By John Harrington

Calum Lyons is still searching for answers as to why Waterford were so out-hurled by Clare in Sunday’s Munster SHC quarter-fina, saying the defeat is still very ‘raw’.

He didn’t agree with the suggestion though that the Clare players were more mentally tuned in for the battle than Waterford’s were.

“Look, at the end of the day, it’s Munster championship, both teams were equally up for it,” said Lyons yesterday at the launch of a new baseline concussion testing and treatment programme launched by the GAA, GPA, and UPMC.

“You could say the breaks maybe went for them, maybe you could say that, that could be potentially making excuses, but, as I said, you just have to kind of have a look back at it and see where it went wrong.

“I can’t really answer the question for you now, it is a bit raw, it was only yesterday. We’ll all just have to kind of dust ourselves down and take a good look at it and try to break it down and see exactly what did go wrong.”

It can’t have helped Waterford’s cause that they were without so many key players players who were central to their run to last year’s All-Ireland SHC.

Tadhg De Búrca is a long term absentee, and losing Conor Prunty and Jamie Barron to injuries in recent weeks was very unfortunate.

If there was a silver-lining to the defeat to Clare, though, it’s that Waterford never stopped fighting and finished very strongly thanks to a big impact from their substitutes bench.

Which suggests that despite the injury losses they have a good depth to their panel.

“Yeah, absolutely,” says Lyons. “I think, like, we kind of got a hit with a couple of injuries a week or two before the match. It just showed we do have a serious depth in the squad. It was just an overall disappointing performance but you see the bench coming on made a huge difference and made a bit of a surge at the end. I suppose it’s probably too little, too late at that stage.

“We’re an extremely young team, if you break it down, a lot of the players are still developing, me included. I still have a lot of work to do. So I think the future is still bright, regardless of what went on yesterday.

“I think for Waterford hurling it would be a silly thing to rule us out in the coming years. I think, as I said, we’re a very young team and there’s still a lot of developing to be done.”

Whatever about the coming years, you wouldn’t write them out of contention for the 2021 Championship either on the strength of one under-par performance.

They have a three-week break now before their next match in the qualifiers, which might be just the rest the panel needs to recharge their batteries after a condensed league schedule and allow injuries to clear up.

Perhaps losing this match to Clare might ultimately prove to be a blessing in disguise, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now for Lyons and his team-mates.

“Ah, potentially,” says Lyons. “Maybe in hindsight it’s easy to say something like that but obviously the goal yesterday was to win the match and the goal after that was to play against Tipp and hopefully win that but obviously that wasn’t the case.

“It obviously wasn’t ideal to have the injury concerns in the weeks leading up to the Championship but, as I said, with the depth in the squad the management just had to put their hand on another individual which we expected that they’d have the capabilities and we still believe that and we’re totally confident in the whole depth of the squad so to answer your question, was it a blessing in disguise?

“Maybe you could say that in hindsight but the goal yesterday was always to win the game.

“As disappointing as yesterday was, we have an opportunity now to dust ourselves down a little bit, regroup and obviously analyse the game, work on the things that kind of went somewhat wrong yesterday and just regroup and go at it again.

“You can’t be feeling sorry for yourself I suppose.”