Waterford sharpshooter Stephen Bennett says the belief never went out of the Deise men in this evening’s All-Ireland SHC semi-final win over Kilkenny.

Liam Cahill’s side trailed by seven points at the half in Croke Park and would fall eight behind before goals from Bennett and Darragh Lyons saw them take control to inflict a first semi-final loss on the Cats in 15 years.

Speaking to RTE Sport afterwards, ‘Man of the Match’ Bennett admitted the first-half from the Munster side was below par.

"Coming up, we promised we wouldn’t let Kilkenny kill us off in the first 10 minutes. I think we were over eager and maybe tried too much. There were snapshots, we were panicking," said Bennett, who notched 1-10 over the 70 minutes.

"We did silly things in the first half. They got two goals with the bounce of the ball. We felt at half-time we had definitely five or six mistakes made. We knew we had a chance." 

He added: "In fairness to Liam and the lads, they said we can’t come up to Croke Park and leave it like that after a positive year. We can’t just come out and get hammered, seven points down. We shouldn’t have been seven points down

"We always believe in ourselves." 

'Too many games we're after leaving behind us'

Man of the match Stephen Bennett says Waterford will not lack for motivation or confidence ahead of All-Ireland final after inflicting a rare semi-final defeat on Kilkenny #rtegaa https://t.co/czuXxifNjS pic.twitter.com/b3uPWELC1V

— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) November 28, 2020

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