​By John Harrington

Waterford manager Derek McGrath is not stressing about the lack of goals his team has scored so far in the Allianz Hurling League this year. The Deise have managed just one goal in the six games played so far which does not compare favourably with the amount of green flags raised by the other three teams remaining in the competition – Limerick (11), Kilkenny (10), and Clare (8)

But McGrath insists their difficulty in finding the back of the net is no reason to change the game-plan that has got them to the League semi-finals

“I won’t say it’s a damning stat but it’s not one we want to have associated with us,” said McGrath. “What we’re trying to manage now is the talk about it, that it doesn’t become engrained in our approach. We love to hit the net the same as any other team but we’re trying to get the balance right so that while being conscious of it, it doesn’t become a burdening factor.

“We’re happy to win games in whatever manner is possible. We’re working to hit the net but we’re not going to promise any radical change in meeting that end. We’re like any management, we’re encouraging the lads that when they get the chance to take on their man but, look, we don’t want to over-emphasis it and hope it comes in a natural flow. It’s like if you say to guys before matches ‘don’t give away frees’ and then there is a tendency not to tackle then. We wouldn’t be happy with it (the lack of goals) but we’re stressing it too much in the group. It’s about being as positive as we can.”

There’s no shortage of those positives for Waterford to draw on ahead of Sunday’s Allianz League semi-final against Limerick. They’ve posted some outstanding victories so far in the campaign, most notably against Kilkenny and Tipperary. Against Kilkenny in particular, the kilos of muscles that their young players have put on since last year really stood to them.

“It’s part of the good work done by Fergal (O’Brien), our physical trainer, Gary Walsh and Stephen Barrett there,” says McGrath. “To me, it’s natural growth spurts for the likes of Austin (Gleeson), Patrick Curran and Shane Bennett. That’s not taking away from our strength and conditioning team but the boys are growing as much as anything else.

“Austin, in the aftermath of the Kilkenny game, would have remarked that he needed to get stronger. I just think the mind and what’s in your chest dictates how strong you are. We haven’t put any over-emphasis on one area over another. It’s a real combination of a good strength and conditioning programme but as much as anything else it’s natural growth spurts for a lot of these lads.”

Their team’s triumphant 2015 Allianz League campaign and subsequent run to the All-Ireland semi-final meant that the expectations of Waterford fans were always going to be sky-high this year, but McGrath believes those expectations are unrealistic.

“It’s very hard to control what people expect,” he admits. “To give you a practical example, in the run-up to the Wexford game in Wexford Park, the general talk in Waterford was ‘banana skin’ or ‘difficult place to go’. For me, that was way off the mark and certainly not how we saw it as a group. It was absolutely contradictory to how we saw it. Even in the aftermath, when we were meeting people we were told ‘ah, you didn’t play well’ and ‘you should be beating Wexford’ but that is not what you want to hear.

“There’s nothing between us and Wexford, particularly a Wexford team who were obviously motivated coming off the back of stories in the county the week before the game. I know how hard Liam Dunne works in the job and Wexford have a lot of ability. It’s only a year and a half ago that Wexford put us to the sword in Nowlan Park and having already beaten Clare, the All-Ireland champions. In advance of the game, I read one headline that said ‘Waterford in a different league to Wexford’. Whilst it was true literally, the chasm isn’t as big as people think on any given day.”