McGrath still upbeat despite defeat by Tipp

WATERFORD star Ken McGrath insists he and his teammates won’t be feeling sorry for themselves after the Munster semi-final loss to Tipperary.

McGrath admitted the side’s injury crisis, and the lack of a first round game, weakened the Waterford challenge against the Premier County.

Now, it will be a matter of them regrouping — and of getting all their players back in action.

“When we can manage that, who knows what will happen?” he said.

“We’ll have to pick it up. There’s no point in feeling sorry for ourselves.”

“We were hurling okay in the first half, but we were missing crazy scores — scores you can’t miss at this level if you want to win the Munster championship.

“We had 11 wides, which was unacceptable.”

“We turned it around in the second half and hurled well for about 25 minutes. We should have got two or three goals and it would have been a different story. When we got it back to two points in the second half I thought the game was there for the taking. But we weren’t able to go forward from there. We missed a goal, they went down the field and Lar Corbett got a lovely goal. The game was over really. There was no coming back from that.’’

Selector Shamie Hannon agreed with McGrath’s assertion that Waterford suffered from not having had a first-round game.

“It was basically a matter of us missing the chances we got and in particular Paul Flynn missed chances from placed balls that he would take on another day,’’ he said. “If we had taken all the chances we got, the margin would have been much closer.

“But in saying that, Tipp had the advantage of that extra match, against Limerick.We were slow in getting into the pace of the game and at times we were outfoxed and outsmarted. They were that bit sharper.’’

He accepted they had taken a gamble bringing John Mullane on (withdrawing Dave Bennett just after he had hit a great score from his own 70-yard line). “He needs a lot of games. His hand is not right but he was game to go on and we let him in,’’ he explained.

Hannon feels that they can take “a lot of positives” from the game, adding: “Justin (McCarthy) asked for a huge effort and he got that response. We did very well to come back to within two points before Tipperary got their third goal. That was a killer. Naturally, we would have preferred to go through the direct route, but we are very glad of the second chance.”