Dessie Hutchinson hoping Waterford can crack championship code after 'disappointing' 2022

It is the enduring mystery of the hurling year.

How did Waterford go from league champions and All-Ireland contenders to finishing fourth in Munster and an early end to their summer?

Manager Liam Cahill hadn't - publicly at least - identified the issue when he departed to take over his native Tipperary.

His successor at Waterford Davy Fitzgerald said that "everybody has their ideas" and that he would make identifying what went wrong a top priority.

Austin Gleeson suggested the team were in good condition but might have been over-confident after their league campaign but then "just folded" in the championship.

Speaking to RTÉ Sport today, Déise forward Dessie Hutchinson felt they might have needed more of a break than the two weeks the compressed schedule between league and championship allowed.

"What actually happened, I don't know," he said. "You are on such a high after the league, maybe we didn't celebrate the league as we should have and reset it then towards the championship. We took no in-between. I know it was a short turnaround but sometimes you have to do that.

"I think it is important to come down off things. Give your mind a little break from the training. To be fair to us, throughout the league we were training very hard. We were fully focused on winning the league. After we won it, maybe you didn't feel like you won it because there was no change of mindset of what was happening the following day, no break. Straight on to the game against Tipperary.

"Things go against you. Injuries and little things going on. We just had a really disappointing Munster championship. If you lose a game in Munster, you’re on the back foot straight away and that’s what happened to us, unfortunately we went to Limerick and lost. We had a