Justin says the 17 wides to blame

THIS was not how it was supposed to end. Waterford, the boys of the summer of 2002, had shaken off their Munster championship malaise, beaten, the All-Ireland champions in the process and had been branded with an air of invincibility by Justin McCarthy.

An All-Ireland final seemed the next pre-ordained step. But maybe it was a leap too far.

“The plain fact is that we didn’t do ourselves justice in that second half,” McCarthy said in the aftermath. “In the final analysis they were our undoing,” he reflected on the 17 wides, 10n of which were registered in the second half. He refused to accept that Alan Markham’s goal just before the interval was a major turning point, and there was no question of them going in at the break in despondent mood.