Micheál Donoghue defends Galway’s homecoming after Hurling League win

Galway manager Micheál Donoghue has defended the decision to hold a mini-homecoming celebration after their Allianz Hurling League final win.

Donoghue and captain David Burke addressed a gathering of supporters at the St Thomas’ club.

Eyebrows were raised by some commentators about a team chasing a first All-Ireland since 1988 holding such an event after a league win in April, though Donoghue rejected this.

“When you read something in the paper... if you read it you think you’re misinformed, if you don’t read it you’re uninformed,” said Donoghue.

“So look, we came back to Gort, we went to St Thomas’ which was the club of our captain, we went back there for half an hour where there was a lot of young lads.

“If people want to criticise us for doing that, that’s fair enough. We’re in this game to try to promote it as much as we can and we were happy to do that with the St Thomas’ club.”

The former AIB All-Ireland club title winning Clarinbridge boss insisted there was nothing over the top about Galway’s celebrations.

“No, absolutely not, absolutely not,” he continued. “It was, as I said, a situation that we came back to meet after the game and it was for half an hour and look, our preparations started again the following night so it had no bearing on anything at all.”

Galway are scheduled to face Dublin in the Leinster championship quarter-finals on May 28.

“For the last couple of weeks everything has been about preparing for that,” said Donoghue. “We’re three weeks out now, we’ve had a round of club games last weekend and a full round this weekend so three weeks of a run-in into it then. So looking forward to it.

“The whole objective of the league was to get to the latter stages and to get as many competitive games under our belt as we could in preparation for the championship.”

Cyril Farrell, Galway’s last All-Ireland winning manager from their 1988 success, tipped the league winners to go on and end their Championship famine this summer. Donoghue shrugged at the prediction and said the league win can only be a positive.

“Look, when you win any competition you’re going to get some confidence out of it,” he said.