Who Will Be the Next Waterford Senior Hurling Manager?

            Before Waterford played Cork in this year’s Munster Senior Hurling Championship I had heard from a number of good sources including one very good source that that game would be Derek McGrath’s last game in charge of the Waterford Senior Hurling team.

            I looked up the website of Paddy Power to find out there and then to see if they were offering odds on the next Waterford senior hurling manager. Maybe they had heard the same stories as I did, but there was nothing to be seen.

            However the day after McGrath publically announced that he was stepping down as Manager after serving five years in charge of the side there was plenty of names to be seen and some clear favourites were named as well as some very far out odds.

            I logged onto my Paddy Power account and placed the massive sum of five euro on former Wexford and Kildare senior football manager Jason Ryan to be the next manager of the Waterford team. Before doing this he had not gone on the Déise Today programme on WLRfm to confirm that he would indeed be interested in taking the job if he was offered it.

            The former Waterford footballer was listed at 14/1. If I wanted I could have went for someone like former Tipperary goalkeeper Brendan Cummins who at the time was the early favourite or indeed Sean Power, the man that lead Waterford to Minor and Under 21 hurling championships in recent years.

            Personally I can’t see the Tipperary man being interested in the Waterford gig. He is, he certainly was up to last year playing for his club Ballybacon/Grange winning a Junior County title with the South Tipperary Club which straddles the West Waterford Border under the Knockmealdown Mountains. If he is playing for the club again this year is he prepared to make the time available to take over a county team and the time constraints that go with it, and is he prepared to give up the media work that he does. There must be good money in it with the amount of former Inter County Players getting involved in the last number of years.

            Sean Power is the favourite in the eyes of many including many here in Waterford, but I would have my doubts about giving him the gig.

            Yes I know he managed Waterford to Minor and Under 21 titles in the last few years, but I would worry about his lack of experience for the bigger positions. I would worry that we have not seen him take charge of a club team in Waterford. It need not necessarily have to be a senior team, there is many excellent Intermediate and Junior teams in Waterford night now, something that we have seen with the number of clubs that have contested Munster and All-Ireland Finals in recent years.

            His own club Mount Sion have had a number of managers in recent years, and I can’t but wonder why he has not managed the Monastery Men. Did he allow his name to go forward to wear the Managers bib with his club or was he asked and turned it down for some reason that most of us might not know off? I honestly don’t know.

            It could well be argued that he won the two All-Ireland’s he did with bye and large the same group of players, a special group of talented players who might not have needed all that much coaching as many of them were and are natural hurlers. It’s not often that such a group comes along, but every so often it happens and I can’t but wonder did we see this happen in Waterford with those that won the 2013 Minor and Under 21 All Ireland Final in 2016.

I can remember seeing some of these players playing under 10 and 12 and even then you could see that they had something special about them.

For ten years or so I was involved in Bord na nÓg and for many of these years when it came to county finals in all age groups and in all grades and codes we picked out one player from each team that we thought was their best player and brought them together at the end of the year and they were presented with their awards by a senior inter county player.

Sometimes to pick out one player was a difficult task as there would be a number of players that impressed on a particular side while other times it was an easy task.

I remember seeing Saint Mary’s playing in an under 12 County Final at Fraher Field one Saturday morning, and on the day I was often tasked at picking the players to be presented with the award. That day I had no problems in picking out the winner. I had never heard of him before, but once I saw Michéal Harney playing I knew he was going to be someone that would win further honours in the game. He was a player with natural skill, and I felt that if he had enough players of similar or even better quality around him then honours would be achieved.

I could say the same about Patrick Curran playing with Dungarvan. I did not have a programme to know his name, I identified him by the number on his shirt and when I heard after the game who he was and who his father was I knew that he too was a player that was going to go places.

When you throw in the likes of Tom Devine, the Bennett brothers, Austin Gleeson etc into the equation, all very talented players who had all the skills and who needed little coaching I believe and maybe I am wrong, someone with the minimum amount of coaching ability could guide them to bigger and better days.

