Waterford boss Liam Cahill said that all bets are off after Clare swept his team aside in the Munster Championship opener.
The Banner ran out 1-22 to 0-21 victors at Semple Stadium to set up a provincial semi-final meeting with Tipperary next Sunday and Cahill admitted that the final score flattered the Deise.
He said: “We could have been beaten by a lot more to be honest. That was one of the flattest performances of my reign here. Bitterly disappointed.
“Can’t really put my finger on it to be honest. Then again to be fair to Clare, I’m not taking away from their performance. They brought what they had to to win Munster Championship hurling, all credit to them in fairness.”
Cahill said that spots are very much up for grabs ahead of Waterford’s round one qualifier tie on the weekend of July 17/18.
“They have to be. I have to throw everything at this now. I’m going to look at it really stringently and rigorously because ultimately too many lads failed today.
“Too many players failed today for my liking. I have 37 on the squad and they’re all putting in great work. We had 11 guys training earlier this morning that trained really, really hard.
“They must be looking in at that saying, ‘What have I to do to get into the squad?’ I’ll be rewarding any player that puts their hand up over the next fortnight or three weeks for a qualifier because at this stage I’ve nothing to lose. I’m going to throw everything at it between now and then.”
The Tipperary native admitted that the loss of Stephen O’Keeffe, who has taken the year out, and Conor Prunty, Tadhg de Burca and Jamie Barron to injury was significant but he felt he had plugged the holes sufficiently.
“They’re all massive players. That goes without saying. They’re big game players. Hard to replace them.
“But we’ve trawled the club scene in Waterford and I really felt we’ve a good strong panel assembled.
“I know we were without them through injury and what have you but we had guys stepping in to take on the mantle and well equipped to do it. The long and short of it, experienced players like that are hard to replace.”
Cahill added he had no issue with the awarding of a first half penalty, scored by Tony Kelly, which ultimately gave his side too much to do.
“Ah, not really. From what I could see, again, I’ll look at it tonight, but from what I could see it was inside the 21-yard line and the foul was there. Probably was a goal chance and had Shane - and this is just my initial reaction just looking at it - had Shane Fives not dragged out of the forward so I have no problem with that.
"That’s the rules and I think Colm Lyons applied the rule correctly.”
