Waterford manager vows to stick to principles after drubbing

Derek McGrath has had terrible days in charge of this Waterford side but none to compare with this. A couple of trouncings early in his first league sent him off to dream up a way to organise his team so it wouldn't happen again. A 21-pointer in a Munster final is far worse but if anyone imagines it will make him change his first principles, he has news for them. There's no rethink coming.

“No,” he says. “It actually reinforces the way we set up. A close analysis of that game will show that for 45 minutes or so, we were actually conventional. It was just that Tipp dropped a player back and it made us look like we had an extra man. It would actually revert me to thinking that we’re better off playing a particular way. The nature of the defeats against Clare and Kilkenny [in the 2014 league] brought about a change but that was an off-season change.

Irony

“We’re in mid-season now. We haven’t the time to alter too much. We altered today. We choose today as the time to decide that 0-16 wouldn’t be good enough to win a Munster final. It wasn’t good enough last year. The irony of it is that we scored less.”

The youth of McGrath’s side buys them plenty of goodwill and is a huge part of their rise. But the world can feel oppressively small when you’re 20, and coming back from this in the space of a fortnight will be no cinch.

"Yeah, and that was even in our minds with the substitutions," McGrath conceded. "We were looking at experienced players like Maurice [Shanahan] and Michael [Walsh] and taking them off, not because they were going particularly badly but because we thought they might be able to handle it a bit better. We feel that Michael and Maurice and Pauric Mahony might recover better from a dip in performance like that, whereas the younger lads might not recover that well. So that was in our thinking.

“But it’s very difficult to know. The lads will go out and tear it up with the under-21s on Wednesday night [against Clare]. They have an unbelievable under-21 team. They’ll be back on the horse straight away for that. You’ll probably see a reaction in that game.

“Look, it’s a test of everyone’s credentials. But we’ve shown a lot of resolve as a group in the last two years, we’ve been through a lot together. Our unity and togetherness will be needed more than ever. We’re not as bad as we showed today. That’s clinging to the absolute most minute positive. But we’re certainly not as bad as that.”

Bad conditions

For Mick Ryan, the sense of achievement is huge. Tipp were strong and forceful and murderously ruthless when they had to be – not always characteristics you could rely on them for in bad conditions.

“How often have you seen a team with a reasonable lead take their foot off the pedal and get a little bit complacent?” said Ryan. “We’ve certainly seen it in Tipp. We’ve got to keep a level of competition in this squad. We’re approaching the right level. There are no freebies.

“Complacency is the greatest enemy of any team. If you become complacent, there is no switch to turn it back off. We were very determined that it wouldn’t happen us today. I’d say [we have] a little bit more maturity, a little bit more hurt in terms of occasions that we didn’t complete in previous seasons, not just last year.

“Ah, it’s excellent. We came to win and we are delighted. A Munster championship is cherished in Tipp and to win a Munster final is a big thing.”