Justin McCarthy holds no grudges over his acrimonious departure as Waterford senior hurling manager and he wishes the Deise all the best in Sunday's All-Ireland decider with Galway.

The All-Ireland winning Cork hurler and manager guided Waterford to three Munster titles after taking over in 2001 but his relationship with the players turned sour midway through the 2008 championship campaign.

Writing in today's Irish Daily Star, the Cork native states: "Don't forget I gave seven years of my life to Waterford. That's a long time and a lot of driving and I didn't do it for the money.

"I didn't get the money fellas are getting.

"If I was offered €100,000 or respect, I'd say, 'give me the respect and forget about the €100k'.

"Let's be honest about it, do players realise the effort and time a manager puts into it?

"You have to show some respect for that. I felt there was a lack of respect there."

Expressing the hope that Derek McGrath's side's can bring the Liam MacCarthy Cup back to Waterford for the first time since 1959, McCarty added: "I still have a lot of friends in Waterford and I'd love to see them win the All-Ireland.

"I said below in Waterford when I started out that they were going to have great teams going forward.

"They said, 'jeepers, Justin when they are gone who is going to be coming up?'.

"I said, 'they'd have heroes to look at who they could relate to, to be as good as, and be better than'.

"We were winning at that time, won three Munster titles, and most of the present team would have been 12, 13 or 14.

"That's how Kilkenny did it. Their young players watched the greats and believed they could do that.

"They had heroes to emulate, and so did Waterford."

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