FINALLY DEREK MCGRATH and his Waterford team cracked the code to beat Kilkenny tonight.
A 2015 All-Ireland semi-final defeat and a loss at the same stage after a replay last year had been difficult to absorb.
After eventually seeing off Cats with an extra-time success tonight in Thurles, it was easy to understand why the Deise manager was intent on enjoying this.
“We’ll go out tonight. We’re going to have a couple of drinks tonight.
“We’re two weeks away from the match, so we’ll have a few pints tonight. We’re going to enjoy it, I think the lads deserve it.
“We’ll focus on the Munster Final tomorrow. We’ll go out and celebrate this without going cracked.
“You go to two league finals, you go to two Munster finals, you don’t turn up for last year’s Munster final, you go to two epic All-Ireland semi-finals last year, so the pressure was building on all of us, the management and players to go the next step.
“We’re in the quarter-final now but I suppose we’re advanced in terms of the opposition we’ve beaten. The challenge for us it to just take it on again.
“That’s the reality. Wexford or the losers of Cork or Clare, tomorrow, there’s nothing easy ahead of us. We’d be hoping there’ll be some confidence gained from what happened today.”
And yet Waterford nearly blew a golden opportunity to triumph here.
They squandered the chance to seal the deal in normal time as Kilkenny wiped out their eight-point advantage.
Plenty to mull over for the Waterford camp then as the match went to extra-time.
“Initially we just had to gather our own thoughts as a management. Pauric (Mahony) couldn’t walk but we were toying with the idea of bringing him back in for the actual free in the last minute (of normal time) just in terms of his overall radar.
“So I think there was initial disappointment from management in terms of Pauric’s injury. We were kind of saying, ‘Jesus, this is going to come back to haunt us’, to be perfectly honest.
“That was the initial thought. Then we needed to lift ourselves, body language and the overall approach. It was a head down approach.
“The pleasing thing from our point of view is the likes of Maurice (Shanahan), Brian O’Halloran, Tommy Ryan (played well).
“We spoke about the strength of our panel and that this would be the biggest test of that.
“Any modicum of doubt at the end of normal time was put to bed by the performance of the subs in extra-time which is really pleasing.
“I think we were good value for the win overall, albeit we did it the hard way.”
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