Last night in Waterford Justin McCarthy resigned from his post as the county team’s hurling manager. In a statement he said

“Today I informed the chairman of Waterford County Board that I intend to step down as manager of the Waterford Senior hurling team.
I made the decision as I feel I no longer have the full support of all the players on the team.
I regret that my decision to step down has come in the middle of the championship season, however I feel it is the best course of action for everybody involved”

It had become apparent in the wake of the defeat to Clare that some of the players were unhappy with McCarthy. There were rumours that Eoin Kelly was dropped off the panel for disciplinary reasons and much was made of Dan Shanahan storming off the field and refusing to shake Justin’s hand when substituted. Apparently the players held a private meeting among themselves earlier in the week and so Justin resigned when he realised the game was up.

It’s tough on McCarthy given how much he’s done for Waterford, he took them to Munster titles and to the brink of All-Ireland glory. It wasn’t his fault the schedule conspired against them last year or the players choked when so near the finishing line or there’s not a decent goalkeeper to be found in the county. You could say that McCarthy has been there so long that his message and methods aren’t working anymore but the manager is always the easy scapegoat after failures and in this case it looks more like players getting too big for their boots.

The effort (or lack of it) from some of them in the game against Clare was a disgrace, Shanahan was so anonymous during the game he could have been taken off long before half time. Conceding 2-26 was pretty shocking for the backs too even without Ken McGrath and Eoin Murphy.

Anyway now they have to find a new man to lead them through the qualifiers. They have an easy start to those with a likely game against Antrim and with the usual initial surge from having a new man in charge they might fly on a bit further but it’s very hard to see them making the all ireland breakthrough this year now. Haven’t heard any rumours yet as to who might take over, realistically they need a big name and a strong character although they’ll probably settle on some easy choice guy from within the county.

TV3 debuted their live championship coverage at the weekend with the Clare v Waterford game and it was a pretty decent start. Matt Cooper presented from the studio with Liam Griffin, Jamsie O’Connor and Daithi Reagan all providing good analysis. Mike Finnerty was on the commentary with Nicky English assisting him.

I thought Nicky was very good, rather than just repeating what the commentator said he picked up on good bits of play or assists that led to scores and was insightful in his remarks, plus he gave the man of the match to a guy from the losing team, not always an easy choice.

Studio, cameras and information graphics were all good although the main camera seemed a bit too far from the action at times making it difficult to identify players. Nice to see some new stats in their graphics with them tracking things like hooks and passes for the players.

A change is always good and RTEs coverage can get a bit stale, with the same old guys repeating the same old mantra time and again. However TV3 only have one more hurling game to show, the Leinster final, so it’ll be back to Michael Lyster and the boys for the rest of the summer.

It’s as expected up north where Antrim and Down came through the semi finals to make it into the the Ulster final. Read full report on both semis on the Ulster GAA site.

Seems to have been a successful Ulster campaign with 10 counties involved and one or two surprise results. It should serve as a great warm up the teams for the Christy Ring and Nicky Rackard cups, aside from Antrim who can look forward to hammerings from Galway and Waterford in the Liam McCarthy.

The Ulster final is in 2 weeks time on June 14th and Antrim will probably be the favourites.

Clare caused a slight upset in Munster today beating Waterford on a score of 2-26 to 0-23. Clare dominated most aspects of the game with only man of the match John Mullane putting up resistance for the Deise. The loss of 4 all-stars was obviously too much for Waterford who will now face the losers of Antrim/Galway in the qualifiers while Clare move on to play Limerick in the Munster semi final.

Clare: P Brennan; G O’Grady, F Lohan, D Clancy; B Bugler (0-1), C Plunkett (0-3f), P Donnellan; B O’Connell, C Lynch (0-2); T Carmody (0-2), D McMahon (0-3), J Clancy; T Griffin (0-5), N Gilligan (1-2), M Flaherty (1-7, 0-3f, 0-2 65s).

Subs: T Keogh for O’Grady (half-time), F Lynch for McMahon (64m), P Vaughan (0-1) for C Lynch (67m), D Barrett for Clancy (71m).

Waterford: C Hennessy; B Phelan, K Moran, A Kearney; T Browne, D Prendergast, J Kennedy; M Walsh, D Bennett (0-10, 9f); S Prendergast (0-1), D Shanahan, S Molumphy (0-1); J Mullane (0-8), G Hurney (0-1), E McGrath (0-1).

Subs: D Coffey (0-1) for Moran (55m), S O’Sullivan for Molumphy (60m), S Walsh for Shanahan (60m), R Foley for Phelan (65m), T Feeney for D Prendergast (65m).

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