Waterford footballers savour first championship win in seven years

Wexford 1-18 Waterford 3-14

That was annoying, certainly, but it wouldn’t have struck him at the time as the sort of regret that would take root and flourish given the county had achieved promotion from Division 4 the year before and beaten Clare in Munster a handful of weeks later.

It may be relative, but these were the good times for a Déise footballer and, with Prendergast only two seasons into his stint with them, he had no personal history of the endless crushing defeats and years of oppression.