By Michael Devlin

Even while kicking back on holiday in sunny Portugal with a cool ‘cerveja’ in hand, getting back into the thick of the action in 2019 with Waterford was on Jamie Barron’s mind.

Following the Deise’s exit from the Championship season in the Munster round-robin stage last June, Barron and his team-mates were able to go off and indulge in some rest and recreation for the first time in a good few summers. However, the ongoing search for the Liam McCarthy Cup was never too far from his thoughts.

“I went on two holidays," said Barron. "I went to Spain and I went to Portugal, with the lads and with my girlfriend. It was nice to be able to do those things that I haven’t been able to do the last few years. It would refresh you in a way, and you’re good to go again then.

“I watched the All Ireland in Portugal last year, I suppose drinking a few bottles of Corona and sitting back relaxing! It’s tough to watch, you’d love to be there yourself obviously.

“I think even at that time you’d be saying to yourself ‘it’s time to get back on the horse, get home and get training, and try to get back to where Aaron [Gillane] and them lads are at the moment. So that was probably a driving factor in many ways.”

“Obviously it was very hard, watching the likes of the Limerick and Cork All-Ireland semi, and then the Galway and Clare replay and stuff like that.

“Ultimately, it’s after driving us on even more. Going back training, it’s a lot easier than if you’re tired or if you feel like you’ve been on the road a long time. As well as that, we got a chance to do whatever we wanted to during the summer, which is one summer I’ve sought after for a while.

“It’s refreshed us as a team and we’re mad to get back at it, at places like Croke Park where we go at it again and hopefully win trophies."

That ambition has manifested itself early on in the new season as Waterford enter into a Division One league final this weekend in Croke Park. There they meet the team that delivered the final blow in their premature 2018 Championship season, Limerick.

Under the stewardship of new boss Páraic Fanning, Waterford notched four wins out of five in Division 1B, only losing out by two points to table-toppers Dublin.

After an impressive outing over Clare in the quarter-final, they booked a place in the final with strong second half-showing that proved too much for Galway, all the more notable given that they played the final 15 minutes with a man less.

Barron says though that winning this year’s league was not top of the Fanning‘s agenda when he took over from Derek McGrath in September last year.

“We didn’t target winning the league or things like that. We targeted winning every game as it comes and I suppose week-on-week we’ve been building and building and training throughout the weeks, trying to keep a balance between freshening up for the weekend and working hard enough to be able to improve your fitness levels coming up to Championship.

“I think it worked game-on-game and it’s got us this far, and when you’re here you want to win it, so we’ll be going gung-ho for the weekend.

“I suppose it doesn’t really bother us who thinks where we’ll come or what we’ll do or what way we’re going to play or stuff like that. We just focus on ourselves and at the minute things are coming right for us.

“We obviously have the biggest test at the weekend in Limerick, who’ve been the form team this year and last year. So we’ll find a lot out about ourselves in terms of where we’re at come Sunday evening, and we’ll know where to go from there.

“The League has been good to us in ways over the last few years, 2015 was great for us to win and to get the show on the road for us as a group of players. This year, it’s probably more about getting the show back on the road for us due to last year being a failure, a year that was more so written off in our copybooks so we’re looking to restart and get going again and Sunday’s League can be the kick-start we need for our 2019 campaign.”