By John Harrington

Waterford have no intention of appealing any further the one-match suspension that has ruled Conor Gleeson out of the All-Ireland Final.

The red-card he received against Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final was upheld by the GAA's Central Hearings Committee on Monday night, and today Waterford manager Derek McGrath revealed they won’t take their case further to the Central Appeals Committee.

“We spoke in advance of the hearing last night and we spoke about possible outcomes in advance, and I won’t say we’ve exhausted every outcome, but we’ve made a decision as a management - and player - to leave it at that now,” said McGrath today at Waterford’s All-Ireland Final media event.

“I’d have spoken to Conor about the different circumstances, there are different circumstances with each case.

“The loco parentis issue, the duty of care, I was up with his mother yesterday and they’re very supportive of the stance we felt we should take, which is to go to the first hearing, see how that goes, and our approach then was to get the red reduced to a yellow in terms of the infraction.

“When that wasn’t going to be successful as a result of last night, we felt it was a case of a different scenario to what Tadhg (De Búrca) faced. That was the reasoning behind it.

“These fellas are well able to accept that each situation is different, we’re moving on to look forward to the All-Ireland.”

Tadhg De Búrca is available again after missing that semi-final with a suspension of his own and is likely to replace Gleeson in the team, but McGrath is still rueing the loss of his specialist man-marker.

“Massive loss to us,” said McGrath.

“He performed key roles in the last three or four games. He did well on Richie Hogan against Kilkenny, did well on Shane Dooley and Joe Bergin against Offaly, against Conor McDonald with Wexford and on Conor Lehane the last day.

“He’s been assigned key tasks, so he’s a very significant loss.”

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