By Paul Keane

He returned for the first game of the new club season in Dublin yesterday but Mattie Kenny still isn't sure if his time as manager of AIB All-Ireland club hurling champions Cuala is over or not.

The Galway native was back on the sideline for a low key league game against Crumlin - Cuala won 3-30 to 2-12, for the record - just nine days after delighting the Dalkey supporters by lifting the Tommy Moore Cup on St Patrick's Day.

Kenny described the league game as a line in the sand moment for his celebrating players whose focus was immediately drawn towards the tasks ahead again. Whether or not they move forward to take on those tasks alongside Kenny remains to be seen.

"We haven't discussed it yet, to be honest," said Kenny. "Last week, everyone just took some time off to chill out and enjoy the experience we've come through. So as a management team, we need to sit down and have a good discussion around where we go from here.

"The (league) game came up Sunday morning so we had to get together for that and the draw for the 2017 senior championship has been made now, so we're playing Ballyboden in the first round of the championship. That's in four weeks' time. One season runs into another season very quickly.

"We'll have to sit down this week to be fair to everyone. Last week, it was hard to get people to sit down. The future, look, we're still looking in the rear-view mirror as to what happened on Paddy's Day. But this week we'll have to sit down definitely and see where we go from here."

Kenny admitted it was an entirely different experience presiding over a bread and butter league game than what he'd experienced just over a week earlier on March 17 at GAA headquarters.

"Within nine days of playing in Croke Park we were out playing in Shankill, which is kind of Cuala's home ground," he said. "It was an iconic moment really, you were definitely back to where the guys all started off, within a week or so. It was a good grounding experience for them."

Cuala's historic club success will inevitably bring Kenny's name to the forefront of the minds of any top county teams that part company with their manager in the coming months and years. Kenny didn't rule out applying for the Galway position when it next becomes vacant.

"I was involved with Galway with three U-21 setups, we won three All-Ireland U-21 titles at different stages," he said. "The last of them was in 2011. Anthony Cunningham, Tom Helebert and myself were involved with Galway. We took over in the senior squad in 2012, we lost the final then to Kilkenny, and in 2013 we lost the quarter-final to Clare.

"At that stage, I'd put a number of years into Galway and between a number of things, I took a step away from it. It's a huge undertaking. It's something you have to see how it fits in with your work and your career and your family.

"There's days when you're up in Croke Park, it's an All-Ireland final and you're saying that you'd love to be a part of that.

"But if the opportunity did come along you'd have to take a long hard look at it. It is a huge commitment. It's not something I've to worry about at the moment or be able to answer at the moment. There's something in all of us that says you'd love to be involved in something like that."

• Mattie Kenny was speaking at the launch of the Electric Ireland GAA Minor Star Awards. The inaugural awards will recognise the best individual performers from the entire season, including provincial and All Ireland stages, with the best player in each position selected on the 2017 Electric Ireland GAA Minor Star Top 15.