Ballyhale Shamrocks 0-16 Dicksboro 0-12

Thurles will face Waterford champions De La Salle in the provincial decider on Sunday, November 25.

IT WAS a day of biblical storms and tempests, but you don’t have to take our word for it.

BALLYHALE Shamrocks qualified for the Kilkenny SHC final yesterday with a hugely impressive win over last year’s champions O’Loughlin Gaels.

BALLYHALE Shamrocks had to give free expression to all their multiple talents when beating neighbours and fierce rivals, Carrickshock, in the replay of the Kilkenny SHC quarter-final in Nowlan Park yesterday.

Ballyhale Shamrocks 0-19 Newtownshandrum) 0-17

THE Kilkenny SHC final certainly didn’t live up to its top billing before 8,000 spectators at Nowlan Park yesterday.

ON THE basis of what was the more impressive of the two semi-final victories, Ballyhale Shamrocks will be fancied to follow the lead of the Kilkenny hurlers and make it four-in-a-row in Sunday week’s domestic championship decider.

WHATEVER about the holders ‘leaving it behind them’, as manager Pat Joe Whelahan suggested afterwards, the relative ease with which Ballyhale Shamrocks built up an eight points lead in the first-half undoubtedly inspired their sixth AIB Leinster Club hurling title win in Nowlan Park yesterday.

FIVE minutes into the second-half of the second Kilkenny SHC semi-final in yesterday’s double-header at Nowlan Park, it looked like a shock (pardon the pun) was on the cards as Carrickshock took a surprise if well-merited one-point lead.

Ballyhale Shamrocks 3-20 St. Martin’s 3-8

St Kieran’s, Kilkenny 3-20, St Raphael’s, Loughrea 1-6