De La Salle driven by Portumna defeat

DE LA Salle’s heavy defeat to Portumna in the All-Ireland club hurling final of 2009 is the motivating force behind the Waterford club this year, according to captain Ian Flynn.

In their game with the Galway kingpins on St Patrick’s Day last year De La Salle went down to a 19 point defeat and Flynn said that has been driving them on.

“That’s been a big motivation for us this year,” said the full-back.

“We didn’t do ourselves justice that day and we’re keen to make amends.”

On Sunday the Waterford side edged out Tipperary champions Thurles Sarsfields in a tight game played in Arctic conditions at Páirc Ui Chaoimh, coming out on the right side of a 0-9 to 0-8 scoreline.

“Thurles Sars are a very good team, we were delighted with the win,” said Flynn.

“The fact that it was a tough, hard game will stand to us when we get into the All-Ireland series.

“With no disrespect to the teams we played in the last few rounds of the Waterford championship, we won those games pretty handily, so we needed a good game to get ourselves right for the All-Ireland.

“We had another tight game in the Munster semi-final over (Cork champions) Sarsfields so we’ve been getting good games under our belt.”

Flynn agreed that the Waterford club showed the benefit of their experience in closing out the final against Thurles.

“Definitely it was a big help, the fact that we’d been there before a couple of years ago. We knew if we kept going that we’d have a chance, that Thurles Sars would come back at us in the second half but that we’d get our chance, and when we did we took it, thank God.”

Flynn also paid credit to his fellow defenders for keeping Thurles’ lethal attack, including this season’s Hurler of the Year Lar Corbett, at bay but he conceded that they had given little thought to their All-Ireland semi-final opponents, Clarinbridge of Galway.

“We’ve got a good defence, we have physically strong players which is a good help at this time of year when the conditions are so heavy.

“We were so focused on the game against Thurles that we haven’t really thought about who we’re going to play in the semi-final. We’ll enjoy this win for the next couple of nights and then we’ll get back down to work and prepare for the next day out.”

Picture: De La Salle’s Conan Watt (centre) celebrates with Bryan Phelan and John Keane following their defeat of Thurles Sars on Sunday. Pic: ©INPHO/Cathal Noonan