Derek McGrath says Waterford can't use Croke Park as an excuse should they lose Sunday's All-Ireland SHC semi-final to Kilkenny.

The Cats have vastly greater experience of playing at HQ than Na Deise, but the underdogs' manager believes his team must embrace the experience of togging out on Jones Road:

"I don't think you can be overawed by it in any sense," he notes in The Irish Daily Star. "It sounds like a cliche to say it is just a pitch - but it is. We're looking forward to being there.

"If we lose or are comprehensively beaten or we win, it won't be anything to do with the pitch. It won't have anything to do with Croke Park or the aura that surrounds it.

"You can go the classic way that people often go when a team has been beaten in Croke Park and they say 'ah sure, they were looking up and around during the parade and they came out and their touch was poor in the warm-up and blah, blah, blah and they weren't able to cope with the Croke Park experience' or you can just go up there and embrace the whole thing and just go along with it."

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