By John Harrington

When Derek McGrath walked into the media room after today's drawn All-Ireland Semi-Final against Kilkenny, the first question was an obvious one.

Should we congratulate him and his players for a brilliant performance, or commiserate that they had conspired to surrender what looked like a winning position?

“I don't know, you decide,” shrugged the Waterford manager who unsurprisingly looked drained after nerve-shredding contest that ended with such high drama.

“It's a mixture of emotions, definitely. You've answered the question, I suppose. I think we should congratulate our lads for the nature of the performance. It was heroic. It was epic. They gave everything inside their soul.

“Anytime you have that, there's a level of congratulations that is merited, if you like. There's obviously a small tinge of disappointment based on being in the position to win the game, if you like. So I don't believe in hiding disappointment for the sake of psychological advantages that will be gained the next day.

“I think we're disappointed we didn't close it out. But we're not portraying any bad body language by doing that in my opinion. We feel we've a different Waterford team that's able to recover.

“The general consensus will be that Kilkenny don't lose replays, that you don't get a second chance, et cetera. So we'll be coming in as much under the radar as we did today.”

History tells us that if you allow Kilkenny to snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat, you pay for your inability to nail that coffin shut.

Under Brian Cody, they’ve won four of the five championship replays they’ve contested. The only one they lost was in 2013 against Dublin, a year in which they were some way shy of their usual very high standards.

You usually only get one chance to skin the Cats, and McGrath admitted he felt the circumstances were ideal to do so today and may not be so easy to replicate for the replay.

“I just felt it was an ideal scenario in terms of the preparation,” he said. “I felt the 10-point victory almost kind of was dismissed as a non-event if you like. A, I thought that was harsh on Wexford, and, B, I thought it was an ideal scenario for us coming into the game. It was Croke Park and we could have right cut, as such, but yet be clever as well at times. I thought everything was set up and I thought our preparation was excellent.

“We came up to Carton House yesterday and just got together as a group. Even though in 2008 Waterford went up the night before it was labelled as a mistake. We just felt the young group, myself included, on Saturday when you're together you're less nervous. You're kind of together as a group and I thought that worked well. We put everything into it.

“So, yeah, I think that's the probably hard part to take. To replicate that and simulate that again.”

Waterford were the team that set the tone of the contest for most of the match. They tore into Kilkenny like wild dogs at every contest for the ball, and knocked them out of their stride by pushing up on their defenders high up the field.

Kilkenny defenders were constantly having to clear the ball under immense pressure, so their deliveries were often of the hit and hope variety.

But in the final ten minutes of the match Waterford surrendered the initiative by reverting to a sweeper system. Now the Kilkenny defenders outnumbered the Waterford defenders so were able to win the ball and clear it much more easily.

They built pressure steadily and eventually the Waterford defence cracked when Walter Walsh scored the goal that dragged Kilkenny back from the precipice.

Were you to be harsh, you would say that Waterford had no-one to blame but themselves. At the very least, it was a bad mistake to stand off Kilkenny in the manner they did when pressurising them had worked so well up to that point.

“That's a fair point, a fair point,” conceded McGrath. “We stepped up, but we came back, I suppose. That's what we were trying to do all day and I think there was a little bit of fatigue crept in there with 63 or 64 minutes gone, I thought. The fatigue was creeping in with key players. So you're balancing key players being fatigued against that key part of the game where you need those fellas.

“And I think that was the kind of conundrum for us on the line. We had a few really key players that were firing and were doing well. But they were tiring. And I think that was the reason we didn't make the sub between the 66th and 75th minute. I'm just thinking out loud as I normally do.

“That's probably, I'm just looking back on it now in my own mind here. Yeah, I think there came a stage where we were clinging to it that you could probably label the fact that we retreated too early, if you like. But very hard to control the match day.

“Especially when you're on the cusp of 60 years of hurt being evaporated.”

Waterford might have erred tactically in the closing minutes, but you have to give massive credit to Kilkenny for the way they found a way to draw the match despite being out-hurled for most of it.

It looked like the game was going away from them when Waterford moved five points ahead in the second-half at a time when they seemed to win ever 50-50 contest for the ball. Even at that juncture though Brian Cody never feared his team’s number was up.

“You could start to feel like that if you wanted to but I mean five points in a game of hurling is very, very little really,” said the Kilkenny manager after the match.

“The goal would make serious inroads into that and it did but the points were coming so fast and furious for both sides really. As the game was nearing completion, a goal was obviously going to be significant and it was significant.

“But they were excellent today, they really put it up to us in a massive way. We fought out to the bitter end and we'll certainly go again the next day.”

Cody could afford to sound magnanimous considering how his team had snatched a draw from the jaws of defeat. But he was being nothing less than genuine when he praised the effort of both teams and admitted he was looking forward to the replay as much as anyone else.

“It was a serious game that's for sure,” said Cody. “Obviously we were chasing the game, you could say for certain and we never really got ahead in the game or anything like that.

“Probably the first time we weren't behind was at the final whistle really. So it took huge effort to stay in touch in the game, to fight it out and to grind it out.

“As the game went on, it was becoming a bit apparent that we needed a goal to really strike a blow because whenever we got within a point or two points or three points, they picked off some terrific long range points and really just kept that breathing space there.

“But we did get the goal, a very, very good goal. They responded with a point again and I think we got a great point to level it. We almost had another point then to win the game.

“It’s a serious game to look forward to again.”

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