Managers Brian Dowling and Matthew Ruth reflect on classic Leinster Colleges Final

We may only be in the early weeks of the new season but it’s hard to see a more dramatic and epic contest occuring over the rest of the year than what we saw in this Leinster colleges final.

The silverware went to St Kieran’s but Kilkenny CBS still won plenty of admirers in a contest that was on tenterhooks throughout.

Kieran’s boss Brian Dowling was full of relief afterwards as his side won out in the drama of a penalty shootout.

“We won and we are delighted to win but it could have went either way as a penalty shootout is 50-50.

“In fairness to our players we had plenty of them putting their hand up to take a penalty and that shows great character in the side.

“We lost the junior final to the CBS on penalties so it’s nice to win the senior one on penalties and while it’s not the way we wanted to do it, you just take it whatever way you can.”

Dowling acknowledged that they didn’t practice penalties in the build-up and it was the players themselves that accepted the responsibility of stepping up in a high pressure situation.

“We’d no idea who was going to take a penalty as we had no practice done and it’s not something we prepared for at all to be honest.

“We asked the players who wanted to take one and 10 or 11 lads put themselves forward so we had to say no to some of them and Noah Manogue who scored the first one told us to get Cian Phelan to take one as he’s a great penalty taker and he ended up scoring the winner so Noah can take great credit for that,” he added.

For Kilkenny CBS, it was huge disappointment but Matthew Ruth is taking the positives with their year far from finished just yet.

“I’m just so proud of the effort the lads gave in both normal time and extra-time as well as the five lads that stood up to take a penalty. The never say die attitude of the lads was the thing I was most proud of and the lads kept playing to our style of hurling which is giving the ball and going again.

“Even when we needed it the most, there was no sense of panic among the lads.

“On our starting team we had five transition years, five fifth years and five sixth years but they are very skillful and they kind of hurl with abandon and it seems to suit us and we’ll regroup now for an All-Ireland quarter-final.”