Derek McGrath and Darragh O’Sullivan are among the leading contenders to succeed Davy Fitzgerald as Waterford senior hurling manager.
He quit after a poor showing in the first edition of the Munster round robin series the following year and was replaced by Paraic Fanning, who only lasted a year after another Championship wipeout. However, when managing Waterford, McGrath spoke of how difficult he found it to combine it with his job as a secondary school teacher and took periods of parental leave as he “wasn't performing well in the classroom”, with his inter-county role eating up some 60 hours a week.
In more recent years, they have translated that to the province having won four titles since 2018, including three-in-a-row from 2021-23, while they became the first Waterford club to claim an All-Ireland title in 2022 with a sensational win over Ballyhale Shamrocks in the final. However, with the under-20s having lost each of their four games in this year’s Munster Championship, it may be a hard sell, even if it is acknowledged locally that the quality of underage talent in the county has fallen off in recent years.