Maurice Shanahan is to Waterford fans what Davy Fitzgerald is to Wexford – he drives them mad and they bloody love him.
The Lismore man’s role has been reduced from starter to sub this year, but the powerful impact his introduction makes, generally with twenty minutes to go in a game, reverberates throughout the Déise from fellow players to supporters like no other.
Maurice marauds onto the pitch with a careless gusto and nonchalance as a substitute, but he sends the droves of Déise fans into raptures.
He’s his own player, he does his own thing both on and off the ball.
His gangly limbs combined with his unique bravado create a running style that resembles a soldier wearing a uniform that is too small for him.
Maurice does the simple things on the field, but he does them bloody well and he does them with bloody passion.
He may not kill a ball dead like Austin Gleeson might, but he’ll break it out in front of him, he’ll leap, he’ll lunge, he’ll scoop all the thing while engaging the people of Waterford like no-one before him.
They love him. He loves them. He could be running across the field, going nowhere, but their cheers from the terraces will draw him towards the goals and he invariably manages to end up, after a journey, doing the right thing.
It’s the journey that they love. He’ll somehow manage to get the job done, and by God when he does, they’ll be buzzing.
When he gives them a fist-pump, they just cant contain themselves.
Derek McGrath knows the positive psychological tide Maurice creates, and he bloody well encourages him to raise the roof when he enters the fray.
It may be only for twenty minutes, as he doesn’t have the legs to last the full game, but it’s when the game is won and lost.
That’s when you need Maurice.
No sunbeds here https://t.co/lmY8r3EsL6
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) July 24, 2017
Colm Parkinson asked the question we were all thinking in, “Has Maurice fallen into the super-sub role, the dreaded super sub role that Kevin McManamon and Bernard Brogan have now as well? He comes on, he gets ye going, he waves to the crowd and he gives ye that lift.”
McGrath was speaking on The GAA Hour Hurling Show on Monday, in the wake of yet another positive substitute impact from the charismatic forward in their quarter final against Clare, and he revealed the value he places in Maurice’s emotional bond with supporters.
The Waterford manager revealed that if a blood sub is required early on in the game, they won’t use Maurice. They want Maurice to come on when the game is in the melting pot, and when he can send them supporters delirious.
They tell him to interact with the supporters, they want him to send them wild.
“A small bit of insight, even talking about the blood subs in the run-up to the game. Who will we use as a blood sub? (We’re thinking) No, We’ll hold Maurice because he’ll make the biggest impact in terms of crowd and you know, he just has that affect on the crowd. Lots of things have been considered there.
“It wouldn’t be a definite bracketing of him as that impact sub, but if you’re looking for leg, you’re looking for absolute energy for that 45 minutes, I won’t say he doesn’t fit into that category, but it’s when he opens up then that he’ll hurt you, and he’ll give you a physical point of attack.
You can listen to the searingly honest Derek McGrath interview from Monday’s GAA Hour Hurling Show here from 16″00′.
