Mullally keeps his cool after the Déise are defeated

Tom Mullally has always been a straight talker. He doesn’t over-celebrate. On the face of it he doesn’t get too down either. Perhaps the best way to describe him is that he is a realist. He is a man who doesn’t use superlatives.

“Yeah, we are happy. Happy to get the win. Obviously it follows up on last week’s performance against Offaly. We knew that we had a game under our belts and it might stand to us. Especially at this time of year,” he said afterwards.

The Kilkenny man has always looked for his players to get the best out of themselves over seventy minutes play. He conceded they did so on Sunday.

“We were looking to perform. That was the key thing. We have been in situations before we have had good first halves. Good 20 minutes. We are trying to improve that when we are in a good position maybe try and get ourselves further along in terms of performance. Today was a good way towards that.

"Things went our way too which helped us get the victory too,” he acknowledged.

He says the players built on their good start.

“What is there to talk about? The scores came. We had got off to a good start. It probably helped us because we didn’t give it up over the remaining 65 minutes. It was a good start. An excellent start. It got us into the game straightaway. It was invaluable to us. We just want to get into the game as quickly as possible. Not to complicate it. We are looking to get scores on the board,” he said.

He says have worked hard themselves to find the character which saw them take three points out of four in two league games.

“It is not something we (the management) instill into the team. It is something the lads have learned over the years. They have been in tricky situations before. It is a good group of players. They have each other’s backs,” he pointed out.

“It was a test of character coming when Waterford came back at us. I think the response was excellent. We created opportunities and the goal helped us get there. We took our chances. We defended well. I think against Offaly last week we probably gave up scores but, today, we were more patient in our defending. I think that paid off for us over the seventy minutes.”