Paraic Fanning: ‘We want to ensure Waterford people wake up the way Limerick people did, feeling 10 feet tall’

Few teams have had their playing style analysed more closely than the Waterford hurlers of the last few years.

Paraic Fanning: ‘We want to ensure Waterford people wake up the way Limerick people did, feeling 10 feet tall’

By Michael Moynihan

Few teams have had their playing style analysed more closely than the Waterford hurlers of the last few years.

Sweepers and two-man full-forward lines have been scrutinised and criticised, so it’s a fair place to begin with the new manager.

Paraic Fanning was a selector with Davy Fitzgerald when the Clare native took charge of Waterford, and he also joined Fitzgerald with Wexford. Now he’s in charge of his native county, what can we expect tactically?

“Everyone wants to talk systems, and sweepers, and deep-lying centre-backs, all of that, but there’ll be an element of wait and see,” said Fanning.

“I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of really good things in the Waterford set-up and the players are high achievers.”

“To be fair, there’s been some stick handed out to them but some of the best goals of the last few years have been scored by that Waterford team, the way they transition and attack.

“No different to Clare this year, who had to go back to a sweeper at some stages, we’ll adapt if we need to. We may use that at times, we may never use it. I have a couple of ideas about the way I want to play but obviously, I’m not going to broadcast that now, when we’ve no games played. We’ll have targets but we’ll also be keeping that stuff in-house.

“I’d like to think we’ll be entertaining to watch, but if we can win without being entertaining we’ll settle for that. Looking at the Waterford team there’s a lot of serious talent there, and I think the way they’ll play will be entertaining, if you want to use that term, but they’re smart players who know when to attack and when to defend.”

Is he keen for them all to be available next year? We spoke the day after Barry Coughlan stepped down as full-back at 28, after all.

“I’ve spoken to a good few of the lads, the club championship is on now and I’m very positive about who’ll be available.

“My plan is to get to talk to everyone and to see what they’re thinking, what way they’re leaning, but age won’t be an issue for me. It’s performance-based — if lads feel they can give it and the appetite is there, I really want them involved and I’ll do everything I can to keep them involved.

“Some of the lads that people have in mind have been unbelievable in the last few years and I’m going to do what I can to make sure they stay on board. And if they do I’ll be absolutely thrilled.”

There’s a ready-made model for them to emulate.

Fanning acknowledges that Limerick’s All-Ireland success, having come from a similar base, is encouraging for Waterford.

“Of course it is. I think the encouragement is there in the All-Ireland final of 2017 as well.

“It’s small margins. Limerick got a lot of things right last year, you need those, but it also reinforces our belief that we need to get up to that.”

“As a Waterford person going to watch the lads in the nineties and noughties, when the team came back, I remember waking up on a Monday with a buzz, going into work with a spring in your step to have the banter with the lads.

“That’s what we want to do, to ensure Waterford people wake up with that buzz, the way Limerick people did, feeling 10 feet tall. We saw what it meant to Limerick people and it’d mean even more to people in Waterford, I guarantee you. Once the lads start rolling here, the support is fantastic.”

Fanning knows well what hurling means to people in Waterford. His grandfather Pat was President of the GAA but was also a crucial member of the backroom team with his Mount Sion clubmate John Keane when Waterford last won the All-Ireland in 1959.

“It’s important for the players and ourselves to be aware of our history, of Waterford’s history. Personally it’s something I probably get emotional about because my grandfather meant so much to me. The values he and my father gave me . . . my grandfather was involved in 1959 with John Keane, those connections are there.

“Every Waterford person puts their best into it, and my grandfather would have had that belief, that if your county comes calling for you, you always answered.

“That always stayed with me, I often heard him say that and it’s something I’d bring with me, I’d expect that. If we’re asked, we go for it.”

But where will that happen? The Waterford County Board is rumbling about playing their Munster hurling championship matches at home next season, as the county had to play all their games on the road this summer. Fanning saw the benefit of home advantage up close with Wexford.

