Do-or-die Clare clash may suit round-robin-phobic Déise

A week is a long time in the microwaved hurling championship. A lot changed between the aftermath of Waterford's first and second Munster championship games.

The night of the Limerick game, Davy Fitz was lauded for his tactical insights in taking the allegedly invincible All-Ireland champions to the brink.

Seven days later, Clare had beaten Limerick in the Gaelic Grounds, stealing a march on the rest in the battle to make the top-three and re-casting Waterford's two-point defeat as a missed opportunity.

And then Waterford themselves put in a confused and abject display in a one-sided loss to Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Davy cut a particularly morose figure in his post-match interview, unable to really muster a case for the defence.

Meanwhile, the paltry crowd from Waterford for both matches was taken as a decisive vote of no confidence in the team and where they're going.

The Déise hordes that stayed away can hardly lean on aristocratic confidence and claim they're waiting for bigger days later in the summer. This may well be it.

Davy wasn't about to berate them for their apathy, telling reporters this week that "we didn't give them any reason to come to Cork."

He was once more quick to rope the failures of 2022 into the narrative, noting "the Waterford supporters probably have their reasons over the last year or two that maybe they are not happy with different things, and that's fine."

After the loss to Kilkenny in the league, Fitzgerald's comments that "when I got this team they weren't in a good place" were interpreted by his critics as pre-emptive self-justification and presumably weren't well received on the Tipp sideline.

We weren't even in May and Waterford's championship campaign already looked doomed. They might have perked