By Paul Keane

Donal O Fatharta admitted that Galway's EirGrid All-Ireland U-20 football success was all the sweeter after coming up short in back to back minor finals.

The Galway U-20 manager presided over the minor team's defeats to Kerry and Cork in the 2018 and 2019 finals.

Last year's minor final was particularly difficult for Galway to take as they conceded a last gasp goal to be taken to extra-time and eventually lost against Cork.

Tomo Culhane, who scored 1-6 in the U-20 decider, was part of that minor group and O Fatharta said he was particularly happy for that group of players who experienced such heartache.

"There's only a few from last year but especially for those guys and for the management team as well, it's the same management team from last year, we're really delighted for them," said O Fatharta.

"I'd like to say that because even myself personally I'd be easy going enough but last year was very, very difficult. I felt that and I still do and I will feel it for a long time.

"So I'm delighted for those guys who were involved last year and that the management are all the same, they made that decision to keep going and stepped it up again which wasn't easy with the way things worked out last year."

O Fatharta was satisfied too with how his Galway team implemented a high press on Dublin's kick-outs and how they restricted the amount of ball that was played in to the Sky Blues' lively forwards.

"The work we do isn't special, it's the same as what others are doing, it's push up, close down space, there's nothing special," he said.

"But our guys brought the energy to that. We thought the kick-out might be a place we could just interrupt them a bit and slow them down and even if they did get the kick-out, they were a little bit slower getting the ball into Archer and Swan and O'Dell and O'Leary and those guys, that was the plan because you don't want to give the likes of Archer space.

"Jack (Glynn) played well on him but closing down the space is important too. We won by a point, it wasn't one thing that worked or anything like that. It was a collective and the boys worked very hard and got their just rewards at the end."

Dublin manager Tom Gray acknowledged that his team struggled to get their lethal forwards into the game.

"Galway were quite good at getting bodies back," said Gray. "Probably our decision making in terms of that last pass, that wasn't the best over the 60 minutes either, to be honest.

"We worked a lot of really good scores. It was just a little touch here or there that prevented us from getting in front."