“The ideal scenario is to have the games at home. I want the buzz in the town before the game, then people walking up to their own pitch in their own land with their own people around them.

“We haven’t had a major discussion on it yet, I know there are other things at play, even looking in from the outside last year. I’d like us to have some games at home, and if it has to be somewhere else after that, we’ll see. We’ll have to see what’s possible.

“If it’s going to happen, it’d be nice to see some joined-up thinking on tickets, TV, all of that, with the GAA involved at a national level.

“For home games you’d like as many people to see the games as are able, and unfortunately, for the moment, not as many people as we’d like are able to do so, but at least there’s movement in the right direction on all of that.

“We know a home venue can’t spring up overnight but we saw last year with Wexford how important playing at home can be. The atmosphere in Wexford Park for some of those games was unbelievable, but it’s also the build-up all that week for the match.

“It’s what it does for hurling in the county — and for businesses in the county, too. We have a lot of people who back the hurlers and chip in and they’re entitled to have people come in to support their businesses when the team is at home.”

The operations and business development manager at WIT Arena is happy with his selectors, James Murray and Pa Kearney. “I knew James from my time with the Waterford hurlers (with Davy Fitzgerald), he was always a very solid character, well respected in the dressing-room, he’d have the same core principles I’d have myself when it comes to the game. I’d have earmarked him as someone I’d like to have in the set-up.

“Pa I’d know from coaching myself and since he got into coaching he’s taken a few teams, he brought Erin’s Own to a Cork county final — for a young fella he has huge experience with different teams. I only got a call the other day from someone about him saying we had a gem there, and the person who rang was right.

“In terms of coaching I thought about extending the ticket, bringing in one or two other lads, but one thing that I knew about James and Pa was that they’d be hungry. I spoke to James and bounced it off him and I knew he was interested. Now, he has four young kids but straightaway I saw the hunger. Pa the same.

“They’ll bring that hunger to it. James has already engaged with some of the players, he’s a well-grounded guy with plenty of experience, he served himself long enough.

“From speaking to Pa, you can get the energy from him, and he’ll bring that to the players as well.”

“I’ll be manager but I’ll also be involved to a fair degree in coaching, that’s always the way I’ve operated anyway. We’ve talked through how we’ll do that and we’re very much in sync on that.

“We can see the team is close enough, in the All-Ireland final last year it was level with ten minutes left, so we’d be confident we’re not too far away. But we all know, in addition, that the Munster championship is a minefield - there are probably five teams there with a chance of winning the All-Ireland, so whatever little gains, little wins we can get, we’ll go for them. We’re not going in with some three-year plan: we have to hit the ground running. We have to generate momentum straightaway, but we’re encouraged already by the reaction.”

His past experience is a benefit, but he’s open enough to concede he’s readier now than he might have been before: “If I go back eight years to when I fell in with Davy with Waterford, I’m probably wiser and more measured now.

“Eight years ago I probably thought I was ready to have a go at it but being honest now, I don’t think I was ready.

“I’ve no doubt it’ll be difficult at times, but at least I’m going in after years involved in intercounty senior hurling, so I know the little things that must be put in place. Because if you step away for two or three years, things can change very fast, but going in I’m confident, given what I’ve gone through, that I’ve learned a good bit.

“You can’t predict the future, but you can be sure of your own effort.” He’ll need to be. He’s impressed by the opposition. We’d have done a lot of analysis over the years in Wexford on other teams, and you’d see little things from them all. Eamon O’Shea’s Tipperary, their forward movement was very impressive, the evolution of Galway to the animal they became, some of the things worked by Davy in Wexford — marrying all of those is the challenge. Everyone puts a lot into it. Limerick last year, it was obvious how much John (Kiely), Joe (O’Connor), Paul (Kinnerk), Brian (Geary) and Alan (Cunningham) had done, the cohesion and the system the team had. Some of the things they did, creating space — that was very impressive.”

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