No moral victory for Gilroy as Cats catch Dubs

PAT GILROY would not be drawn on Cian O’Callaghan appearing to be fouled just before Liam Blanchfield scored the crucial goal in Kilkenny’s dramatic 1-24 to 3-16 win yesterday, instead insisting that he was proud of his Dublin players. ‘I read my official guide before I came in here, and I would rather not comment on that as I am not supposed to. I’ll leave that to others,’ the Dublin manager said before emitting a simple, ‘extraordinary’ which left nobody in any doubt about what he made of the incident. However, Gilroy did claim that Dublin had arrived in Parnell Park expecting to beat Kilkenny. ‘We were very confident. Preparation had gone well the last month and we felt the performance was there. We fully expected to win that game,’ said Gilroy. ‘But I couldn’t fault any of the players in terms of effort. We were taking fellas off in the second-half because they had run their race and we can’t fault them. But we need to learn from that. We are not here for moral victories. We are here to try and win the Leinster Championship.’ Gilroy reckoned the turning point was the shoulder injury

sustained by Conal Keaney 10 minutes before the end. ‘Conal going off very much disrupted us. We were scrambling after that, he was doing a lot of good work, himself and Liam Rushe were working well up the middle. That did affect us.’ Kilkenny boss Brian Cody had given seven players their first Championship start but wasn’t worried about taking such an inexperienced team to a cauldron like Parnell Park. ‘Picking the team is difficult because there is a very strong panel. But I have every confidence in every player. Everyone’s attitude is good and everyone’s drive to achieve is there. Did we bat an eyelid [about playing seven newcomers]? We thought long and hard and made the decisions we made.’ And Cody admitted that the over-riding emotion in the Kilkenny dressingroom was sheer relief. ‘Our dressing room is quiet. It’s absolute relief. It almost feels like “did we win it?” We did win it. ‘Am I happy? I’m delighted, because we are walking away with two points when we could have been walking away with no points. Then there would have been real pressure on,’ added Cody. But Kilkenny are a team that knows how to win. Yesterday’s thrilling encounter was yet more evidence of that.