Liam Cahill: 'We hurled like a car on dirty petrol'

Waterford manager Liam Cahill during the Munster championship clash with Cork on Sunday in Walsh Park.

Waterford boss Liam Cahill said his side's performance was unacceptable as he lost his unbeaten record at Walsh Park with Sunday's Munster Championship defeat to Cork.

"We weren't good enough, simple as. We hurled like a car on dirty petrol, just chugging along. It is just not acceptable. It is not acceptable to the big Waterford support that came here. It's terribly, bitterly disappointing."

He admitted his charges were completely outfought by their opponents who had lost their previous two outings in this campaign. "Cork bullied us around the field today. That's something we committed to, in that we wouldn't allow any team to bully us. From the throw in, we had players that were introduced to proper Munster championship hurling. That's what it was going to be here. When the questions were really asked around the cut and thrust of championship hurling, we were more or less looking to the officials and out to the line rather than to what was going on between the lines."

Where did it go wrong? 

"We didn't hurl together as a team. We didn't commit to what we said we would commit to when we came out. We had the advantage at times where we kicked on by four points and looked like we were going about our business properly and then we just decided to down tools and let Cork back into the game. We've a lot of work to do to get our heads around this to go to Ennis in seven days' time. It's going to take a lot of soul searching and a lot of honesty to come out here over the next seven days - or else we'll have a good long summer to think about it."

He is looking to hear from the players over the next week ahead of their make or break trip to Clare. 

"I haven't spoken to them yet but we'll go back for a bit of recovery and I'm really interested to get their views now. A lot of things that happened today happened between the lines. It takes massive leaders to sort them out. Our decisions were poor again, you always hear me talking about that. Delaying the ball around with runs being made by inside forwards, not setting up for our puckouts quickly. Looking in at a different team really versus the team that I know is there."

Cahill said he didn't see the off the ball incident which led to the dismissal of Austin Gleeson on a second yellow card. "That's not a cop out. I genuinely didn't. I was turning back to bring in Shane Bennett at the time. I don't know what happened. I can't comment if I didn't see it. If it was warranted, it's bitterly, bitterly disappointing. We'll do our best to address it and fix it again. It just seems to be falling on deaf ears at this stage."