Tipp manager Liam Cahill has said remarks that Waterford players were left emotionally damaged from his final year in charge of the county were “unfair”.
Following Waterford’s defeat to Cork last month, current Déise boss Davy Fitzgerald said he had inherited a group of emotionally damaged players.
“I think there was a lot of damage from last year emotionally-wise. We fixed a certain amount of it. We have a lot of work to do,” commented Fitzgerald at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
While not namechecking his Waterford successor, Cahill expressed disappointment with the narrative that there was emotional baggage from his spell as Waterford manager.
“These Waterford players, they don't use excuses. The narrative around Waterford the last couple of months was that there's a bit of emotional baggage with that Waterford team. That's the one thing that disappoints me about the whole thing. To me, that statement was unfair,” said Cahill.
“Waterford showed no emotional baggage today, only the good team that I know they are and the quality players that I was fortunate enough to be involved with the last three seasons.”
Reflecting on his first championship defeat as Tipp manager, Cahill said this was nothing short of a six-point hammering. He rejected the suggestion that his team’s flatness owed to the after-effects of their endeavours against Limerick the Sunday previous.
“These are quality players I have. That's not them today. We only showed little snippets of what we are capable of.
“I can't stress enough how disappointed we are for the Tipperary public today to witness a lot of basic errors on our behalf and it is something myself, Mikey, the management, and the players are really going to have to man up and get sorted out before we can say that we are serious All-Ireland contenders.
“We got rightly bet today. We got an awful hammering to be straight and honest about it. That is something that we have to try and sort out. It will test me as a manager, and it will test our players' resilience. So a big job of work over the next couple of weeks.”
For Davy Fitzgerald, his grievances lay with the unfair criticism, as he saw it, that his Waterford players have had thrown at them in recent weeks.
“Out of the whole championship, we'd two halves that were poor (first half against Cork and second half against Clare) and we got punished badly, but to listen to some of the crap that I'd to listen to the last few weeks is absolutely disgraceful and annoying.
“I'm proud of the guys because they have trained so hard, they have worked so hard, and it's so annoying to see them be treated the way they are being treated.
“They showed today what they are about and fair play to them.”
