Waterford put league behind them
However, while nobody would downplay the seriousness of the challenge confronting Justin McCarthy's team in their eagerly awaited Munster opener, in another two months we could be looking at a very different scenario.
Inevitably, comparisons are being made with last year's League decider, when Tipperary failed narrowly to Kilkenny in a thriller - and lost Philip Maher for the season through a serious knee injury. A week later, Clare demolished Tipperary and were looking good until they lost to Cork in much the same fashion.
On the Waterford side, nobody is denying that their display at the Gaelic Grounds was poor and that it will demand a huge improvement to avoid defeat. "Clare will definitely be favourites, but against that, you can't compare games, with different teams having thrown up different results in the League,'' comments selector Shamie Hannon. "But, I know for a fact that we'll have to 'up' a few gears from Sunday to be able to stay with Clare. You can be sure that they will throw everything at us and go for one mighty effort. The vibes we're getting back is that the training is going well, everyone is hyped up and they're going to give it a big lash this year. Anthony Daly would be in the mould of Ger Loughnane and he will want to stamp his mark on the team.''
Hannon insists that 'the real' Waterford isn't the outfit that stuttered through Sunday's game, saying that nobody could have anticipated that so many of their good players would have an 'off' day. "You could name half the team that didn't perform up to the standard they are able to. I couldn't say that we detected any bad vibes. But, looking back, we were caught in a catch 22 situation - where we had a kind of an eye on the championship all the time while still wanting to win a national title. I suppose, we 'fell' between the two of them.''
In mitigation, he said Galway were in a 'privileged position' because they won't be involved in the championship in the next month. "It meant that they could really throw everything at the league, knowing that whatever happened, they'd have a cut at the championship. They were one of the few teams that could go 'hell for leather' for the league."
While Waterford gained 'few positives' from the game, he felt it was still noteworthy that they lost by just five points after squandering 16 wides (against Galway's eight) and failing to convert a few easy frees. Nevertheless, nothing could take from the fact that it was a poor display. "All in all, it was very disappointing that we were so near and yet so far away from winning a national title which would have boosted up the team a good bit for next week,'' he added.
One of the positives was that they managed to avoid any major injury, although it was felt that midfielder Dave Bennett, who had a marvellous opening half-hour, went into the game with a leg injury which may have come against him in the second half.
According to Hannon, the players recovered their spirits after the game, saying Justin McCarthy did "a good job in trying to pick them up".
"After the meal they were in good shape. The heads were right,'' he said. "Okay we didn't perform, we left it after us. That's the bottom line. As I said, we squandered so many good chances and that's the difference between winning and losing.
"The league is done and dusted. All we can do now is to move on, put our best foot forward and try and square up next week. Hopefully, all the things that went wrong will come right. Hopefully, they will be man enough to come back and take the bull by the horns. And, maybe this time we'll get a bit of luck. We didn't have much on Sunday!''
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