Dan Shanahan says that Waterford's defeat to Clare in the hurling league division one final replay is "hard to take" and maintains that his side deserved more from the game.
Tony Kelly scored two points in the dying embers of yesterday's match and pulled the game out from under Waterford's nose.
"It's hard to take," said the Waterford coach and selector, "Did we deserve to lose that game? No way, but we did. We'll go back to the drawing board and we'll see what the story is.
"But that last score... It's hard to take the way we lost it. We have to take the good with the bad, if we'd have won that game... We deserved to win that game, we definitely didn't deserve to lose."
Waterford were denied a free at the death, while Clare were awarded one which Kelly took full advantage of to level up the game. Shanahan said that this was a big decision that went against him.
"If you look at it again, I thought Jamie Barron was fouled, personally. That's my opinion, I thought he was definitely fouled.
"These are big decisions. We have lads who are training for eight or nine months and they rely on decisions like that. Look, we'll get back on the horse. The lads will go back to their clubs and we'll see the lay of the land next week."
Waterford selector Dan Shanahan with Clare manager Davy Fitzgerald on the sidelines during the match
Image: ©INPHO/Cathal Noonan
The GAA also had trailed out the use of HawkEye outside of Croke Park, but the system was not in use during yesterday's final and could have been used to detect whether or not a contentious final score had in fact gone over the bar.
"HawkEye definitely should have been used. They're spending so much money on so many things, why can't they spend it on HawkEye in Thurles and Croke Park?
"But that's the way it is, Clare won by a point today and we didn't. It's hard to take, I just don't think we deserved to lose this game."
The game was won and lost on the skill and talent of Tony Kelly in the final moments of the game and Shanahan says that there was little that could have been done to prevent him scoring the winning points.
"Let's be honest, Tony Kelly is a very, very good hurler. He's an absolutely outstanding hurler and if he gets a ball like that he's going to put it over the bar. Credit to him.
"You must take the good with the bad and today is a bad day for Waterford but we'll rally. We'll be back in here in a few weeks time to face Clare again it's going to be tough again but we'll be back."
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