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1st September 2017
03:19pm BST

"Whelan is going to be in one corner anyway, that's for certain," Hayes said on The GAA Hour. "The other corner forward is up between Cathal Mannion, Jason Flynn and Niall Burke. "Noel Connors, I've marked him myself. He's a lovely fella, he's tight, he's aggressive, he's not dirty. You won't get much off him. I feel for the person that's going to be going in on him."Many of Waterford's other defenders share this mentality with Connors, whereby the ball is almost a second priority to them. They will keep a close eye on their man and instead of winning the ball cleanly, will try and break it down for the sweeping Tadhg De Búrca to collect. Conal Keaney has marked their full back Barry Coughlan on occasion in the past, and he recalls Coughlan focusing more on him, than on the ball.
"What Coughlan's really good at is he never plays the ball, he nearly always plays the man," Keaney said. "When that high ball is coming in, he's absolutely all over you. "He knows to be on your catching hand all the time. "It is an option for Galway to go route-one, but then again, the ball has to be right, because they're going to have De Búrca there. So all Coughlan has to do is try to stop a lad from catching it, because once it gets to ground, it's nearly always Waterford."Nothing will come easy for the Galway lads on Sunday, particularly for the man who picks up Noel Connors. The 27-year-old burst on to the Déise scene in 2009, as a nineteen-year-old, and when you compare his frame then to now, he's made some progress. His chest was nowhere near as bulging then, as it is now.
The size of that upper body now.
And the size of them legs.
You can listen to the chat on Connors, Coughlan and much more tactical analysis ahead of Sunday's All-Ireland final from Monday's GAA Hour Hurling Show.
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