GAA tips: Catch John Mullane’s best bets for Limerick v Waterford

* All prices are bang up to date with our snazzy widgets, while odds in copy are accurate at time of publishing but subject to change.

Waterford To Win

We’ve got two mouthwatering hurling semi-finals to look forward to this weekend and Limerick v Waterford opens the show. Out of the four teams left in the All-Ireland Championship, these counties are the two best sides remaining and is a rerun of last year’s All-Ireland and Munster finals.

This will be Waterford’s fourth game in as many weeks, and the question going around is ‘how tired will they be?’ But, these lads are in great condition, they are very young and I don’t believe the number of extra games they’ve played will have much of an effect on them. If The Déise are to fall to Limerick this weekend, I don’t believe the pile up of games will be the reason.

Waterford won’t have done much training in the last month either, it will probably have been a case of play the match and then do recovery work. But, this is shaping up to be a titanic battle and I can see the sides going at it hammer-and-tongs right from the first whistle.

Saturday 5pm – Limerick v Waterford
RTÉ 2 / Sky Sports Arena

The first 15 or so minutes will be crucial. However, If Waterford get out to a good start – like they did against Tipperary and Galway – I’d give them every chance of taking down John Kiely’s men.

Limerick comprehensively won their All-Ireland meeting with Waterford, but nine months down the road from that match, The Déise are in a much better place. They are certainly much better equipped now to take down The Treaty County than they were back in December. I believe Liam Cahill’s outfit are in with a great shout of causing an upset on Saturday.

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Stephen Bennett To Score The First Goal

I fancy we’ll see a few goals in this match. The goal opportunities presented themselves to Waterford in last year’s All-Ireland decider, but they just couldn’t take them against Limerick. But, if The Déise get similar chances on Saturday, I reckon they will take them to raise some green flags at Croke Park.

Waterford have shown in their last few games that they can create goal chances now, and I believe they can continue that trend in this semi-final. Likewise, Limerick won’t pass up the opportunity to score a goal, but they are usually more of a point-scoring oriented outfit. They will probably attempt to hit the 30+ mark on just white flags alone here.

I’m going to go with a man wearing white and blue to land the opening goal though. This guy scored a penalty last week against Tipperary, and I reckon Stephen Bennett is one the play to back in this one.