Dessie Hutchinson: Ballygunner loss to Borris-Ileigh 'made us stronger'

Hutchinson, who hit 1-9 in Ballygunner’s emphatic win over Roanmore in Sunday’s Waterford SHC final, was already thinking of the Munster club championship at the final whistle

Tue, 05 Oct, 2021 - 06:00

Michael Moynihan

Dessie Hutchinson, who hit 1-9 in Ballygunner’s emphatic win over Roanmore in Sunday’s Waterford county final, was already thinking of the Munster club championship at the final whistle — and maybe avenging defeat by Borris-Ileigh in their last outing in the competition back in 2019.

“It’s probably made us stronger more than anything,” said Hutchinson of that loss to the Tipperary champions. “We know we can’t have that happen again and that’s not taking anything away from Borris-Ileigh because they were the better team on the day.

“We know though that there are bigger and better performances in us so hopefully we’ll realise that.”

Hutchinson’s early goal in Sunday’s county final was a key score in the game: “Yeah, Tadhg Foley made an unbelievable run up the pitch and I did the easy bit but all credit to him. We know we have to work the ball better against the wind. We’re not stupid either. We knew we couldn’t be hitting the ball from deep because the way Roanmore were set up, they’d have cleaned up. Thankfully that worked for us.”

In the semi-final Mount Sion nearly beat Ballygunner, a close call which spurred Hutchinson and his colleagues on.

“I wouldn’t say it gave us a shock but it definitely drove us on. Mount Sion are a serious team in fairness and are doing a lot of work.

“That game could have gone either way last week but we knew coming into a county final that we shine in finals — that was the most important thing.

“It wasn’t to do with Roanmore’s performance — we just knew what we had to do.

“They’re a very good team in fairness to them. We were worried because of their work-rate and everything over the last few games so we targeted that intensity and came out on top. Our hurling shone throughout.”

There’s an eight-week gap now to their Munster club opener. “You have to enjoy county finals, if you don’t they’re not worth winning,” said Hutchinson. “We’re lucky in Ballygunner that it’s our eighth in a row but there are some lads out there and it was their first county final.

“We’ll enjoy ourselves over the next few days but come Wednesday week we’ll go back and we’re looking forward to our Munster club. We know we have to go on to better things.”

There’s also some unfinished business at county level with Waterford, he added: “It’s been two good years but we didn’t achieve what we wanted to achieve.

“Liam’s (Cahill, manager) did a brilliant job with us but there’s definitely more in us with Waterford. We need to win an All-Ireland or need to win a trophy so that’s the aim.

“As players we were worried for a while whether he would go or not (Cahill was linked to the Tipperary manager’s job) but it shows the confidence he has in us and we need to repay him for that faith and really work hard this coming year for him.”