LEINSTER SHC ‘A’ FINAL
Boss O’Brien hails Dublin North’s historic Leinster victory
Daire Walsh
LAST Thursday afternoon at Dr Cullen Park was a historic occasion for Dublin North as the side claimed its first Leinster Schools Senior Hurling ‘A’ Championship title with a stunning 1-14 to 1-11 victory against St Kieran’s College.
With Micheál Murphy and Sean Currie leading the way, the Metropolitans registered five points without reply to deny the much-fancied Kilkenny outfit. They showed remarkable resilience in the final-quarter and North manager Paul O’Brien believes their experience of high level inter-county fare stood them in good stead.
“We were leading at half-time and then Kieran’s pushed on a little bit to go two up. We did clip the last five points of the game. In fairness, there’s an awful lot of that team who would have played minor or under-17 last year in high-calibre games in Croke Park,” O’Brien explained.
“Those lads are used to keeping in tough games at the business end of championship in a high-pressure environment. There’s a lot of good lads there.”
While North’s status as a combined college means they can’t compete in the All-Ireland series, there is no denying the significance of this victory for Dublin hurling.
Given the history of the competition, and also the fact that provincial successes for the county have been few and far between, O’Brien sees it as a great achievement for the squad – which is led on the field by St Aidan’s CBS star Lee Gannon.
“We always knew we weren’t going into an All-Ireland series, so Leinster was our focus all year. There’s not too many Dublin lads with Leinster medals and I consider that a really strong Leinster medal to be winning with the 100 years of history of the Corn Ui Dhuill,” he added.