Cruel blows for the Déise, cruel blows for Derek McGrath.
Waterford are staring down the barrel of a gun as they prepare for their Munster Championship opener with Clare this Sunday firmly under the cosh, under the radar and under pressure.
Their League campaign which saw them relegated was thoroughly uninspiring but it was excusable. After all, the team has enjoyed success in the League over the last few years prior, and another big effort would have been tough to muster, and fairly unrewarding even if they had won it.
It is all about an All-Ireland for this team now, after coming up narrowly short in recent years.
On top of that, after losing last year’s All-Ireland final, the Déise boys were out on holiday into the new year and started training a good few weeks after the majority of their competitors.
Rustiness won’t be a problem this time around, the problem this time around is that the 2015 League champions are going into the game missing three of their most potent attacking threats from last year.
The Irish Examiner reported that 2016 Hurler of the Year Austin Gleeson has been struggling with back and ankle injuries in recent weeks, and he won’t make it back into the fray. Nor will free-taker and sharpshooter Pauric Mahony who has a finger injury.
When it rains it pours and Derek McGrath must feel fairly drowned in the sunny south east at the moment because lively Ballysaggart attacker Shane Bennett is also out for the year after he joined his brother Kieran in taking a year out from the panel.
This is far from ideal preparation for Derek McGrath for a year that has long been mooted as his last throw of the dice. The De La Salle club man is going into his fifth year as manager and will hardly stay on for a sixth unless that elusive Liam MacCarthy arrives.
As a result of the blows, here’s the team we expect to take to Cusack Park at 3.30 on Sunday.
The backline has a similar make-up to last year’s All-Ireland final 15, with Conor Gleeson returning and Darragh Fives moving forward to midfield, where he is also effective.
In the forwards, there is plenty of shuffling around, with Tom Devine now the focal point of their attack. Bizarrely, Maurice Shanahan is available for selection, despite his sending off in their relegation play-off loss to Cork in March.
Shanahan is available because of a GAA rule which states that red cards in a promotion/relegation game only lead to time based bans, rather than match bans. If he had been sent off in a noraml League game, he would be missing here. The mind boggles.
This will leave both Jake Dillon, Colin Dunford and the lively Brian O’Halloran in reserve and ready to impact the game from the bench.
