By John Harrington

Galway manager Tony Ward hopes the general lack of expectancy surrounding his team can be an asset going into today’s Bord Gáis Energy All-Ireland U-21 Final against Waterford.

The Tribesmen are massive underdogs compared to a star-studded Waterford team, which is always a nice way to come into an occasion that would normally be much more pressurised.

“Oh, sure, we are coming in under the radar,” says Ward. “Waterford, anybody all over the country, could list off their players, where I suppose Conor Whelan, Brian Molloy and you get stuck after that on our team, which is a good thing for our lads.

“Another good thing, we've had all the lads all year training, we'd 3 guys involved with the seniors. We were able to build up a squad and a bit of comradeship amongst the lads. They'd all know the 3 boys that were in there anyway. It made our task a little bit easier having so little on the senior panel.”

Waterford’s team will boast 12 senior panellists including Austin Gleeson who would probably rubber-stamp a place on the short-list for Hurler of the Year if he produced a man of the match performance today.

Gleeson was sensational for the Waterford senior hurlers this year and in the U-21 grade can look like an U-16 playing in the U-12 grade, such is his power and ability to dominate the contest. Ward admits figuring out a way to limit his influence is no easy task.

“I don’t know, unless we put a good lock on the dressing room door or something like that,” he jokes. “Ah, look it, sure wouldn’t it be a dream for any county to have a player of his capabilities at 21 years of age and being talked of as the next hurler in Ireland - hopefully it brings its own pressure.”

Rather than getting too hung up on the brilliance of Waterford players like Gleeson, Shane Bennett, Stephen Bennett and Patrick Curran and what they can do to stop them, Galway have decided to focus on getting the best performance from themselves.

“Well, my motto is we don’t refer - no disrespect to any of these guys, I have great respect for these guys - they are famous hurlers but you know, you don’t keep mentioning their names in the dressing room. You go, ‘the six channel, the 11 channel,’ you try and play it down as much as you can because if we build them up in our dressing room, we are in trouble so we keep it as low key as we can as far as that’s concerned.”

Galway’s blessing every year in the U-21 grade is that they immediately qualify for the All-Ireland Semi-Final. But they are then at a disadvantage when they play the Munster or Leinster championship who have been battle-hardened by coming through a series of matches in their provinces.

Galway still found a way to win even though Dublin looked like the sharper team for long stretches of the All-Ireland Semi-Final. But Ward would prefer if the county’s underage teams were able to compete in Leinster like their senior teams are.

“I think once the seniors and intermediates are in there, the minors and U21's should be in there as well,” he says. “A lot of these guys that are on the U21 panel went up and played an intermediate semi-final v Wexford.

“There'd be nothing wrong with it. I think the second chance would be a good thing because there's so much pressure going into a game that you have to win, when you're not up to championship level. Now the semi-final if you planned it, it couldn't have gone better. You got 80 minutes of hurling, got to look at 21 guys and came out the right side of the result."

Galway coped with a lack of competitive matches by playing Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and the Kilkenny intermediates in challenge matches.

Ward also believes they got a lot of benefit from playing the Galway senior team in a series of challenge matches, even if the results were sometimes chastening.

“I don't think you'd want to know the results,” he laughs. “There was one in the middle that we did very well in. But there was two, the week leading up the Clare game, we got a bit of a trouncing alright and the very first one. There was two in between that we held our own.

“You could see the progression. It's like anything, you'll never learn anything playing a lesser grade. You aim for the grade above you all the time.”

Galway are underdogs for a reason going into this Final – Waterford are really very good – but that would make it all the sweeter to win which is why they are so motivated to pull off a shock result.

“I think if we could get a win on Saturday it would be something else because even at home, even to go to mass in my own parish, everybody is just saying, ‘fair play to ye, ye bet  Dublin, you did well, ‘ but the but is there,” says Ward.

“Nobody, even in Galway could see us putting this one over on Saturday evening, so if we did happen to be lucky enough to get over the line I think it would be one of the best ones ever.”