Déise hurling boss Liam Cahill will use the league as a team building exercise for the Munster championship at the end of June but will still be targeting as many points as possible.
“A good league would be to win all our matches. People would say that the prestige of the league isn’t as good as it should be this year because of no real final, whoever tops the group wins the league. It’s still one of our national competitions and our objective always is to win every match we play. It’s not going to be the be all and end all but it’s definitely going to be a great opportunity for us to find the balance of our team for the first round of the championship, that’s the whole objective. We’ll be looking to unearth a couple of new options as well and give players, both new and not so new, a fair chance to put their hand up to a make a starting fifteen and a 26 man panel for the first round of the championship.”
Waterford used lockdown to add more power and more muscle in a bid to go all the way this year. “We reflected immediately after the All Ireland as to where we needed to improve and what we had to do. I’ve said it already, as a team, as a management team and everyone together, how we can raise the bar a little bit higher because ultimately, we fell short last year and we have to try and make up that ground to make sure we can go a step further this year. That was the initial process after the All Ireland and then we tailored fitness and training regimes for the individuals, you have different sizes and make-ups of guys here on this team. During lockdown, it gave these players a great opportunity to address little areas of the physical aspect that they needed to improve on. It was a help as well if you were a player that was trying to build power and muscle or trying to put on weight to be physically stronger; it was that little bit easier during lockdown when you weren’t actually having to come and perform on a training field with me every night. Hopefully, that will pay dividends now as we get back out onto the field and try and get our hurling right.”
The squad have changed their training base to Fraher Field for the year ahead. “I’m always conscious of players travelling and we have a good few players down here in the west of the county and it’s nice to change it up. With Covid, it’s ideal for us to be able to come into a real open environment where activity isn’t as it would be in the likes of Carriganore and WIT. It makes it a lot safer from that point of view in my opinion. We can close the gates here and train away behind the scenes. It’s a great facility as well, a top class field, it’s working very well to date.”
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