Clare and Waterford to give it their all, says Justin McCarthy

Sunday's Allianz Hurling League final may be the first one between Clare and Waterford but Justin McCarthy is in the unique position of having managed both counties to league titles.

In 1977 and ’78, having won All-Ireland medals with his own county Cork, he coached Clare to back-to-back success and 30 years later was in charge of the Waterford side that won the county’s first national title in 44 years.

His Waterford side had great success without winning the All-Ireland: three Munster titles and a league title nine years ago.

He says that Waterford’s success has not surprised him because on top of the coaching work done within the county the environment was right for developing young hurlers.

“I remember talking to people in Waterford about 10 years ago and making the comment that you know, you’re going to have some very good hurlers coming through in the future and I was talking about nine, 10 and 11-year olds. They said, ‘how can you tell that?’ and I said because they’ll be reared on success, watching Waterford win things and that will rub off on them. I

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“We always have heroes. I had in the 1950s and’60s and that has happened in Waterford.”

Decades earlier, McCarthy’s success with Clare built a team that went on to be influential off the field as well.

"A lot of players in those teams between 1976 and '78 went on to become very good coaches and put a lot back into the game: Seán Stack and of course Ger Loughnane, Seán Hehir and Colm Honan."

He believes that the rise of Clare and Waterford in recent years points up a difference between his playing days when the traditional Munster powers of Cork and Tipperary held sway and the present.

“Barriers have also broken down over the years. Players see a lot of each other. They meet more often and go to college together so there’s not the same hostility between teams any more.

“I remember in my time if a player from another county was walking down the street in Cork you wouldn’t give him the time of day. You didn’t want to let your guard down.”

He says that Sunday is too close to call but doesn’t see any point in either county holding back in advance of their championship meeting five weeks later.

“It’s a tough one from a manager’s point of view with them playing again in a few weeks in the championship. There’s a lot at stake and it could go either way – I’m not just sitting on the fence! It could – but I think it could be very congested and maybe not an awful lot of goals.”

In 2004 he had a more acute version of the same dilemma. Waterford lost the league final against Galway but bounced back a week later to trounce Clare in the championship.

“Genuinely we went out to win that game,” he says of the league final. “People did come up and say, ‘Justin, you were only looking at Clare,’ but that wasn’t true. The venue, Limerick, didn’t suit us and we never got going. But a week later we beat Clare in Thurles by 19 points.

“I don’t think though that either team on Sunday can afford to drop their guard.”