Three-time All Star Dan Shanahan says that there will be fierce competition for places in the Waterford camp ahead of the All Ireland qualifiers later this month. He thinks that the players will have a point to prove after last Sunday's defeat to Clare.
“The best you can do is go training and see who puts up their hand. Liam Cahill did say that there were eleven lads who didn’t make the panel that trained very hard that Sunday morning so they must come back into contention. The one or two lads who were taken off have to be considered as well. I know Kevin Moran was taken off after 33 minutes but he has to be considered the next day. Everyone had a poor game against Clare; you can’t judge them on one game. Just park it, go back to training Friday night, go fifteen on fifteen and let them flake each other! See who puts their hand up for the next day.”
They must move on from the Clare defeat as quickly as possible in his view. The Lismore man was on the line when Waterford lost to Cork in the 2017 Munster semi final. Derek McGrath’s team turned their season around and made it back to Croke Park for an All Ireland final in September. “It’s tough to take. When you go from winning last year to not performing and that’s all that happened, the lads didn’t perform and Clare did. Let’s not forget, with three minutes to go, Waterford were only a goal down. They were only goal down and it would have been an injustice to get a draw out of the game. We would have parked that game (in 2017), given the lads a few days off to recover properly and got going for the next day. You can’t do anything about the past or the previous game, whether you won it or lost it. You’re facing a different opponent the week after. Of course, you’ll chat, see where you can improve, tell the lads a few home truths to get better for the next day then park it and get on with it. I’ve no doubt Liam Cahill and his management can’t wait for the next game as well as the players. They’ll be under pressure, don’t get me wrong, but I think a nice draw, get a victory underneath them and get their injuries cleared up and I think they’ll have a great chance of progressing.”
Shanahan agreed with Liam Cahill that Waterford could have lost by a lot more than four points. “To Clare’s credit, they had their homework done. I was listening to John Conlon after the match and he said that he knew in the warm-up that Clare were up for the match. I think that Brian Lohan got his tactics spot on. John Conlon was always in the right place at the right time. Anytime our faster lads went to go with the ball, they met a Clare man in front of them. They well deserved their victory. I thought they were definitely ten or eleven points better than Waterford.” Listen to "Dan Shanahan Waterford v Clare" on Spreaker.
