Waterford manager Derek McGrath says pre-match emotion may have contributed to their bad start against Cork in their Munster Hurling Championship opener.
Although the Deise ultimately prevailed, they did not register their first point of play until the final 15 minutes of the first half.
McGrath joined us on Off The Ball tonight to talk us through the match from his point of view and admitted the effect raw emotion was not beneficial in the early stages.
"We're no different to any other group. We had a motivational video along the way and messages from Pauric O'Mahony and a few other guys that have been demoted to the intermediate panel from the extended senior panels. They were a few messages that were highly emotive and I thought the emotion almost drained us. I thought in the warm-up we were jittery and dropping balls and I think a lot of the emotion from the build-up in terms of the videos etc might have been brought into the initial period of the game," he said, adding that they also arrived to Semple Stadium a wee bit late.
Waterford's Shane Bennett tackles Conor Lehane of Cork ©INPHO/Cathal Noonan
Despite being league champions and beating Cork in that Spring final, it was still suggested that the Deise were not favourites for yesterday's match and McGrath admits that outer negativity cannot be fully kept away from the players.
"It wouldn't irk you, but it can seep through no matter what type of cocooned world you can try to isolate the guys into. You still will hear 'ah, this is championship, it's the real thing now and it's only the league' type of thing, even though our approach was totally centred towards the league final. I think that got to us a little bit in the first 15 minutes," said McGrath.
He also admitted that he had concerns about bringing on substitute Shane Bennett, given that he is in the middle of Leaving Cert.
"I was considering my own responsibility as a Leaving Cert teacher myself. I was selfishly saying how does this look for someone who, I won't say pillar of education, but someone who's teaching everyday to throw on a guy," he said.
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