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You are > Home > Plenty of positives in Déise’s Crystal win
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19 January 2010
Plenty of positives in Déise’s Crystal win
The new playing season finally get under way last Sunday, and while the footballers were giving All-Ireland champions Kerry a decent run for their money in Killarney the hurlers made it a winning start with a comprehensive 1-26 to 1-12 victory over Cork I.T. in the Waterford Crystal tournament game played at an excellently appointed Kilmac’ venue.
As expected Davy Fitz rested many of the “elder statesmen’’ and availed of the occasion to give a run out to several of the fringe players. Most of them grasped the opportunity with both hands, none more so Maurice Shanahan and Shane Casey in an attack in which Shane Walsh at full forward was also quite magnificent throughout.
The form of Maurice Shanahan however really caught the eye. The Lismore teenager has become much stronger in his own body since last year, and I really can see him claiming a regular starting place in the line up in the year ahead. Nine points was his haul last Sunday five of them from play and everything about him resembled the real deal over the seventy minutes.
Well though many of the newcomers played however, including Ballygunner’s teenage goalkeeper Stephen O’Keefe, for me the most outstanding player on view was Michael “Brick’’ Walsh at number six. Everything about his display was pure class, and if he can maintain this level of performance in the weeks and months ahead then the team will be half way at least to doing what ot so clearly wants to do in an overall context.
CIT looked decent enough opposition twenty or so minutes, but once Waterford came to grips with the game it became very much one way traffic. Twenty six points is a air decent haul even in the best of playing conditions, and while the side was restricted to just one goal well taken too by Tallow teenager Tomas Ryan the excellence of CIT goalkeeper Ciaran Cronin kept out at least another three that a lesser ’keeper might not have.
An encouraging start then, and I do know that the manager was particularly pleased with the manner with which the players approached the game and their attitude throughout.
Seems to be that the desire and the hunger for success is there in pretty plentiful supply and that can only be good.
Incidentally the team paraded its new “3 Ireland’’ strip last Sunday and right good it looks too. Here’s hoping it will be the lucky omen that just might carry us to even bigger things than were previously achieved in a terrific decade that was the nineties.
Next weekend its another home game in the “Crystal’’, and its unlikely in the extreme that the Kerry opposition will prevent our smooth passage into the semi-final of the tournament.
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