I fancied Waterford. Yet the longer the week goes on...

Selecting the man of-the match on The Sunday Game last weekend was an easy enough decision, to a point, a straight shoot-out between Pauric Mahony and Austin Gleeson. We went for Mahony but nobody would have argued if we had gone for Austin. Richie Hogan also made the shortlist but if you were to stretch that long-list even further, the results would have shown how off the pace Kilkenny really were.

Five of the top six performers were from Waterford. I’d be confident enough saying that eight of the top 10 were in white jerseys. Pádraig Walsh was the only guy you could put into that category with Hogan because so many of the Kilkenny fellas didn’t show up. A few of their big guns like Michael Fennelly, TJ Reid and Conor Fogarty hardly got a puck. Most of that was down to how well Waterford played, and how much they put Kilkenny on the backfoot.

And yet, and yet, they still didn’t lose.