It feels utterly churlish to be asking Michael Ryan about his future as Waterford manager after an evening of such absolute hurling. But someone has to pop the cold hard question, even in the burning aftermath of their raging assault on the All-Ireland champions.
“Absolutely I’ll be sticking around,” said Ryan, who has however come to the end of his two-year term. “No question about it. It’s up to the county board, but my name is in the hat. As will the rest of the management. Having said that there’s a lot of work to be done. We’re not there yet. But we’ll take great heart from this performance, to drive forward. Maybe we didn’t quite reach 100 per cent here. But we came very close to it.”
If Waterford didn’t meet a Kilkenny team at their most doggedly ruthless then they would surely have got over the winning line.
"And yes we are absolutely gutted," added Ryan. "Because we believed we were going to win, had prepared very well. We've great belief, with a lot of youngsters. We knew there was no point firing high ball down on top of Kilkenny. We would simply use the ball well, and at times we did.
Deciding factor
"Maybe the deciding factor was those early minutes of extra time, when they showed the composure, got a couple of great scores, and we left to play catch up again. But a tremendous game. Tribute to Kilkenny. Tribute to Waterford. But I'm so, so proud of those lads in the dressing room.
The potential of Kilkenny continues to defy all bounds and was again personified in players like Tommy Walsh: “Sure it was like being inside the Coliseum out there,” he reckoned. “It was epic, great to be part of it, but no, we never thought it was gone.”
Jackie Tyrrell was as focused as ever, and is looking forward to the quarter-final in two weeks’ time: “That’s it, back into training , still, to work on things. It’s all about getting the body and the mind right again.”
Yet Brian Cody will be taking it easy on them for a couple of days at least: “Obviously we will take things very, very easy maybe until next Thursday night and recover the bodies and that . .. . . For a long time, we were put to the pin of our collar to kind of get a grip on the game. . .
“But I suppose this particular team has been doing that for a long time, and you keep going and you keep going and you don’t panic and you don’t try and lose touch in what you’re trying to do.
“But the heads didn’t go down, they just drove on, drove on, drove on, just kept hurling, kept doing the things that made you a hurler in the first place.”
