REACTION: USUALLY WHEN you're dealing with the defeated All-Ireland finalists you like to keep it simple. Like, say, some you win, some you lose.

Dealing with this Waterford defeat felt more like a sort of tragedy that had us turning to Shakespeare to keep simple.

Like, say "give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak" from Macbeth, or, say "the worst is not, so long as we can say, this is the worst" from King Lear.

So when Davy Fitzgerald entered the stage that is Croke Park's press conference room it was fitting that he broke into what was part eulogy, part confession, and all monologue. It certainly wasn't a speech he would have rehearsed, but it almost came out that way, such was the rhythmic pacing of its delivery.

"Where do you want to start?" he asked us as much as himself.

"I believed coming up here today that we were going to win. If I didn't, I'd be no good to them boys inside the door there.

"Ask me to explain what happened? Can't. The one thing I will say, and there's probably a few guys out there waiting for this moment, and this occasion, to have a go at me, and off they go. All I said when I came into this job is that if I could wake up Monday and say that I did everything that I knew how to do, then I'd be happy with myself. And I did everything that I thought was possible. Maybe I will have to look at myself, and ask myself questions, maybe I didn't prepare them right, whatever.

"I'll have to accept some of the blame. I am the manager. I will not blame the boys one bit whatsoever. They're good lads. They've given 10 years of unreal hurling, some of them guys, and there's a lot of young guys coming on. It's important that the Waterford people give them support.

"There is nothing worse than the way they feel inside in that dressingroom right now. They've worked hard, trained hard and, trust me, that arena outside there is the hardest place to be when things aren't going right for you. You know when your back is to the wall, when they get a few scores, and are on top of you, there is no place to hide.

"We asked lads to go out and play with freedom, with passion, to let themselves go, and give it everything, and then you get behind after a while, it's fair hard, fair hard, to keep going. And I can tell you at half-time it wasn't nice. But we said we won't drop the heads, and I don't think they did.

"We didn't play to our potential, we know that. Maybe ourselves and the rest of the country if we played to our potential we wouldn't have beaten Kilkenny today. They're an awesome team, and we accept that.

"I was just looking at their tackling a few times. I mean we had a game plan, which was to hold their half-back line as far back as much as we could, not be drawn up the field. We had such a way that we were going to try and surround the ball, but no matter what way we did that, it was coming into a Kilkenny hand. The one thing you don't want to concede when you're playing Kilkenny is goals. So maybe that tactic was costly, and if so, hands up."

He paused, briefly, as if to catch his breath, but if Fitzgerald was even considering making any sort of excuse he didn't once let it slip. Instead he focused almost entirely on the positives, as difficult as that must have been.

"I've no regrets with the year I've had. The boys did everything I asked of them. I will not say one bad word about them after today. People can say the scoreline, whatever it is, but I'm proud of them lads. Hats off to them.

"It's been a great three months of my life, myself and my little fella travelling down there, 10 or 11 hours of a round trip, but I wouldn't swap it for everything."

He was effectively parachuted into the job, and yet Fitzgerald gave the impression he may not leave by similar means. Waterford hurling needs to look to the future and there's no reason he shouldn't be looking with them.

"I don't know what the future holds. The job came up at a time, and it didn't take me two seconds to jump at it. The three months has been fantastic. I'll take a bit of breather, myself. The last 18 months has been fairly phenomenal, in a lot of ways. I'm a hurling man.

"I love being involved in hurling. I'm not in it for any ulterior motives. I'll come back fighting. There's two things you can do after this. You can bury your head in the sand, or you can get up and go again. I'd like to think that I'm strong enough to get up and go again."