Dublin hurling manager Pat Gilroy resisted the urge to pat himself on the back after coming within touching distance of beating Kilkenny at Parnell Park.
The visitors led right through the game before Liam Blanchfield’s injury-time goal inflicted defeat on Gilroy in what was his first match in the newly-remodelled Leinster Senior Hurling Championship.
Speaking to Oisin Langan, Gilroy could not hide his frustrations after running Brian Cody’s team so close.
“The only thing that was important was to get the win – let’s be honest,” Gilroy told Off The Ball.
“We weren’t coming here to make up the numbers or to get a moral victory. We wanted to win every game to get into a Leinster final.
“We’re just massively disappointed. This is not about performances – this is about wins. We’ll take the positives out of it for sure and why we didn’t win it.
“But at the end of the day we were here to win the game and we fully expected to.”
Reflecting on his team’s performance, Gilroy feels his side can improve despite an impressive showing at Parnell Park.
“We have to improve,” Gilroy added.
“We missed far too many chances in the first half [as well as] short balls and wides. We didn’t win enough ball in the last 10 minutes to really stem the tide.
“There’s a lot of things we can learn from the game but it’s about picking it up next week and doing it again.”
Gilroy agreed that his side’s creativity was something to be excited by but feels his side need to be more clinical in the future.
“We did and we could have got a couple more in the second half when the last pass just didn’t come off,” Gilroy said.
“There’s positives in that. We worked very hard in trying to limit goal chances and put bodies on the line.”
Written by James Hopper
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