Loughrea's Kelly praises Ballygunner 'brick wall'
Loughrea manager Tommy Kelly during the AIB GAA Hurling Senior Club Championship final match between Ballygunner of Waterford and Loughrea of Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Loughrea manager Tommy Kelly admitted his side hit a brick wall in the shape of Ballygunner in today’s AIB All-Ireland Club SHC Final.
The Galway champions trailed by just a point at half-time but were out-hustled and out-hurled by the superb Waterford club in the second-half who won by six points in the end.
“We came up here with full intentions to go home and win the All-Ireland, but we just hit a brick wall, really,” said Kelly. “They’re a fantastic club, Ballygunner, I couldn't speak any higher of them.
“We done our match-ups as good as we could, we worked really hard in training and I thought we were in a really, really good place. But the bar is a lot higher than where we are at the moment, so fair play to Ballygunner.”
Loughrea did themselves no favours with some poor shooting in the first half when they hit eight wides and left two very good goal chances go abegging. Kelly admitted that profligacy hurt them.
“Yeah, I think we were down 40-something percent (chance conversion rate) in the first half. Yeah, left a lot of scores behind, we needed to build a lead if we were going to have any chance.
“We still felt we were in a good position at half-time, we were winning a lot of dirty ball. They definitely turned the screw on us in the second half a little bit, fair play to them.
“We have a bit of learning to do after that one today, we have to get up to an awful lot higher than where we are.”
The game turned five minutes into the second half when Michael Mahony scored a superb goal for Ballygunner. From that moment on the Waterford side turned the screw.
“They did, yeah, and we were always trying to creep it back to three, they were able to go out to four again and we were able to come back to three,” said Kelly.
“Our scores probably tightened up definitely in the second half. When you're pressing for a game and you're trying to go forward and win a game, because we were brave, but when you are playing against an exceptional Ballygunner team, they're going to hit you in the counter-attack and they're going to get scores against you, and that goal at the start, yeah, that was a killer, it really was, it gave them breathing space.”
