WATERFORD MANAGER LIAM Cahill admitted his side would have been fortunate to take anything from Saturday’s Munster round-robin clash with Limerick.

The Deise struck two goals in the closing stages to threaten a late comeback at the TUS Gaelic Grounds, but Limerick reeled off the final two points to pick up their second win of the championship. 

It was a fourth straight defeat for Cahill against the Treaty since he took charge of Waterford and he said he’s still searching for the best formula to take down John Kiely’s side. 

“Did we really deserve it over the hour? I’m not 100% sure. My initial feeling is we probably didn’t if we did have to sneak something.

“Look, this Limerick team, it’s going to be very hard to try and unlock them, as to what the strategy is to beat them. They’re a very decent outfit.

“It was heart-stopping at times and riddled with errors at other times. But look, it was all that Munster Championship hurling is. It was tenacious and hard-hitting and fast and look, you can sense I’m disappointed that we didn’t get something out of the game even though we did struggle at certain periods.” 

Cahill felt Waterford’ wastefulness in front of goal badly hampered their chances.

“You can’t afford to be butchering chances the way we were doing, you just can’t against the top class opposition. You can’t afford to be doing that.

“When you bring the ball into contact with this Limerick team they just dominate you and we did that on a couple of vital occasions where we brought the ball into contact and lost it and it was turned over.

Them turnovers are big here with a massive Limerick crowd in their home ground. They had a big bearing on the game as the game progressed.”

Limerick were down a number of key men and Cahill knows his side must substantially improve of they meet again down the line.

After playing two games in six days, the Deise now have a three-week gap to their next outing against Cork. 

“Limerick were minus Cian Lynch after whatever, a few minutes, minus Kyle Hayes today, Peter Casey, Seamus Flanagan, when all them come back it’s another headache again.

“That’s if we do get an opportunity to meet them. We’ve to try and park it as quick as we can now and see can we get ready for Cork in three weeks’ time.

Waterford had failed to score against Limerick in their previous three championship meetings, so Cahill was pleased to see his side hit the back of the net. 

“You have to be rattling that net every day you go out but especially against Limerick when they’re able to pick off scores from long range. They’re always going to be well into the 23 or 24-point mark so you have to be putting a goal or two on the scoreboard to counteract that.” 

He admitted he was disappointed at the poor travelling Waterford support. The vast majority of the 27,488 crowd were backing the home team.  

“If I’m being really honest I thought there’d be more of them there,” he said.

“When we came in on the bus the colour just wasn’t there and we kind of had a feeling that the Waterford people didn’t travel.

“Hopefully now they’ll get behind this team because they have something to look forward to with this group of players if they get in behind them and support them.”

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