MIKE MAC wore a mischievous grin and the look of a man vindicated. This coup, coming out and battering the Munster champions with honest physical play and a hail of scores underlined yet again his reputation for the unexpected. As a Clareman you could tell he had enjoyed himself. This was old style.

"We prepared for this one like an All-Ireland final. We had to come out of the hole we were in. Clare hurling was in a bad way. Supporters were deserting us in droves. We put in a lot of effort and we felt that we had to. We had to win, we had to put in a performance. Our ambition, our pride and our honour. We couldn't let it go down the line any further."

There you could see the tenor of his team talks and the essence of what drove his side. Pride. The desire to draw a line in the sand. A refusal to retreat to the days of being whipping boys.

"The key to success is work rate," he said of his forwards who had been exemplary in their harassment of Waterford's backs when the latter had the ball. "We spoke about the lost cause, the one ball that you don't contest that could cost you the game."

Other things, too. Designs they aspired to but could scarcely achieve in practice.

"Goals! In order to match the Waterfords and Kilkennys we must score goals. It is a pleasant surprise that we managed that. We weren't even scoring goals in training."

Were you worried?

"The last I got worried was 1963 or 4 when I was sent off to boarding school."

Tony Griffin seemingly endless sojourn either in a saddle or in a library finally came to an end. He was satisfied.

"Anyday you score five points from play yourself is good. I needed a game, a good competitive game. I felt sorry for a few of the lads going for the same position as me that I got in."

The scores had come in almost unprecedented quantity. Griffin wasn't too surprised.

"Waterford are an open team to play against compared to Cork or Kilkenny say . . . I feel we have some of the best forwards in the game, too, lads like Diarmuid and Carmo. As I said we are just trying to go in right directions . . . We are getting more successful at that.

"It was all a positive. I don't even remember the first round of the Munster championship last year.

"Nobody remembers the first round. I sat out the whole game (play-off slump versus Limerick) last year in Croke Park. It had been eight or nine years since I had done that and I saw some honest performances and some potential for us that day. I only came back on the 28th of April but things have been fantastic. Mike is so honest and sincere. Honesty will get us far." How far? " Well, We are scoring and playing the type of game we want to play. That's enough for a start."

Justin McCarthy veteran of so many of these days good and bad took the disappointment with grace. "They would have beaten any team today. Clare were excellent. we came up here with high hopes and high ambitions: goals were a big issue. We scored 23 points which wasn't bad but we needed goals."

And hope survives.

"There is hurling to be played in August. We are playing again in five weeks time which is a good gap. We will regroup and look at ourselves and hopefully our injuries will be cleared up. It won't be an easy road back but a lot of teams will fall by the wayside between now and August. Listen. If you win you are on a high and if you lose you are on a low. At the end of the day these things come and go. We have to see what happens between Galway and Antrim. Who knows in the long-run."

And finally John Mullane. Scored more than a third of his side's total. All from play. And a man-of-the-match award. And he came off a loser. "No excuses," he said. "We were beaten by a better team today. I said earlier we threw in the towel awful early. It's a bad sign. We haven't done that over the years. Absolutely, we were missing four all stars there today. Four leaders. We needed players who would take the game by the scruff of the neck. We have been down this road before.

"We need to regroup and come back even stronger."

Ah championship and it's yearly challenges.