John Kiely, the Waterford football manager, excelled in the RTÉ quiz ‘Where In The World?’ in his former life.
Well last weekend he headed home from Marckeviz Park consigned by Sligo to another year in Division 4, not surprisingly perhaps when one weighs up the various obstacles put in their way (a litany of injuries, unforeseen withdrawals and the annual frustration of not being able to field the best 15 footballers in the county – a situation the county board surely needs to call to rights in 2010).
Inconceivably, their downfall was that shock St Patrick’s weekend loss in London, though Kiely later put the background to that defeat (the burial of two of his players’ father that week) in due perspective.
I’m told there’s a book in the making about Waterford’s annual attempt to break through – a ‘how football’s other halves live’ if you like. Or as Brian Corcoran might say, in ‘their world’. A place that, for now, is once again so near yet so far.
