Galway v Waterford - GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship Final
Waterford hurler Pauric Mahony says the Deise will need to improve again in 2018 if they’re to get back to another All-Ireland Final.
They pushed Galway hard in this year’s decider, but the Ballygunner man says they’ll need to bring their game to another level again if they’re to be genuine contenders next year.
“I’m sure Derek (McGrath) is working away in the background and thinking of ways that we can get that extra one or two percent that we require because if we are going to get back to where we were last year and try and go a bit further we’re going to need to certainly find a couple of more percent here and there.
“We’re back to square one really, back in the pack with everyone. There’s eight or nine teams there who if they can get a bit of momentum throughout the summer you’d be surprised how far it will take them.”
Mahony admits that Waterford made significant progress by making it as far as this year’s All-Ireland Final, but for him the bottom line remains that they came up short of what they wanted to achieve.
“I suppose there’s no real silverware on the table from a county perspective so that’s obviously the first thing you’d look at at the end of every year but at the same time, we did make a bit of progress, we got to an All-Ireland final, we competed pretty well on the day and fell that little bit short.
“In fairness, we bumped into a serious Galway side this year and they were deserving champions.
“I looked back on bits and pieces of (the game). You analyse every game win or lose and you always find room for improvements and a simple mistake here and there.
“But that’s what a good team does, they force you into rushing into decisions. They certainly had us under pressure from the first minute right to the last.”
All Stars
Mahony agreed that the key moment of the game from the Waterford point of view was their inability to kick on again after taking the lead early the second half.
“It probably was,” he said. “We probably needed a bit of…I don’t think, bar Kevin Moran’s goal obviously in the first half, other than that we didn’t have any big moment in the game.
“We needed a big moment maybe 10 minutes into the second half whether it was a goal or something inspirational to happen and it just didn’t happen for us. It’s hindsight now.”
