Waterford football manager and Munster selector Paul Shankey at the launch of the Allianz Interprovincial series at Croke Park. Photo: Sportsfile
Waterford football manager Paul Shankey is upbeat about the county’s future and feels the game can comfortably co-exist with hurling in the county.
Shankey, an All-Ireland winner with Meath in 1999 who has been based in Waterford for years, has cited the example of Offaly as to how such a relationship between the codes in a county of their size can develop.
“It’s a great county because every club is a dual club,” said Shankey of Waterford. “They’ll play football and hurling, every single one of them, so there are a lot of good footballers there. It’s just a case of them wanting to play hurling for Waterford and that’s great, we support all the codes there. You’re just trying to get that environment with football where lads are thinking, ‘there’s an opportunity here to push things on’.”
Shankey guided Waterford to championship wins over Tipperary in Munster and Longford in the Tailteann Cup in 2024 and hopes to build on that now.
“We struggled at the start of last year just getting the numbers out but towards the end we improved dramatically. We’re just trying to keep the core and add more to it.”
Shankey has noted the impressive performances in the Waterford championship of county hurlers Dessie Hutchinson and Mark Fitzgerald for Gaultier against Balliancourty, who had Conor Prunty in last weekend’s semi-final.
“Anyone who is good at one sport is good at most sports. They can’t all be hurlers,” he said. “The lads who are hurlers, we support them and go to all their games. Obviously, there are lads who have no interest in the football but we’re slowly changing that.”
Shankey is involved with the Munster team in this weekend’s interprovincial series and is looking forward to what the new playing enhancements throw up to see if they can bring back the “inside forward.” But he is sure the game is nowhere near as bad as some have portrayed it.
“People like to be negative. The world now is, ‘oh that’s not good enough.”
“Gaelic football is a great game. There were lots of bad games in my time as well. There’s lots of bad games in every period of time. It’s gone very structured and has lost that element of risk maybe, the element of teams going for it.
“Coaches and managers and players are playing what’s in front of them, trying to enhance their chances of being competitive. So I can’t blame anyone for that,. But it does need a couple of tweaks just to make it more exciting, bring back the inside forward.”
