Mattie Kenny
By John Harrington
Cuala manager Mattie Kenny paid tribute to the character of his team after their AIB GAA All-Ireland Club Championship Final victory over Ballyea this afternoon.
The Dublin side were deserving victors, but Kenny doesn’t believe they would have made it this far had they not shown a steely mentality at a number of different moments throughout the campaign.
“On a journey like this there's times that you're character is going to be tested,” said Kenny. “We've all played in games where you're better than the opposition and you're getting it easy and you can look good but it's when questions are asked, that's when we see the true worth of a player and the true character of the player.
“There was times along the way, a lot of them tests came in the Dublin Championship and also in the Leinster Championship and we had to go up to Armagh for the semi-final and here today for a very spirited Ballyea team.
“Your character is being tested the whole time and that's the thing that I'm most pleased with, the way these guys are developing as a team.
“You've got to understand that you're going to have periods of dominance and the opposition is going to have periods of dominance and it's how you manage the opposition's periods of dominance that defines the result as much as anything else.”
Cuala are the first ever Dublin team to win an All-Ireland Club Hurling title, but that wasn’t a source of motivation for Kenny or his players coming into the match.
“Well I never thought about that,” he said. “We didn't want to be the first in Cuala, we didn't want to be the first from Dublin, we just wanted to win the match. When you're playing sport at this level the motivation has to be that you want to be the best you can yourself.
“You're not here to break records or do anything like that. We've an ambitious bunch of lads and they wanted to go and win everything they can. If you haven't that as a player or as a coach or a manager then you shouldn't be in the sport.”
Cuala got their tactics spot-on, particularly the manner in which they neutralised the threat of Ballyea danger-man Tony Kelly by detailing John Sheanon to man-mark him.
John Sheanon
Sheanon held the Clare star scoreless, and chipped in with a point himself in a powerful individual display.
“If you didn't recognise that threat...Tony Kelly is in the top five hurlers in Ireland,” said Kenny. “When he carries the ball up the field and he injects that pace and the skill level he has, it usually ends up with a score.
“The way we looked at it was if he went back into the half-back line we'd kind of let the system deal with him, our half-forward line and our players up the field would be so hungry to get on the ball that we'd minimise the amount of ball he'd get on there but once he travelled up the field we had to make sure there was someone picking him up. An outstanding talent like that obviously could do damage to us.”
Ballyea manager Robbie Hogan admitted afterwards the manner in which their most inspirational player was contained was a big factor in the result.
“They did that exceptionally well and I have to compliment them on that,” said Hogan. “Again, the first one went wide on Tony and the other came off the best, and if one of them stuck it creates a bit of momentum.
“It would have gave a bit of a forward plan for Tony but I have to compliment their man-marking they did very well on him.”
Ballyea’s fate didn’t rest solely on Kelly’s shoulders. They were beaten in most areas of the pitch, and Hogan agreed that Cuala were simply the better team on the day.
“We just struggled with lots of aspects of the game,” he said. “Our feet; we just seemed to keep slipping. The ball didn’t stick, just the little things that we wanted to get right didn’t seem to happen.
“You can’t take that from Cuala, the conditions were the same for them so it was one of those days and some of our established players didn’t get going and didn’t get into the game.
“Unfortunately this was the game it happened to us this year of all games, but you move on. You dust yourself down and we are just disappointed for the supporters really that we didn’t give them a bit more to cheer about.
“As the song goes it’s a long way from Clare to here and it’s a long way back again."
