Liam Cahill said that he felt there was more in his Waterford side after watching them slip to a four-point Munster final defeat to Limerick.
Waterford led briefly midway through the second half but were swamped by Limerick in the closing quarter as the All-Ireland favourites ran out 0-25 to 0-21 winners.
Waterford now enter tomorrow morning’s All-Ireland quarter-final draw along with fellow beaten provincial finalists Galway and will face either Clare or Cahill’s native Tipperary next weekend.
He reflected: “We came here with real belief that we were going to win the match, we had to.
“That’s what I believe I have in this crop of players. In fairness they gave everything out on the field, probably didn’t hurl as well as I expected us to. Maybe we weren’t allowed.
“I just thought there was a little bit more in us.”
Elaborating, he said: “I just thought we got muscled out of a lot of the ruck ball and we just didn’t attack the breaking ball the way I think we’re capable of but, again, formidable opposition, like.
“Against Limerick you have to be winning your fair share of them areas so I suppose, look, you have to be taking chances too.
“We didn’t create a goal chance today or a real obvious one anyway, with the exception of that last pass to Austin (Gleeson) going through, maybe if he had to get on the end of that things might be different but we needed goals and we needed maybe more than one to win the match and that didn’t happen.”
Picking his players up after this setback for a quarter-final next weekend will be challenging, Cahill admitted.
“It’s a big ask and it’s been a big ask for every team that’s had to go this route. It’s going to take a bit of work but it’s something we’ll have to get our heads around.
“It’s the same for everybody and it’s important we stay in this Championship as long as we can,” he added.
