We wanted more admits Kingston

IT says much about the character of Kieran Kingston that, after Croke Park officials had signalled the end of his press conference after Sunday’s defeat, he asked to be allowed to make one extra contribution, noting the passing of his former opponent, Galway great Tony Keady.

“It would be remiss of me, for the day that’s in it, not to mention Margaret Keady and her family,” he said.

“None of us can be there from Cork hurling because of the game, but that puts sport in perspective and on behalf of Cork hurling, we send sincere condolences to Margaret and the Keady family.”

Kingston could appreciate that there was more to life than hurling, just as a good 2017 campaign hadn’t been undone by one bad result at the end of it. And yet…

“But we’re greedy, we’re ambitious, we want to do more than that,” he said.

“We’d a right chance of doing it, I’ll be honest. We were going in at half-time and we had mastered the breeze that was there. We were a point down, hadn’t hurled fantastically, and weren’t allowed hurl fantastically.

“But still, the game was there to be won and then we kick on and we go two points up so we’re ambitious, we’re greedy, we’re not in any way arrogant like that, we’re confident in the group we have and we felt we could go and win today.

“Credit to Waterford, this is the fourth semi-final in three years, including the draw, so they’ve had a lot of disappointments in the last couple of years. They’ve felt a few times like we do now.”

When the time comes to sit down and assess everything, it will certainly be seen as a step in the right direction, though.

“At the start of the year, we were totally written off,” Kingston said.

“We won a Munster league, good league campaign and we won a Munster championship. We wanted to go on from today. We’re hugely disappointed we didn’t. That Cork bunch of players have been fantastic all year.

“We asked them at the end of last year to change a huge number of things and the culture of the way we do things and they bought into that.

“They’ve got the whole of Cork behind them and you can see that from the support we got at the games right through the year and again today.”

Damien Cahalane of Cork is shown the red card by referee James Owens after picking up a second yellow card during the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship Semi-Final match between Cork and Waterford at Croke Park in Dublin Photo by Piaras Ó...