Reaction- St Kieran's College rejoice after All-Ireland Croke Cup Glory
It may have looked shaky for periods of last Saturday’s Croke Cup final but come the final whistle St Kieran’s manager Brian Dowling was overjoyed to have led his side to another All-Ireland title.
“We’re absolutely delighted,” he said. “The aim coming up here was to win that cup and while we would have liked to done it in an easier fashion, the lads eventually found a way.
“After normal time, the draw was probably a fair result but in extra-time I did think we were the better team for that 20 minutes,” he added. “We did hit a huge amount of wides, I think it was 26 in total which you’d be disappointed with, but we got there somehow. It’s a sweet victory even though it maybe didn’t feel like it at the time.”
Dowling was full of praise for the opposition in what proved to be an end-to-end tussle with extra-time needed to get Kieran’s over the line.
“In the semi-final against Ardscoil Rís we tried to leave space inside for Rory Glynn and Sean Hunt and obviously Loughrea had watched that match and learned a lot from it,” he said.
“Every time we won the ball, their half-back line was dropping back and we probably didn’t use the ball as well as we’d like and you can’t really get messages into them so you kind of just have to wait till half-time to try and sort it out.
“In saying that if we took the chances we missed, things may have been a bit different, but Raphael’s were brilliant and they really put it up to us in what was a great game. The referee John Keenan let it flow and we are just so happy to have title number 25 in the bag.”
As has been the case for most of the season, both Rory Glynn and Sean Hunt proved to be Kieran’s main assets in attack, scoring nine points from play between them.
Glynn was in the wars all day but his class shone through as he collected the All-Ireland final Man of the Match award for the second year in a row.
“It’s unbelievable, it’s great to get as well as the win of course,” he said.
“When you’re in a moment like that, the adrenaline keeps you going and there wasn’t a dirty stroke in the whole match.
“Loughrea were brilliant and we knew what they were going to bring and they brought that all the way through,” the Clara player added.
Sean Hunt finished as top scorer on the day which included landing two crucial points when the game was in the melting pot at the end of normal time.
The pacy forward outlined what it meant to all the players especially the sizeable number that were playing their last game.
“I’ve never been as sore after a game and while it took extra-time, we eventually pulled through,” he said.
“We said at half-time that this was our last time playing with Kieran’s and we wanted to make the most of our last time in the jersey. We got that All-Ireland which is unbelievable and great credit goes to the management.”