Dowling delight as College eye up back-to-back titles

Heading to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Weekend has become something of a tradition for St Kieran’s College and it will be more of the same for the Kilkenny school the weekend after next.

Last Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final success over Ardscoil Rís was certainly a statement of intent and manager Brian Dowling was very pleased with the display.

“We are delighted as coming down here you would always be a bit nervous especially after the Leinster final performance and you’d be wondering could we back it up again.

“Ardscoil Rís are a very good team but I thought our first half performance in particular was super and that kind of set the tone for the game.

“The second half showed we still have things to work on and that’s good as you want that going into a final.

“We came down to win and we done that and we can look forward to the All-Ireland final now.”

The O’Loughlin Gaels man is dividing his time between Kieran’s and Kildare duty at the moment and he admits that their experience told throughout the game.

“We’ve a lot of good players in our team and we matched up with Ardscoil a lot in the last few weeks and looked at their main threats.

“The likes of Timmy Kelly is a great man-marker who played senior championship with Bennettsbridge last year so we’ve a lot of experience.

“Jeff Neary is another one who is a great organiser and brilliant on the ball and we got our matchups right but I also thought the workrate among the forwards was brilliant and that kind of nullified their threat inside because the ball going in wasn’t as good as they’d like.”

What of the performances of Rory Glynn and Sean Hunt?

“The lads inside have been brilliant for us all year,” the manager said.

“Rory (Glynn) is just top class and when you look at him from the outside you’d nearly think he’s a transition year but he’s nearly one of the oldest on the team.

“He has great speed and workrate and he was actually sick before the game so to put in a performance like that is unreal.

“Sean (Hunt) has barely trained since the Leinster final due to a bad injury. He was in hospital there for a while so for him to come out and put in a performance like that was unbelievable.

“His goal was a crucial part of the win and it really set the tone for the game.”

Kieran’s came into the game on the back of a month long layoff but they showed no effects of any rustiness.

“We would have been a little bit worried going into a big match like today after having four weeks off and winning a Leinster Final rather easily but we challenged the players to step it up,” the manager said.

“We had a very good 15 on 15 training game last week and we just said that we have to be right because we knew if we were off the pace here that we’d be caught. In fairness to the lads they were tuned in from the start and they were ready to go.”

The Kilkenny school play a lovely style of hurling and it showed again on Saturday.

“The lads are an absolute pleasure to work with and as a squad we set high standards and at the start of the year we asked them to raise it as a Kieran’s hurler,” he said.

“We’ve a lot of sixth years in the group with 25 in of them in total and that brings its own maturity.

“In the first half you could see them working the ball out and we encourage them all the time and they are good at it so we told them to keep doing it.”

Getting to another final is no mean feat, but Dowling knows they still have a job to do.

“We wanted to get back to a final and winning Leinster titles is great but at the end of the day, in Kieran’s you are going to be judged on All-Ireland victories.

“I’ve been in Croke Park as a player and a manager and it’s only a good day when you win,” he said. “We don’t have any Croke Cup won yet and it went back last week. We’ve 60 minutes now to try and get it back on March 16.”