Sunday September 3

All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final

Galway v Waterford, Croke Park, 3.30pm

By John Harrington

What’s rare is wonderful, and the novel pairing for this Sunday’s All-Ireland SHC Final has added an extra frisson of excitement to the occasion.

The final whistle will be greeted by the sort of raw explosion of joy only the ending of a sporting famine can produce regardless of who wins the match.

The fact that Waterford haven’t won an All-Ireland Final since 1959 nor Galway since 1988 isn’t just an interesting historical footnote, it could well have a bearing on the game.

If either team has a three or four-point lead with 10 minutes to go and the finishing line in sight, history might suddenly start to weigh very heavily on their shoulders.

So, don’t be surprised if the winner of this game is the team that comes from behind in the closing minutes when the imperative is to strain every sinew while throwing caution to the wind.

In that sort of scenario you don’t really have time to think about the enormity of the situation whereas if you’ve already established a winning position it’s very easy to fall into the mental trap of trying to hold what you have rather than going for the kill.

Perhaps Galway would be more vulnerable in this sort of situation.

They were accused of being a mentally fragile team when they lost the 2015 All-Ireland Final to Kilkenny despite leading by four points at half-time.

And many of these same Galway players also played in the 2012 All-Ireland Final against Kilkenny when they led by 1-8 to 0-4 after 32 minutes, but ended up drawing the game and losing the replay.

In both of those matches it looked like history suddenly started to weigh heavily on Galway when it dawned on them they had a great chance of ending the county’s long wait for an All-Ireland Final, so how will they react if they build a lead on Sunday, but then see Waterford in their rear-view mirror coming down the home-straight?

The flip side of that mental argument is that having suffered two All-Ireland Final defeats these Galway players wills simply refuse to lose a third, and you’d have to say they certainly showed a lot of bottle in the semi-final win over Tipperary.

The knowledge gained from previous All-Ireland appearances has to count for a lot too against a group of Waterford players who will be experiencing the unique occasion for the very first time and may find it tests and saps them in a way like no other match.

It should be remembered to that when they’ve contested showpiece Finals in the past – the 2014 and 2015 Munster Finals against Tipperary – they came up short, most obviously in 2015 when they suffered a full system melt-down.

Galway are quite similar to Tipperary in terms of their very direct style of play and abundance of natural scoring forwards, and will hope to by-pass the Waterford sweeper by going long to inside forwards like Conor Cooney, Conor Whelan, Cathal Mannion and, whether he starts or comes on, Jonathan Glynn.

What makes the Galway forwards so hard to handle is that they’re all powerfully built men who can win their own ball, and this is an especially handy attribute when faced with a sweeper system like Waterford’s.

Tadhg de Búrca does his best work when hoovering up ball that breaks between an opposition forwards and one of his fellow Waterford defenders, but there may be less of that than usual if Galway’s big men can win it cleanly in the air.

What makes those Galway forwards all the more formidable is that they’re all natural score-getters too, so even if you can keep the likes of Joe Canning and Conor Cooney quiet, there’s every chance Conor Whelan, Joseph Cooney and Cathal Mannion will still build a winning total.

Waterford just don’t have the same sort of individual talent in attack that Galway do, and if they’re to win this match then their midfielders Kevin Moran and Jamie Barron will have to once again score heavily.

Over the course of the five championship matches that Waterford have played this far they’ve hit a combined total of 4-20 from play, which is incredible shooting from a pair of midfielders.

If Galway can successfully shut down their threat then they’ll win this match, and in David Burke and Johnny Coen they certainly have two midfielders of their own who are up to that task.

It should be a ferocious contest in that middle third of the field, and if Galway even manage to break even there then you’d fancy them to win this match.

That’s not to write off Waterford’s chances, they’re more than capable of lowering Galway's colours.

Their status as underdogs should take some pressure off their shoulders, free up their minds, and allow them to just go out there absolutely rip into Galway.

They’ll hope their sweeper defence can carry out a successful damage limitation exercise, and at the other end of the field the plan will be to prise open the heart of the Galway defence.

Gearoid McInerney has lorded things at centre-back for Galway this year, but other teams have helped make a hero of him by lamping high ball down on top of him.

Waterford won’t make that mistake. They’ll pass short, try to out-flank him with runners from deep, and ask Austin Gleeson to take him on a tour of Croke Park.

McInerney will likely hold his ground when Gleeson goes wandering, but if the 2016 Hurler of the Year starts firing over points from all angles then the Galway centre-back might feel he has no other option but to follow him wherever he goes.

The shape of the Waterford attack might also pull the formidable Daithi Burke away from a central channel.

He’s likely to be given a man-marking role on one of Waterford’s two inside forwards, Shane Bennett or Jake Dillon who like to hug the sidelines, leaving Aidan Harte as the spare man sweeping in the Galway defence.

Harte is a classy hurler, but if Waterford can pull McInerney out of the centre and leave a channel down the middle for men like Barron and Moran to charge through they’d prefer to be faced with Harte than Burke.

Perhaps it might make sense though for Galway to take Burke out of the full-back line altogether and detail him to man-mark Michael ‘Brick’ Walsh.

The Waterford veteran’s ball-winning ability makes him a key cog in his team’s attack, but he wouldn’t find it nearly so easy to physically dominate Burke like he did Cork’s Mark Coleman in the All-Ireland semi-final.

That would leave John Hanbury and Adrian Tuohy picking up Bennett and Dillon in the wide channels, which might make more sense from a Galway point of view.

The respective benches of both teams will also have a big role to play in the destination of the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

Depending on what starting XV they pick, Galway will be able to introduce quality forwards like Jason Flynn, Jonathan Glynn, Niall Burke, and Shane Moloney into the fray.

Substitutions are a key part of the Waterford game-plan because playing with a five-man forward line requires Jake Dillon and Shane Bennett to run their legs to stumps before being replaced by men like Maurice Shanahan, Brian O’Halloran, Tommy Ryan, Colin Dunford, and Patrick Curran.

All of those Waterford attacking replacements possess serious pace and bring real energy to the fray just when the opposition are tiring.

If Waterford are within touching distance of Galway 15 minutes into the second-half, they’ll fancy their chances of winning the game thanks to impact their subs are likely to make.

Quite often All-Ireland Finals are dominated by one or two big personalities, and in that sort of scenario Waterford will look to Austin Gleeson and Galway to Joe Canning.

Gleeson has played some brilliant hurling in fits and starts this year, but if you were to put your house on one player dominating the stage on Sunday it would be Canning.

When Galway needed someone to drag them over the line in the semi-final against Tipperary he was the man who did it, and you get the feeling he’s primed for a performance on Sunday that could set his legacy in stone.

**GALWAY:**Colm Callanan; Adrian Tuohy, Daithi Burke, John Hanbury; Padraic Mannion, Gearoid McInerney, Aidan Harte; Johnny Coen, David Burke; Joseph Cooney, Joe Canning, Jonathan Glynn; Conor Whelan, Conor Cooney, Cathal Mannion.

**WATERFORD: ** Stephen O'Keeffe; Shane Fives, Barry Coughlan, Noel Connors; Tadhg de Burca, Austin Gleeson, Philip Mahony; Jamie Barron, Kieran Bennett; Kevin Moran, Pauric Mahony, Jake Dillon; Shane Bennett, Michael Walsh, Darragh Fives.