Waterford manager Davy Fitzgerald enjoyed the way his side dug in against Dublin last weekend. Despite losing Jack Fagan and Stephen Bennett to red cards, they won the last sixteen minutes by six points to five.
"I learned that they have serious character. To play with fourteen men for 25 minutes and then thirteen men for seventeen minutes, delighted with the character. Did we make mistakes? I kinda told you that was going to happen. Could we have been out of sight early? Yeah. We gave them a foothold, we made a few mistakes. I'd like to think that one or two of the goals won't happen again. They were our errors rather than good goals. I liked the character, I really did. Maybe we needed that a small bit you know."
The Waterford defenders had ten shots from distance last Sunday. "I think ye've been very predictable for the last few years, it's run everything in and try and score from inside. What I actually want is a mix. I think we could have carried the ball a fraction more and shot it. Calum Lyons was unlucky, could have walked off with three or four points. Shane McNulty could have walked off with a few. Shane could have got on the end of a ball from Carthach Daly and would have been down on goal. We're not going to shoot everything from distance, trust me. We created four or five goal opportunities the last day, which is pretty decent. We will do a bit of both. There is a process to getting better at this. As I said to you, there will be a small bit of pain before we see the end result. We got off 40 shots in the game. We want to make sure that we get 35 to 40 shots a game and execute 25 to 30. That's where I hope to get us eventually. If we do, we'll be right there in a lot of games. Any of the good hurling teams you watch, if they get 35 to 40 shots, they're seriously attractive to watch and I would hope that's the way we'll be."
Davy Fitzgerald was speaking at the launch of the George Corbett Skoda Big Match. Listen back to the full interview from Friday's Lár Na Páirce.
