"A really difficult day" - Liam Cahill | WLRFM.com

Waterford Boss Liam Cahill said it was a difficult day in Dublin with his Waterford side failing to reel in a dominant Limerick side in the All-Ireland final.

Registering 19 points on the scoreboard was not enough to prevent John Kiely's Shannonsiders from claiming a second All-Ireland in three years.

Man of the match and all but confirmed hurler of the year Gearoid Hegarty had a near-flawless performance in attack, putting the ball over the ball on seven occasions - all from play. Waterford Austin Gleeson his nearest rival in the scoring, with three of the Mt Sion man's scores coming from play.

Credit ©INPHO/Tommy Dickson

Pressure

Cahill was expectedly disappointed with the result saying "a really difficult day, but Limerick were really good for the victory to be fair to them - a really powerful outfit. We picked a bad day to lose our consistency and our choices and decisions on the ball, but I think that was mainly down to the pressure we were playing under from the way Limerick were coming at us"

That pressure was best exemplified by Limericks Tom Morrissey and Gearoid Hegarty as the predatory wing forwards combined effortlessly to repeatedly put a hurt on Waterford. Three points in six minutes for Hegarty as the second half resumed in typical Limerick smash and grab fashion, was enough to put some daylight between them and the Deise, where the gap had been reduced to three points at half time. Captain Declan Hannon must be commended for the supply of ball to his wing forwards - ensuring they had the platform they needed to perform on the big stage.

Credit ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy

Cahill commended Limerick's performance saying "Massive congratulations to Limerick. They're a really good team and I think they would have been a real test for any opposition today. They bring such a game plan and they've so many options and so many fellas you've to keep an eye on - they're creating this overlap and when you're concentrating on them so much it's hard to implement your own game plan"

Ruthless

Having just missed out on Munster glory when the sides last met, Waterford will have gone into this game aiming to narrow the four-point deficit and reel in the Limerick powerhouses in the showpiece game. That turned out to be wishful thinking as the power, athleticism and sheer ruthlessness of Limerick proved too much. That ruthlessness often manifests itself in doing whatever needs to be done in order to get the job done. On several occasions, they resorted to cynical fouls to prevent a Waterford attack from developing. Fergal Horgan put his hand in his pocket on five occasions, but that could well have been ten times all things being considered. Despite a deserved man of the match performance, Gearoid Hegarty put in five fouls with none of the punished by Horgan.

Cahill felt that some of the defending was owed more of a penalisation - "Yeah, there was a couple of incident there you'd feel would warrant a little more stricter punishment for a couple of times we did break the tackle and get through, but I thought Fergal Horgan had a really good game today to be fair to him. I thought he refereed the match really really well and we have no complaints in that department"

Credit ©INPHO/Tommy Dickson

Shortly after the result had sunk in, with a wry grin and laugh, Cahill thought that a black card or sin bin should be an option "Well I'd say today, definitely. We toyed with the idea of the black card and the sin bin towards the early part of the year and I maybe wasn't in favour of it, but I think now, maybe not just today but I see throughout the course of our championship its something that has to be looked at"

The Limerick manager John Kiely said that "we had high expectations of ourselves of how hard we wanted to work on the day, and I think the players delivered on that. They worked really hard from start to finish right across the pitch. Going forward I think we showed fantastic teamwork with our lines of running and our support work. The very first play, that first 40 seconds was a very defining moment in the game - we took it forward, there was a huge resistance put up against us and we still managed to get the score"

Credit ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Loss

The face of the game changed for the Deise in the 21st minute when Tadgh De Burca left the field with what looked like an ACL injury. Despite not being able to continue the match, De Burca showed his true grit and determination by hobbling quickly off the field under his own steam to allow the game to resume promptly. On paper, a huge loss to the team De Burca had been powerful in the opening stanzas, but his replacement Iarlaith Daly filled his boots with aplomb.

Cahill wasn't sure where De Burca stands having left the field "My initial reaction would be that it's not good. For a man that has tried unbelievably hard to get back into the shape he was in and hurling the way he was - having already had a cruciate knee ligament already last year, I hope tomorrow that when we get in behind it that it's not too drastic, but I have my concerns"

Missing out on two goal chances proved costly for Waterford with Jack Fagan and Stephen Bennet both through on goal in the first half.

"We needed to score two to three goals today, we said that. We created one or two half-chances in the second half as well playing poorly, and playing maybe without real energy. We needed those goals to go in. I think Jacks flashed across the face of the goal and Stephens - I think pressure came on and it was blocked. We needed to be in 2-24 or 2-25 territory today to counteract whatever points Limerick were going to put on the board. The scoreboard told the story at the end when we hadn't them two or three goals to put beside the 19 or 20 points we were going to be in trouble."

Next

Having fallen short against Galway in 2017 under Derek McGrath, Waterford failed to register a win in the championship for two years, with that duck being broke this year against Cork in Semple Stadium. Deise selector Stephen Frampton was happy to see the positive effect this year's campaign has had on the people of Waterford, "The goodwill and the messages that we've all been getting has been absolutely fantastic. Times are tough for a lot of people and I think we've given a lot of people a lift, but we wanted to get over that final hurdle today. We've come a long way, we've put pride back in the jersey in Waterford I think. There might be plenty of people who'll say otherwise and we're very very disappointed today, but it's something to build on for next year"