Old guard restore order and ‘good hurlers’ do the business

Kilkenny 3-19 Galway 1-17

And why not? Just six days after shipping a most un-Kilkenny-like 3-3 in the final few minutes of the drawn game to throw away a ten-point lead, this latest edition of the Stripey-men looked much more like one of his all-conquering teams of recent years.

The difference, Brian? “The difference was that they (Galway) ran through us at the end of the game the last day essentially. The reality was that we had a nine-point lead with six minutes to go. You’d be annoyed to lose that lead. But, no excuses, we dropped our guard and they ripped us apart. We went out with a real determination that that wouldn’t be repeated and our defence was very strong, very solid all day.”