By John Harrington

Relief was Kilkenny manager Derek Lyng’s dominant emotion after his team’s dramatic victory over Galway in today’s Leinster SHC Final.

It looked like they were going to surrender their title when Galway moved two points ahead deep into injury-time.

But with the last play of the game Kilkenny somehow found a match-winning goal through substitute Cillian Buckley.

“Ah look, I think relief is the right word,” said Lyng. “I’m just really happy for the group. I thought we deserved something out of the game, I thought it would have been hard luck to lose it.

“I’m just thrilled for the group that they kept fighting and going to the end. I’m particularly delighted for some of the subs that came in and had a big impact.

“Cillian Buckley, I’m delighted for him personally because he’s just so dedicated to the game and is a leader within the group, and it’s a great way for him to finish off that Leinster final. So it’s absolute relief at the end.

“At the end you could say it would have been easy for Galway to close out the game, the ball was in the corner for maybe 30 seconds and I think John Donnelly got the flick across and it’s just…how many teams would give up there?

“We kept going and we got the ball across and fair play to Cillian, he took it on and took responsibility and that’s what we’ve been saying to the players all year. Mikey (Butler) came up and got a goal and that’s we’ve been saying to lads all year, just drive on and have the confidence to go for it and thankfully today it worked in our favour."

Martin Keoghan was forced off in the first-half for Kilkenny after tweaking a hamstring but Lyng hopes the four week break his team now have before the All-Ireland semi-final will be enough to see him recover in time for it.

He’s also believesl that both Adrian Mullen and Richie Reid who missed the Leinster Final with injury will be back in the reckoning too for their next match.

Kilkenny showed great character to win this Leinster title and their attack looked really dangerous at times, but they were defensively fragile too, and Lyng knows they have plenty of room for improvement if they’re to lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup this year.

“I think we need more, yeah,” he said. “When you are eights points up, you look at that.

"It’s happened a few times this year, we have had a good leads and other teams have come back into it. That can happen.

“But what I think it important is managing it a bit better when we get a lead. Easier said than done. The players on the pitch, Galway are a fantastic team. They have excellent hurlers, especially up front and that’s just the nature of the game.

“It think today, you could see the character of those fellas coming through. So, delighted.

“The dressing room, as you can imagine, there’s a great buzz in there and I suppose all through the year, I think we’ve been pretty decent.

“We got to the league final, albeit we were very disappointed with the display that day, and the last day against Wexford we were disappointed.

“Other than that, I think we’ve been pretty consistent and I think today, to win will drive us on even more. I still think we’re improving. We talk about the panel a lot all year and that was really important today.

“A lot of those lads saw game-time throughout the league and championship, and they were able to hit the ground running today. They all made an impact, and that’s really important when we’re missing so many.”