to Limerick.

Since then it has been an impressive league title followed by poor form in the Munster championship, no more so than last Sunday at Walsh Park. It leaves them considering elimination from the round-robin, which would be the third time out of three attempts that the county hasn’t qualified. During that time they have only won once, this year in the first round against Tipp. But failing now would be by far the worst of the three.

After losing to Cork, Cahill didn’t back down. Clogged Spin, Ger Loughnane once vividly described a team that was overly restricted and not firing on all cylinders. After watching his side falter, Cahill likened Waterford’s stuttering game to a car “chugging on dirty petrol”.

Perhaps the worst admission was that Cork bullied her in a small field. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to get that figured out and go to Ennis in seven days,” admitted Cahill. “It’s going to take a lot of soul searching and a lot of honesty to get here over the next seven days or we’ll have a nice long summer to think about it.”

He said their decision making was poor and the team he was looking at was not the team he knew. Both of their midfielders were substituted while Dessie Hutchinson was unable to come into play and was forced to search the field for possession. There are also concerns over the form of the likes of Prunty and De Burca, while Stephen Bennett’s league standards have not prevailed, his first league point from the game only coming last weekend. His free-kick fell out, another problem, while former goalscorer Pauric Mahony failed to reach Matchday 26.

All glasses look half empty in defeat. “I have great faith in these players, I’ve always said that,” Cahill said afterwards. “I’m here, I’m in the trenches with them now, that’s what I signed up for and I’ll help them in any way I can. I can’t wait to engage with them throughout the week. We will try to fix what went wrong today and we will come to Ennis with all guns wagging to try and keep summer alive for everyone here in Waterford.”

If they pull through there could be a second wind or a new leap in them, but if there is to be no tomorrow the potential consequences for the Waterford skid are worrying, to say the least. Cahill may be gone, and if they need to find a replacement, who do they turn to next? And what lessons have been learned? Could last Sunday’s defeat by Cork prove to be one of the most damaging results in Waterford’s recent history?

Former County player Brian Flannery was on the comment box for local Waterford radio station WKLR FM. “They have to put the Walsh Park performance to bed,” he says. “You can’t hide from that. You raise your hand, yeah, we didn’t play, we let ourselves down, yeah, absolutely. But you can’t do anything about it now. The only thing they can do is play in Ennis next Sunday. It’s the only thing they can control and it has to happen. But I think there will be less pressure in a way because the pressure now will be to perform. Expectations have evaporated.”

Flannery won a Munster Championship with Waterford 20 years ago after moving from his native Tipperary and has experience of these challenging scenarios. Down in the dressing rooms last Sunday the disappointment was palpable, the seriousness of the situation taking no time to sink in.

“The disappointment was written all over the players’ faces,” he says. “They watched the players on their way out after the game, they knew exactly what the consequences of a defeat might be. This week will be tricky. They have to go to Ennis and play a Munster Championship game and no matter what Tipp and Cork do, they have to do themselves justice. Whatever happens.

“The last thing you need is a really flat week in training, everyone off form and everyone blaming each other, then step up and maybe get beaten by half a Clare team at Ennis. That would put you back at the bottom of the ladder and the progress of recent years would then be questionable.

“You have to recognize it [Cork] is a game, you are better than that. Players will want to show that they are championship players and can do it when it counts. And that’s the bad thing, last Sunday it was time. And it just didn’t happen.”

Walsh Park himself came under scrutiny with no apologies for the performance. Its dimensions clearly don’t fit the Waterford playstyle, although there are plans to expand it.

What if it ends now? “I suppose it would leave more questions than answers,” Flannery said of a possible departure from Waterford. “Uncertainty that the players are even good enough; Do they have the ability, the temper, the wherewithal to win the games they really need to? The big games. The KO games. And that was exactly what happened at Walsh Park last Sunday and to be fair to management they certainly recognized it. The run-in was heavily billed as a game to be won.

“With such anticipation for the year, winning the league title and the impressive victory, your destiny is now out of your hands,” he added. “You’re kind of wondering, Jesus, how did this happen? Or where did everything go wrong?”