For the third successive Olympic year Galway are the National Hurling League winners. It won't trouble manager Conor Hayes at this stage but his predecessor who delivered two of these titles, the long-suffering Matt Murphy, was fired at the end of the year - on both occasions.

But winning the league is all that Galway can do at this stage of the year. There's no big provincial championship to focus on or big early-season fixtures to distract their attention. The league has frequently been a Galway thing.

It wasn't hard to take encouragement from yesterday's display. The blue-chip products in the team portfolio continued to give a good yield - 2-8 from the full-forward line - whereas some of the more difficult holdings performed really well. But above all the team worked hard and prospered as a unit.

"We had a tendency to panic against Clare and Tipperary," said Hayes, "a tendency to panic and bunch and run all over the place. Today we were cool and kept hurling all the way through. It was a sign of maturity."

On the line they also kept calm, refusing to panic when young David Collins was under pressure from Dan Shanahan's prowess in the air. Hayes explained the reluctance to make changes.

"When Dan Shanahan is on form it doesn't really matter who you put on him. We met him before in the league and tried three or four players on him but he's good at getting possession. In fairness, when Fergal Moore went back he tightened up a good bit. I think Waterford worked the puck-out well in the first half.

"We were trying to get David to go in tighter on him but he's a young player, still only 19 or 20, and it's difficult on an experienced player like Dan Shanahan. But you have to try and give the team a bit of stability."

For Justin McCarthy the afternoon was a rough jolt to receive just seven days before going into action against Clare in the championship. He has studiously rejected any notion that the two matches might get in each other's way and to his credit he resisted any temptation to crank up the laments after week one had gone so poorly.

"The league is over as far as we're concerned. We got to a final and didn't perform. Galway played outstandingly well and every time we got back into the game they came up and got a score. They defended stoutly and we couldn't break them down.

"They scored two goals in the first half, which gave them confidence. We couldn't get that goal, which was needed. To think we played poorly and lost by five points."

The inevitable questions followed. Was it a distraction? Will it be hard to get over this in the space of a week? How do you you'll think you'll lift them? "We'll lift ourselves," he replied. "If you couldn't lift yourself for a championship match in Thurles you might as well not be there."

They'll be there.