By John Harrington

The Waterford hurlers aren’t going to apologise for the way they play and they certainly aren’t going to change it no matter what the critics say.

The traditionalists who believe hurling teams should always set up in a strict 3-3-2-3-3 formation had a field day when Waterford’s less orthodox system was smashed to pieces by Tipperary in the Munster Final.

If there was any self-doubt within this Waterford group about their approach to the game it would have been exposed then.

Instead, in the immediate minutes after the defeat, Derek McGrath defiantly said the system wasn’t the problem, rather it was their failure on the day to stick to it that allowed Tipp to pull them apart.

It’s clear that the Waterford players themselves also still trust implicitly in the ‘system’. There was no deviation from the game-plan in the subsequent All-Ireland Quarter-Final win over Wexford, and it was telling too that some of them said in the aftermath of it that they owed McGrath that win for all the work he has done for them.

And unless they’re all very good at telling fibs, it’s quite clear when the Waterford players talk about the way they play the game that they totally believe their current approach is the one that best suits this team. Pauric Mahony was a case in point at a recent press event in Croke Park.

“I suppose as a group we all buy into the way we play and we still 100 per cent believe the way we play is the best way to move forward,” said Mahony. “Whatever anyone says to us, that's the way we'll move forward. At the end of the day if you're winning games the way you're playing is fine but it's flagged then if you have a big loss like we had against Tipperary.

“You can find flaws in any system on the back of a bad performance. As I said, it's not something that bothers the players or anything like that. We're just interested in working hard and if you're winning games at the end of the day you don't really mind.

“We felt that as players we didn't follow the plan in the Munster Final. That was one of the most disappointing things because we felt we did abandon it. Derek highlighted that himself after the defeat.

“You're going up against Kilkenny now and if there's any sign of slip-up on our behalf they'll certainly exploit it. So we have to really knuckle down and make sure that we're 100 per cent prepared and we have 100 per cent belief in what we're going doing and the roles we have to play.”

Sunday’s semi-final against Kilkenny will certainly give us a definitive answer as to whether Waterford are on the right path, or in danger of wandering down a tactical cul de sac. That Cats represent the ultimate test, and the fact that both teams met at the same stage of the Championship last year means we’ll have an accurate barometer of whether Waterford are progressing as a team or not.

It has been suggested that the pressure is off them now because they go into the game as underdogs. But there’s a lot on the line here for Waterford and Mahony knows it.

“Being honest I suppose from a player's perspective the pressure is still on because we want to go to an All-Ireland Final,” he said. “Losing a semi-final is not going to be acceptable.

“It would be a poor year from the player's perspective because at the end of the day you want to go to September and go up the steps in Croke Park. That's what we're training for so we'll be going out against Kilkenny and doing absolutely everything we can to get over the line. Anything less will be seen as a failure for us.”

Mahony rightly says there’s “no room for error” against Kilkenny on Sunday. For any team to beat the Cats in their current era of almost total dominance of hurling, only perfection is likely to be good enough.

The problem for Waterford is that they have been far from perfect on the way to this semi-final. Even when you set aside the defensive melt-down against Tipperary, their error-count has been high.

Most obviously, their score taken to chance created ratio is very poor. They hit 17 wides against Wexford, and that was hardly out of character for this team. If they’re to beat Kilkenny, they can’t afford to be nearly so profligate.

“Look, no-one is going out there to deliberately put the ball wide and everyone is working really hard at training to maximise every opportunity that we get on the field,” said Mahony.

“Somedays they go over and somedays they don't. You don't become a bad hurler or a bad scorer in one game either. Nine times out of 10 it could go right for you but in that one game you can't dwell on that either. Like our performance in the Munster final, before that we had a good performance against Clare and everyone was saying, 'Waterford are contenders.' So we'll be just trying to think back to the positives of when things have gone right for us and it's a new game at the end of the day and we can't wait to get up here in two weeks' time.

“I suppose maybe the fact that we had a 10-point win (against Wexford), it covered over the wides to a degree too but players know themselves too when they're right and wrong and I think the thing about that was the majority of the shot selections were probably the right selection. If you were back in them positions we'd still take them shots again.

“If you're taking shots and they're pot shots and maybe there's a man in a better position, then the questions have to be raised about your shot selection but the way it was at the weekend, I think the majority of the shots were right so you can't really have any qualms with that because they were just going wide. The same thing (against Kilkenny), if them opportunities come again, you'll be taking the shot again so you're just hoping they'd go over.”

Mahony clearly believes Waterford are on the right track, regardless of what their critics might say. Last year they came up short at the same stage of the Championship against Kilkenny and one of the biggest take-aways from that game was that they struggled to cope with physicality of a considerably more mature team.

As a team they’ve put on a good few kilos of muscle in the last year, and Mahony is confident they are both physically and mentally ready for Sunday’s challenge.

“You won't really know really until after the 70 minutes Sunday week and see how it's after panning out but we've certainly done a fair amount of work over the last year and I think we're in a better position going into Sunday than we were in 2015 so lads are a year older and a year more work in the gym and a year more training under Derek's regime.

“It's high intensity training so I certainly think that we're in a much better position going into the game so physically I hope we're up for the challenge.

“If I didn't think we could win Sunday week I wouldn't be playing to be honest with you. With the demands that are on inter-county players now, it basically is 24/7 whether you're training or recovering or stretching. You're gone every night of the week so you wouldn't do it if you didn't believe you could get over the line and that's the feeling certainly in the Waterford dressing room at the moment that, you know, we firmly believe that we can win Sunday week and go on from that hopefully.”