How success opens doors. In the aftermath of the county's seventh national hurling league title, the Galway dressing room was Liberty Hall, with a media scrum, players and management all milling around contentedly. The county gets few opportunities to play big matches and this final had been looked on as a vital indicator of the developing team's potential for the summer ahead.

The attendance at yesterday's match was disappointing with only 15,553 turning out at Limerick's Gaelic Grounds. The figure was slightly up on last year's attendance when Galway had also played Tipperary, but given the form of the Connacht champions, it had been hoped that they might draw greater support than had turned out for the recent semi-finals in Thurles.

Manager Matt Murphy was too pleased with both the outcome and the performance to harbour many reservations about the level of public support. "They put their hands in the way and their legs in the way to protect the lead and when that's the attitude, a team's hard to beat."

In addition to the winner's obvious desire, there were a number of excellent performances, the most unexpected coming from David Tierney, a late call-up to the team. "We had hoped that Kevin Broderick would make it," said Murphy about his injured wing forward, who failed a fitness test on Saturday night. "But last year we got caught putting out fellas whose fitness was dodgy and we didn't want to go down that road again. Eugene Cloonan (who is suspended until July) and Kevin Broderick are nice options for us to have later on in the year."

"David Tierney we knew had a very good engine, we would have played him before except that he was involved with the county under-21 footballers, and we didn't want to stand in his way of maybe winning an All-Ireland with them."

Without a competitive provincial championship, the tone of Galway's summer is set by this sort of match. Murphy emphasised how important the result was to the team. "Anytime you lose, it knocks you back. Anyone who says differently is telling you a lie. Anytime you come up against a team that gets one over you, it's not good. Last year we weren't really mature enough. We're more mature now."

Down the corridor, Murphy's Tipperary counterpart Nicky English was reflecting on the loss of the one title won by his team last year. "We were in a good position, the goal after half-time came out of nothing; but they closed us down completely after that. Galway won so many positions today. I was happy that in a difficult position they (Tipperary) continued to fight; but I'm sure that if Waterford were watching in the stand they won't have been frightened by what they saw. There's a lot to do and not very long to do it."

In a fortnight's time Tipperary begin their championship with an arduous first round match against Waterford. English was able to derive some comfort from yesterday's events.

"We have played five league finals against Galway since 1989. The two years we won, we lost in the first round of the championship. A lot of our players showed that they needed a game and from that point of view hopefully today will have been useful. We have to sit down and look at where we are."

He was finally asked if he believed that the performance had been distracted by the prospect of their coming championship engagement.

"I hope so," he replied.