Waterford's championship may be at an end but manager Davy Fitzgerald said a sense of pride was the strongest sentiment he will take from their Munster campaign.
A 0-30 to 2-14 defeat to All-Ireland champions Limerick meant that despite improving on last year, the Déise finished fourth in the Munster round-robin and are out of the championship.
"I'm extremely proud of the boys," he said. "I think you could see compared to our other three performances (that) the energy wasn't there as much.
"How we managed to stay in the game, I don't know. We brought it back to two points with ten minutes to go and that was just pure grit.
"But even when you look at the last seven or eight minutes we just fell away. I know they got a few handy frees and that but we know we weren't the better team today, we're fairly aware of that."
Reiterating that he was "immensely proud" of his team, he pledged that the county's supporters "will "have days with this team for sure".
Fitzgerald felt that Waterford's bowing out of the championship at the round-robin stage was more due to points dropped earlier in the group phase.
His team conceded a late winner against Clare last week and led Tipperary by four points going into injury-time in round two before having to settle for a draw.
If the Déise had held on for the win over Tipp, they would have taken third place ahead of Cork on the head-to-head rule.
"We shouldn't be in the position where we had to qualify today, we should be through, which is the hard thing to take," Fitzgerald said.
"Be it a few poor decisions or be it ourselves not finishing off chances we got, it should have been that way.
"But we've no complaint today. Limerick were the better team and fair play to them."
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