There is plenty of upheaval on the managerial circuit this week, but few will be as honest and as forthcoming as Benji Whelan when it comes to reflecting on his reasons for leaving the inter-county game and his role as Waterford senior football manager.
"I look back with reflection on where the team had been three years ago and where they are now," he says.
"And I didn't feel I had made significant enough improvement to warrant looking for another year."
The Kilmacthomas man looks back on the last two years with some frustration although he and his backroom team, which included the likes of Gerry Fitzpatrick, Joe Hagan (who led Starlights to Wexford success in 2017), Ger Walsh and Kieran Hallihan, did all they could to raise the bar.
"We tried to be a driving force and saw a few areas where we could improve," he states.
"But it’s not always easy to process and you need a few things to fall your way.
"Initially, we found it difficult to get players to commit and we had a very small panel.
"We tried to instil a professional approach and that meant weeding out a few – guys who were happy enough to come along for the ride.
"We knuckled down quickly and set about improvement and we pushed them beyond where they would normally go to figure out who really wanted to be with us.
"Lots of that work went on, and as time went by we were getting lads used to that heavier workload and also expecting them to do stuff on their own. That whittled the numbers down even more, but the lads we had that stayed with it responded so well and applied themselves brilliantly."
Over the two years, Whelan made contact with around 100 players and, though 2020 was stop-start all the way through, he is proud of the team’s application.
Once the green light was given for GAA activity to resume, they trained three times a week.
Whelan recalls looking back on the training block ahead of the resumption of the league and discovering that out of 21 sessions with 35 players at each, only six absences were noted.
There remains disappointment, however, that Waterford didn’t give Limerick a proper rattle at home in the Munster quarter-final, losing on a 2-14 to 0-09 scoreline.
"That feeds into the disappointment," Whelan admits.
"We played them in Rathkeale two years ago and I had that most recent game pitched where we might have reached a certain level and troubled them, but they have moved on. They have clearly worked individually on their conditioning and, since the return from Covid, they seem to have taken a leaf out of the Limerick hurlers book in terms of their workload.
"While our lads gave everything, it’s sometime too hard a sell here for other players we would like to have with us. Many of them are serious club hurlers and it doesn’t always sit with them that you essentially have to go off your own bat, go away and improve individually in every aspect of your life, to become an inter-county player.
"Another issue is we didn’t have enough games played before we took on Limerick. The final league game with Antrim was up in the air and we were undercooked.
"It was hard for us to arrange challenge games and even though we had travelled to play teams a year previously, it seemed the onus was still on us to travel again next time around.
"We found ourselves playing college teams, but I think we have to push on now and demand to play Division 3 teams and sides that are better than us. Maybe get five or six of those games in before the next league campaign starts."
Whelan praised his players and backroom for giving their time to the cause for the past two years.
"The underlying thing for me was that we were either in it 100% or not at all.
"There was never a question of my backroom not being there for a meeting, session or phone call and I had to have that approach too – especially when I could see the application, energy and sweat dropping off my players.
"We tried to plan and resourcing everything. My wife could be talking to me at home and I would be kicking a football in my head. There were a lot of late nights and early mornings but that’s what you take on.
"At this stage I have to look out for my family’s needs first.
"I also feel that from Jim Power Cup level upwards (Munster Under-14 tournament) we need to be identifying lads who want to be associated with Waterford football.
"Keep them in the system, make it enjoyable to be involved and then at 17 have identified for them to go away and turn themselves into inter-county footballers – alongside and apart from the training they will receive.
"So far that hope has been falling on deaf ears, but if we can get a fresh approach at that level it would be great. There’s a strategic review underway at board level and I would have huge confidence they will look at this aspect."
