CALLING FOR A CLASSIC
Prendergast well versed in special rivalry Ex-Waterford star hails Derek McGrath’s work
TIPPERARY’S cult hurling hero John Leahy recounts a famous story from the 1991 All-Ireland homecoming. Never the shy, retiring type, he decided to stoke the fires of the border rivalry with Kilkenny, Urlingford being a tinderbox at the best of times.
As the Tipperary team bus rattled through the town, he couldn’t resist waving the Liam MacCarthy Cup out the window at the locals who happened to be standing by. They didn’t forget that one for a long time.
While that sort of grandstanding wouldn’t have been part of Séamus Prendergast’s style, he can appreciate the tensions that exist along county boundaries.
Growing up in Ardmore in Waterford, within touching distance of Cork, plenty of his friends from the village crossed the county line to Youghal to go to secondary school, or went on to college in Cork city.
On Tuesday night, TG4 rescreened ‘Na Comhlinti’, the half-hour special on the Cork-Waterford rivalry that Prendergast had the honour of playing through.
With the counties due to meet in the Allianz Hurling League final tomorrow afternoon in Thurles, the 2004 Munster final featured front and centre of the programme as one of those games for the ages and Prendergast explains why he counts it as his best moment on a hurling field. As someone who won four Munster titles, a National League and appeared in an All-Ireland final, that’s saying something.
‘It’s something that will stand the test of time,’ he says. ‘ We hadn’t beaten Cork in a Munster final in something like 50 years. I’m so close to the Cork border here in Ardmore that it made it extra special.’
Kilkenny may have used the last decade to steal a march on Cork in the All-Ireland roll of honour but no rivalry captured the imagination quite like Cork-Waterford.
Tomorrow, Prendergast will be a spectator for the first time since 2000 when he emerged as a broadshouldered, primary ball-winner in attack, the perfect foil to the quick-wristed talents of forwards such as John Mullane and Paul Flynn.
Now looking from the outside in, he admits it feels very different. ‘I knew it was coming. This time last year I knew I was going to retire so that made the transition that bit easier.’
He walked away on his own terms then as Derek McGrath culled the panel further over the course of the winter. Given the low expectations at the start of year, to reach the Division 1 final from the second tier of 1B has been an unlikely success story and he says he is ‘delighted’ for all the lads he played with.
It’s a touch ironic that he stepped away when McGrath has built a new team on the qualities that Prendergast epitomised: honesty, work-rate, spirit and leadership. The style of play though as a team i s so much more defensively weighted compared to the cavalier approach that served Waterford so well in the noughties.
‘The older, more traditional people would prefer to see it played offthe-cuff. Look, do you want to win or do you want to play? Waterford want to win. They have to go and play what suits themselves. That’s what management have brought into the team. It’s a strategy that suits Waterford at the moment.’
When Davy Fitzgerald took over from Justin McCarthy, he put a similar defensive shape on the team that didn’t always go down well with the locals but brought a Munster title in 2010, again at the expense of Cork.
So he understands what McGrath has done in terms of Waterford’s defensive set-up. ‘It probably makes a team very hard to beat. That’s the most important thing. If the forwards get enough ball and take the chances that come their way, then they have a right chance.’
Apart from 1963, the only other National League title Waterford brought home came in 2007 when they triumphed over a Kilkenny team that had already set out on the path of four All-Irelands in a row.
‘We’ve only won it twice so every time you get to a final you have to try and take it,’ adds Prendergast. And he’s not dogged by regrets over not being on t he f i el d t his weekend.
‘When you finish up with the club they could go on and win the county title — that’s sport. I’ll be above at the match supporting them and that’s the most important thing.’
Unfortunately, his career didn’t get the sign-off it deserved. His last outing against Cork was a doubledigit defeat, 0-28 to 0-14 in the Munster quarter-final replay, and he was a second-half substitute at Nowlan Park l ast July when Wexford knocked them out of the qualifiers.
‘Any game you lose you’d be disappointed. Knowing it was my last time in the jersey it was extra disappointing. It’s more disappointing when you lose a game you should have won. That was the biggest thing.’
But Cork-Waterford will always be about the good days more than the bad.
‘Both teams were pure hurling teams. They played off the cuff – that’s what made them so exciting. There wasn’t a whole lot of tactics involved — just play the ball when it came into your area.
‘They were all very close classics. Someone said to me there was only four points in the difference over all the matches over those years — that will tell you how close they were. They were all special games.’
He hopes tomorrow’s final can produce another.
‘The older people prefer it played more off the cuff’ ‘There wasn’t a whole lot of tactics involved’