The Waterford ladies football team will be fighting for senior survival when they face Monaghan on Saturday afternoon in Bray.
The loser will drop down to intermediate for 2023. Déise boss Pat Sullivan says that they are desperate to hang on to their senior status.
"Waterford went back down in 2008, it took them a long time to come back up. That's the last place we want to go. On that journey, we lost two All Irelands and won it the third time. We're going forward. We feel that we're in a place we shouldn't be. We're there now. I have great faith in these players that they will perform on Saturday to make sure that we're safe."
He says that they need to show composure against the Ulster side. "It's going to be a patience game. We're now facing a different scenario versus the Cork and Donegal games. We're facing a team that has been setting their stall out for the last couple of months for this game. They're playing fourteen players behind the ball so that's going to take patience to break down that and when we do break it down, we have to be clinical."
The Déise lost to Donegal and Cork in the group stages but Sullivan believes that their fitness levels will get them over the line on this occasion. "We know we're way fitter than Monaghan are because we proved that in the two high intensity games we played. We just need to use that and make sure we're in that game with ten or fifteen minutes to go. I have massive faith in the squad that players will stand up and make sure that we correct the wrongs on Saturday."
They have put in nine months of work this season. "In the first week of November, they got their strength and conditioning programmes. They trained then three to four nights a week on that side of things. As we went into the football side in mid December, the players were doing two nights in the gym and three nights on the field plus their recovery session once a week. That's the commitment the players are giving. Come Saturday, I want to make sure that the players have senior status for what they've put in this year."
Throw in is at 2 o'clock on Saturday in the Bray Emmets GAA Club.
