GAELIC GAMES: MALACHY CLERKINtalks to two experts who know why, after a defeat, the focus has to be on the future, the next game, the chance of a reprieve

THE EMBARRASSMENT is the worst of it. Actually no, no it’s not. It’s the bewilderment that’s the real worst of it. Or maybe it’s the dread at the thought of having to go again. Or the fear, after all this time and all these miles, the tonking you’ve just received live on television in your provincial final is as good as it gets and as much as you deserve. The road back can seem a whole lot longer when your starting point is ankle-deep in quicksand.

Realistically, it’s a combination of each of these emotions and energies that faced Davy Fitzgerald and his Waterford side after their seven-goal trimming in the Munster final a fortnight ago. Although they’d been bullish going in, the riotous Mardi Gras of Tipperary goals left them completely stripped bare.

Anguished and humbled, with John Mullane’s tortured apology to Waterford supporters on the teatime news the face of a total systems failure. Where to now? Where to even begin?

John Meyler could help point the way. He was Wexford manager in 2007 and 2008, show-runner of a small off-Broadway operation while Kilkenny were doing their Phantom Of The Opera bit the next block over.

In both years the Leinster final was a turkey shoot, the margin 15 points in ’07 and 19 in ’08. But on both occasions, Meyler got a performance out of his side the next day out, beating Tipperary the first year and running Waterford to within a puck of a ball the following summer. The key, he says, is leaving the beating behind you, on the very pitch itself if you can.

“The minute the game was over, what I tried to do with the lads in the dressingroom was to say, ‘Look, the match is over, forget about it’. You need to forget about it straight away, a minute after the game if you can. We were after playing one of the best teams the game had ever seen and I stressed to the boys that we weren’t playing them again the next day. Move on and forget about them.”

Everybody gets beaten, sometimes devastatingly so. The trick is not to dwell on it.

Enda McNulty, the former Armagh defender whose performance coaching company Motiv8 is gaining a big reputation across Irish sport, does most of his work with defeated players and teams. For him, moving on is priority one. When the walls cave in, get out of the building and don’t give it a backward glance.

“Speed is of the essence,” he says. “At some stage, somebody has to call a halt to any talk or thought of the bad performance and the quicker that can be done the better. Whatever it was that went so badly wrong, it’s probably for the coaches and the senior players to reflect upon rather than for everybody to get bogged down in. It won’t help for everybody to be over-analysing and over-scrutinising the game.

“After a big defeat, the less time spent analysing it the better. Bob Rotella – who was such a key part of Darren Clarke’s win last Sunday – he would be very big on deleting mistakes from your thoughts and from your mindset. That goes across the board, never mind after a complete obliteration.”

Waterford looked to get their feet right back in the stirrups first thing Monday morning after the Munster final, with a 9am session at Fraher Field in Dungarvan. To Meyler’s mind, that was going ever so slightly overboard. Okay, it might have kept the players from taking a bellyful after the game but with a fortnight to the next match and trauma needing to be flushed from the system, maybe a good solid night of it mightn’t have done any harm.

“That was a bit of bravado,” he says. “That was Davy being Davy. I wouldn’t have done that. I would have said, ‘Look, away with ye and have a few pints and I’ll see ye Tuesday night. We’ll get the show on the road again then’. You have to give fellas time and space to go away back home to their friends and their parents. We’ve all got a hammering at some point or other playing sport. We’ve all got a hiding.

“What’s important is that you have your friends and your confidantes that you can talk it out with. You have to chill out and think what you can do to get it right the next time. Different fellas have different escape valves and you have to let them go and do that. You’ve got to let them release that energy, let them stand beside each other and go, ‘Look, f**k it, we didn’t get the best out of ourselves. What are we going to do about it?’ If that means them going for a few pints the night of the game, no problem.”

The first session back can’t be laboured and it can’t be a funeral. An autopsy will only splatter more blood around the place. If the elephant in the room must be addressed, it has to be in the context of putting it in its place and moving on.

“Different coaches will use different little things and strategies.You might go out for a night together in a bar. You might do an old-fashioned run-the-legs-off-them training session,” says McNulty. You might show a DVD of the game or of selected highlights and lowlights of the game and then literally smash the DVD to pieces afterwards. But whatever you do, the focus has to be the future, the next game, the chance of a reprieve.”

