Current Limerick minor hurling manager Shane Dowling was not impressed with how Waterford set up tactically on Sunday as they lost 1-21 to 1-19 against Cork on Sunday at Supervalu Pairc Ui Chaoimh.
Waterford started strong but Cork bossed the third quarter en route to victory.
Speaking on League Sunday, the former All-Ireland winner broke down Davy Fitzgerald’s current problems with his tactics.
“We all know how they play. They play with a sweeper, and if you're going to play with a sweeper, they have to do better on the puck outs as they end up with a 50/50 puck out."
“They seem to be setting up, but they don’t know what they're doing. This was when they pushed everyone outside the 45, which led to the Cork goal. When they go that far out the field, Cork turnovers the puck out of their space there because of how they set up,
“Jack O’Connor got that ball on his own 65. Waterford are supposed to be playing with a sweeper and he runs the whole way down the middle. He could have gone another 10 yards.
The last thing relating to their structures is Callum Lyons got the ball. Nobody was inside the 45, and he hit the ball wide.”
Shadowboxing or not, Shane Dowling sees some issues with Waterford's set-up that they'll need to address by the time the Munster Championship rolls around.#RTEgaa
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Dowling believes that if Waterford are going to succeed this year, they need to play Dessie Hutchinson as close to goal as possible. However, he thinks that the Déise players are just following what their manager wants them to do.
“The tactics we saw today from Waterford are what we have seen from Davy Fitzgerald teams over the last couple of years, and if they don’t have anyone deep inside, they can't hit it in,” Dowling said.
“I know there was criticism last year over Dessie Hutchinson as well, who is one of the top forwards in the game, and we can see how lethal he is with Ballygunner, but yet when he's playing with Waterford, he seems to be so far withdrawn, there was a couple of strange things today,
Well, from what I saw, the players were in that line straight up the middle, but their body language suggests, well, this is what we’ve been told in training, so this is what we're going to do. They didn’t show any intent to look for the ball, which then made it easy for the opposition to defend. If them Waterford players were going hard looking for the ball, there's then a decision for the Cork players to make.”
Canning’s counterargument on Waterford
Joe Canning who worked under Fitzgerald during his time in LIT did have sympathy for his former manager saying that the Déise need to get more clinical.
“I suppose I know from Davy’s time and talking to him his argument will be they are creating chances. They had a good few wides that they should have probably scored even later on. The argument is they had shots. Limerick have loads of shots out of the field, but they scored them. That’s the difference their shooting efficiency isn’t quite there yet.”
Waterford now have one win and two losses in their first three League games and sit fourth in Division 1A
