Whelahan: win is revenge for last year’s ‘humiliation’

RESPECTABILITY! That was what it was all about for Pat Joe Whelahan and the Birr players when they faced up to reigning champions Shamrocks Ballyhale in the AIB Leinster club hurling semi-final yesterday, in a game which team captain Brian Whelahan reckoned they had a ‘great chance’ of winning without having to face the combined threat of Henry Shefflin and James ‘Cha’ Fitzpatrick.

And so it proved, with losing manager Maurice Aylward admitting that ‘in the circumstances’ they had done well to retain their Kilkenny title.

While Brian Whelahan talked afterwards about the ‘humiliation’ of their defeat by Shamrocks in last year’s provincial decider, his father Pat Joe intimated that revenge was on his mind when he agreed to go back as manager after being out of the job for two years. “The day I walked out of Portlaoise last year, this was my aim ... to get back at Ballyhale. They beat us by 12 or 14 points and it hurt,’’ he explained.