At a time like this, a general needs his officer class. Meyler had Damien Fitzhenry who, by the end of his career, had been on the wrong end of no fewer than four double-digit Leinster final defeats. He knew what it was to be way down in the hole and more to the point he knew it was possible to find a route back. On three of those four occasions, Wexford won their next game.

“You will have young fellas on the panel who have no fear but who will still look to the older guys for motivation. That was where Fitzhenry came into his own. That’s where Waterford will need Tony Browne and John Mullane. “That’s where character comes into it. You’ve got to counteract the fear in the panel.

“You have to convince them that no way is this going to happen to them again. You make each of them responsible for their own reputation, make them adamant they’re not going to let it happen again. That’s where you’re going to be looking to Mullane and Brick Walsh and Clinton Hennessy. That’s where you need to go to your stronger senior players and say, ‘Lads, we really need help here. We really need to pick this up. We can’t allow a repeat of this’.”

Easier said than done? Absolutely. But, says Meyler, not impossible. Waterford have to find a way to turn around a worse beating than even Wexford ever had to endure at Kilkenny’s hands but it can be done. It all depends on how the fundamentals are within the squad.

“If you’ve built up your team spirit over a period of time,” says Meyler, “it will be easier to move on. If there’s a togetherness there, then fellas will be more honest with each other. They’ll be able to go, ‘Well, why were we training in the shit and the muck all winter? What were we doing all this for together?’ And if you can convince each other that it was all for two weeks’ time rather than for last Sunday, then you have a chance. If you have unity, if you have a bond, then they will come around to a new way of thinking.”

And if not? Then Galway will eat them without salt.

The road to recovery

SINCE THE advent of the qualifiers in both codes, 13 counties have shipped double-digit defeats in provincial finals and had to pick themselves up for the rest of the year afterwards. The good news for Waterford is that there is a far greater pattern of success for hurling teams who find themselves in that situation – only one of the seven defeated teams didn't go on to win their next game. This is in stark contrast to football where the only team to have gone on to win a match after taking a double-digit hiding was the Wexford side that went on a run to the 2008 All-Ireland semi-final.

HURLING

Waterford 1998 – Lost to Clare 2-16 to 0-10; Beat Galway 1-20 to 1-10; Lost to Kilkenny 1-11 to 1-10.

Offaly 1999 – Lost to Kilkenny 5-14 to 1-16; Beat Antrim 4-22 to 0-12; Lost to Cork 0-19 to 0-16.

Offaly 2000 – Lost to Kilkenny 2-21 to 1-13; Beat Derry 2-23 to 2-17; Beat Cork 0-19 to 0-15; Lost to Kilkenny 5-15 to 1-14.

Wexford 2001 – Lost to Kilkenny 2-19 to 0-12; Beat Limerick 4-10 to 2-15; Drew with Tipperary 1-16 to 3-10; Lost replay 3-12 to 0-10.

Wexford 2003 – Lost to Kilkenny 2-23 to 1-12; Beat Waterford 1-20 to 0-18; Beat Antrim 2-15 to 2-12; Drew with Cork 3-17 to 2-20; Lost to Cork 3-17 to 2-7

Wexford 2007 – Lost to Kilkenny 2-24 to 1-12; Beat Tipperary 3-10 to 1-14; Lost to Kilkenny 0-23 to 1-10.

Wexford 2008 – Lost to Kilkenny 5-21 to 0-17; Lost to Waterford 2-19 to 3-15.

FOOTBALL

Tipperary 2000 – Lost to Cork 1-23 to 0-7; Lost to Mayo 0-20 to 1-14.

Down 2003 – Lost to Tyrone 0-23 to 1-5; Lost to Donegal 3-15 to 2-10.

Donegal 2004 – Lost to Armagh 3-15 to 0-11; Lost to Fermanagh 1-10 to 0-12.

Roscommon 2004 – Lost to Mayo 2-13 to 0-9; Lost to Dublin 1-14 to 0-13.

Wexford 2008 – Lost to Dublin 3-23 to 0-9; Beat Down 2-13 to 0-12; Beat Armagh 1-14 to 0-12; Lost to Tyrone 0-23 to 1-14.

Monaghan 2010 – Lost to Tyrone 1-14 to 0-7; Lost to Kildare 1-15 to 1-11.