Ballygunner claim 10th successive Waterford hurling title

Ballygunner 2-26 De La Salle 0-21

Record-breaking runs can be problematic. They create pressure beyond immediate goals and can become a burden on teams. Ballygunner showed no inhibitions in pushing their remarkable Waterford hurling championship achievements to historic levels and beyond: now the only club to have won 10 consecutive titles and unbeaten in 55 matches since 2013.

Manager Darragh O’Sullivan said that the perfect 10 hadn’t been mentioned in the lead-up to the final.

“We did early on in the year and I said the other day, we changed the narrative around the 10 and make it totally something different to us. I think they showed with freedom there today that they weren’t burdened by expectation.”

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Sunday’s final at a gleaming Walsh Park with its freshly unveiled refurbishment work played out before an underwhelming attendance of approximately 2,500 but there was nothing understated about the champions’ performance.

Two goals in the space of three minutes towards the end of the first half from the in-form Peter Hogan and veteran Pauric Mahony put the match out of the reach of De La Salle, who for their refusal to throw in the towel, were engaged essentially in damage limitation from then on, having trailed by eight at the break, 2-12 to 0-10.

Despite that battling and committed display by the challengers, for whom Ruben Halloran excelled, accumulating 0-12, including four from play and only hit his first wide with time ebbing away and the contest settled, Ballygunner were simply too good.

Their established strengths were on display: thoughtful build-up from the back, effective use of the ball at centrefield and the luxury of an attack in which all starting personnel scored from play – by contrast, apart from Halloran and Thomas Douglas, who had an excellent second half, none of the challengers’ forwards managed to do so.

The early stages had been well-contested although Ballygunner even then had a slight edge, leading by a couple of points through the first quarter. There were frustrations and Adam Farrell was keeping a firm watch on Kevin Mahony – although the full forward would break out of that cage in the second half.

The second quarter defined the match, as acknowledged by O’Sullivan.

“In fairness, the lads went for the throat. Pauric Mahony’s goal: he had a chance to take a point but he went straight at it ... put it over Jake’s head. brought us from five to eight [ahead], gave us that breathing space. So we went in eight ahead and absolutely we were happy with how we performed.”

Hogan had scored the first, embellishing an already lively display by taking a ball from Kevin Mahony and driving it confidently to the net in the 24th minute. Now, daylight was observable between the teams. Pauric Mahony’s score stretched it further.

It came just after De La Salle goalkeeper Shaun O’Brien had stopped Dessie Hutchinson, one-on-one but from the puck-out, Mahony got possession and as his manager said, disdained the easy point, instead popping it over Jake Dillon’s head and running on to score the second goal in the 28th minute.

At 2-12 to 0-10, there weren’t many who didn’t regard the 10th as an inevitability before the second half got under way.

Maybe if De La Salle had made a sensational scoring burst on the restart, such resignation might have been shown to be misplaced but instead Ballygunner shot a couple of points in riposte to Halloran’s opening score.

O’Brien was needed to keep out another possible goal when saving from Pauric Mahony, five minutes into the half but his team couldn’t get traction on the scoreboard.

This was largely down to the champions’ freewheeling attack that managed 13 times to follow up concession of a score with one of their own within a minute.

Thomas Douglas gave Halloran some decent support and scored four from play.

Ballygunner won with Hutchinson and Patrick Fitzgerald not hitting top gear but both scored decent totals.

Kevin Mahony had a splendid second half to end up with 0-5 from play, his team-mates perceptively playing into him as his influence grew.

The champions now chase another record, a third successive Munster club title. O’Sullivan was asked about the impact of last year’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Ballyhale, which cost them their title.

“We are really good at analysing our defeats. We learn more from our defeats than we do from our victories. We broke it down and we tried to find areas where we could improve.

“I think we may have. We’ll see later on, as we enter the next competition. Today was another competition. Focus on the Cork championship now, as first round of that [Munster] is against the Cork champions. We’ll do a bit of work on that.”

The work of winning never stops.

BALLYGUNNER: S O’Keeffe (j-c); I Kenny, B Coughlan, T Foley; H Ruddle, Philip Mahony (j-c), S O’Sullivan; C Sheahan (0-3), P Leavey (0-1); P Hogan (1-2), Pauric Mahony (1-8, 0-6f), M Mahony (0-2); D Hutchinson (0-3), K Mahony (0-5), P Fitzgerald (0-2).

Subs: R Power for Ruddle (51 mins), J Foley for Hogan (54 mins), B O’Keeffe for Kenny (56 mins), S Harney for T Foley (61 mins).

DE LA SALLE: S O’Brien; C Keane, A Farrell, D Lalor (0-1); E Barrett (capt; 0-3), J Dillon (0-1), L Dwyer; J Fagan, S Carton; R Halloran (0-12, 0-7f, 0-1 65), E Meaney, J Twomey; T Douglas (0-4), K Moran, C McCann.

Subs: B Cunningham for Meaney (41 mins), T Moran for Dwyer (45 mins), C Morris for Carton (57 mins), K O’Sullivan for Lalor (57 mins), R Duke for McCann (57 mins).

Referee: N Barry (Passage)