Kilkenny boss Brian Cody hailed his players for fighting to the very end of their Leinster Championship clash with Dublin on Sunday.
Dublin led going into the dying minutes only for the Cats to rally and win by 1-24 to 3-16.
Speaking to Off the Ball's Oisin Langan about his immediate emotion after the match, Cody said: "It was a feeling of relief of course, relief and obviously joy. When we stop to think about it - we have two points.
"Five minutes to go, three minutes to go, people would be expecting that this game was Dublin's and they played outstandingly well, there's no doubt about that.
"To be honest, what it proved again was that you keep going to the very end. I'm always talking about the spirit of the team and the attitude of the players was top class.
"Did we play as well as we would liked to have? No we didn't. Are all the lads happy with the performance? No they're not but looking at the players we have, the collective, the whole panel and the players that came on - all I can do is give them absolute credit for the way they refused to lay down.
"People talk about this new way we're playing and everything else - we're not! We hand it over to the players really and let them make the decisions. And, when you're under pressure in the game, you don't always make the best decisions with the ball and that happened to us a few times.
"At other times, we did very well but that's hurling and that's the game it's played and there's no set pattern, there's no set structure to it and they were very difficult to play against - there's no doubt about that."
Cody is moulding a new team after several high-profile retirements of the last number of years and believes his young side will be the better after the close contest with Dublin.
"The reality is you can't buy experience. You can't just pick it up and read about it and say 'I'm now experienced' - you can only gain experience by sampling what it's all about.
"I said after the league final: 'Now teams go up several notches - not just one or two' - it goes up several notches because it's the championship now and it's a different ball game.
"And, a lot of our players have been exposed to that for the very first time and you've got to learn on your feet and realise on your feet and it's difficult," he added.
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