By Cian O'Connell

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'Delighted' to have reached the Bord Gais Energy All Ireland under 21 final Galway manager Tony Ward admits the Tribesmen could be without Conor Whelan for the decider.

Senior star Whelan suffered a shoulder injury in Saturday's success over Dublin. "It is a shoulder injury, we are hoping that he is going to be okay," Ward said following the game in Thurles. "He doesn't look good at the minute, Conor would be a huge loss for us. Hopefully he will be okay.

"Everybody will want to play against Waterford. What a lot of people are forgetting about this team is that they are very young, a lot of this team will be underage again next year, they are very, very young."

Captain Brian Molloy scored 10 points for Galway with Ward praising his vast contribution."They showed great character," Ward reflected. "Brian Molloy, leave out the scores, leave out the brilliant frees, the last two balls he came out of defence with were absolutely top class.

"Not alone to come out with them, but he used them so well. He used up time and got the ball to our forwards which is a great sign of the man.

"It is funny we were worried about our defence going into the game and they were a solid part of it. All our substitutes came on in the forwards to make a contribution."

Dublin boss Joe Fortune was disappointed not to take the Galway scalp. “It’s probably regret," Fortune admitted.

"We spoke an awful lot over the year about when you get to this level, you have to take the opportunities and anybody watching that would see that we had ample opportunity to win it.

"Galway are a good side, a strong, physical side and they seemed to have that bit more maybe in the tank, especially in extra-time. I thought we looked dead on our feet.

"But look, we weathered the storm in the second half, I thought Galway would have pushed on and even the linesman said at the time we had weathered the storm. We had two or three chances there in that last 10 minutes to win it."