Larry O'Gorman

The morale within the dressing room and out on the field of training was higher than I ever expected before because things were moving nicely.

We were hurling well.

We were confident.

But you're right.

When we got on the bus that Sunday morning to head to Crowe Park,

The same thing was hitting me as probably Liam Dunne and Martin Storey.

Here we go, Kilkenny in the first round.

Wow, we'd been up this journey before on numerous occasions and we just couldn't beat them.

For some reason, we believed it as far as we got to Croke Park, but when you get into the dressing room, you might say, it's the old Kilkenny once again.

Here's the team that we could never beat.

Is there a chance that we can overturn them?

Into the dressing room, got talked out, get your heads right, get focused.

Into the training room, Liam Griffin had these little plaques on the wall about work rate, hassle, winning.

All these little thoughts were floating around our heads.

We got to believe in ourselves and that's what was drilled into us.

And as soon as we went out, I think we carried it from the training to the crow park out onto the field of play.

We did play, we played quite well.

Yes, going through the game you still think we were waiting for Kilkenny to make some kind of comeback and beat us.

And they weren't too far away from in the end.

Yeah.