With a new deal to stay in Waterford for twelve more months, Liam Cahill has given a vote of confidence for his squad that more is to come. The Tipp native has committed to the Deise for the next campaign, with the option of another year after that again.
Guiding Waterford to Croke Park for the showpiece final in his first year in charge, the tone was set for a new era in Waterford hurling - with Cahill and his coach Mikey Bevans each placing a hand firmly on the tiller.
The second year in charge saw Championship begin for the Deise with the least desirable of starts. The draw landed them into the long route to Munster glory, starting in the quarter-finals. An opening day loss to Clare (1-22, 0-21) was not the start the manager had envisioned and now an Al-Ireland qualifier campaign beckoned. With the dust settled on that period, Cahill is left to find the positives in that joruney which may not have been evident at the time.
I think the biggest takeaway for me is the resilience of these Waterford players to recover after defeat to Clare in the first round of the championship. A team of lesser quality and lesser resilience would have gone away.
I'm really proud of the way they collectively came together and made a commitment to one another to hang in there and, you know, fight - fight to get themselves back into the latter stages of the championship.
Next year, the round-robin format looks set to make a return. The hectic week-in week-out format of straight knockout could become a thing of the past, along with the dour mood brought around by games in covid. With the extended format a possibility, managers will rely ever more on their full panel to claim success.
With the returning Tadhg de Búrca and Pauric Mahony, the Waterford panel starts to look a lot healthier than this year of depleted resources. Cahill is obviously excited by the prospect of two returning stars but notes that the talent emerging across the county is a real cause for optimism.
We've unearthed a lot of new young players that came onto the panel and our subs and our impact off the bench in all our matches this year has been really good.
That's a really good sign when you can look back over your shoulder as a manager and know that from 16 up to 26; them ten players - you can trust them to come in and do a job maybe better than the fella or as good as the fellow that's coming off. So, you know, they're big takeaways for me.
The one major spectre that looms over the whole intercounty hurling landscape is one that wears a green jersey. John Kiely and his Limerick men could well be the four-in-a-row champions, but they have settled for three in four years and a reminder of what dominance can look like if unchecked.
The absolute blowout that was witnessed in Croke Park this year provided great entertainment for all but the Cork fans, who had to watch through their fingers as the Treaty ran rampant in Dublin putting on a scoring display for the ages. Not too long ago, Waterford were on the receiving end of that treatment, but having played them twice in the latter stages of the Championship in two years, Cahill says that the gap is coming down even if the scoreboard doesn't seem to show it.
The scoreboard might have stayed the same in relation to the Limerick match. You know, it's still 11 points. It was 11 points last December.
But I think ultimately, there was a little bit of progression again this year and you know, in intercounty hurling if we can find another little bit of progression again in 2022, we put ourselves nearer to getting back into the last two of the Championship and ultimately that's the goal and trying to win silverware along the way.
The Waterford manager sat down with Nigel Kelly and Tomás McCarthy this week for an WLR Sport Exclusive interview, you can see it in full here.