While Sean Power is a firm favourite with some to take over from Derek McGrath as the next Waterford manager, I would be surprised if he was the chosen person. As I said, I have nailed my colours to the mast and have said that I believe that it will be Jason Ryan.

But there is one name that would make a good manager that no one seems to be mentioning.

There is some that will argue to fill the top hurling job in any county you have to have proven credentials, and there is one man within the county who has done it all as a player and a coach.

Colm Bonner helped his native Tipperary to Munster and All-Ireland titles over three decades ago. He helped his native county win the 1989 and 1991 All –Ireland titles. He was also involved in 1988 and 1997.  

In total he played eight Munster Finals (excluding replays), winning five between 1987 and 1993. He helped the Premier County win the National League in 1988 and appeared in three other finals.

He won one Under 21 final with Tipperary (1985) winning the Provincial that same year and appearing in the two finals just before that and also contested unsuccessfully the All-Ireland Finals in 1983 and 1984, and he win a Munster and All-Ireland medal in 1982, as well as three Railway Cup Medals with Munster.

At club level he has also proven to be a successful player, winning the Tipperary and Munster Senior Club Championships with Cashel King Cormac’s in 1991, and finished as beaten finalists in the Tipperary Senior Hurling Championship in 1990 and 1994.

After calling time on his playing career it was an obvious route for someone that was so successful as a player to get involved in coaching with the next generation of players, something he did after moving to live in Waterford.

Between 1999 and 2003 he worked alongside Gerald and Justin McCarthy when they were in charge of the Waterford Senior Team at the start of a great era for Waterford hurling, even if no All-Ireland’s were won.

He worked alongside Ken Hogan for a while with the Tipperary Senior Hurlers, and helped guide Waterford Institute of Technology to win four Fitzgibbon Cup titles.

In 2008 he took over the Wexford Senior hurling team, succeeding current Cork manager John Meyler, remaining in charge until the summer of 2011 when Wexford were knockout out of the senior hurling championship by Limerick.

In more recent times he was in charge of Ballyhale Shamrocks from Kilkenny, guiding them to the All-Ireland Club Championship in 2016, and later that year he took over the reins of the Carlow Senior Hurling Team.

In his time in charge of the most northerly of the South East Counties he helped them to Christy Ring and Joe McDonagh Cup successes in the last two years, the latter win coming recently when they beat a Westmeath side coached by Michael Ryan who has since resigned on a 2-26 to 1-24 score line at Croke Park, as a result of which they will play in the Leinster Championship in 2019 at the expense of Offaly, while the same two counties clashed in the Division two final of the National League earlier this year and again the outcome was the same, a win for Colm Bonner’s side, this time on a 2-19 to 2-12 score line.

There will be some that will feel that while much of Jason Ryan’s experience in the inter county scene has come in football, it must be noted that he was suggested in the recent past to be in line for a place in Michael Ryan’s Tipperary Senior Hurling Management team. He has also helped Wexford Youths in soccer and was believed to be considered to be in the reckoning to become the Wicklow Senior Football Manager since stepping down as Kildare Manger and he was also involved with Stradbally recently as a coach.

There will be some that will argue that much of what Colm Bonner has achieved on the inter county scene was with a Division Two side and that his stint with Wexford was not successful. But it is often harder to be successful with a weaker county than it is with a stronger county. Would for example Brian Cody if he stood down as Kilkenny manager this evening and took over someone like the Wicklow or Mayo hurlers would he achieve the same or half as much as he has with Kilkenny? I doubt it.

Both Jason Ryan and Colm Bonner in my eyes would make very good managers of the Waterford senior hurling team for 2019 and beyond. Will we see one of them in charge, or maybe one in charge with the other involved in some way in 2019; right now it’s too early to tell. Do we know if even there is a process in place to have the new man and his management team picked.

 One thing is for certain, the talent is there for the next manager to win an All-Ireland and more than that for Waterford, ending the long famine that stretches back to 1959. Surly it is only a case of getting the right person in as manager working alongside good hurling brains, who dare i say it are able to come up with more than the one plan when it comes to game.