O’Loughlin Gaels manager Brian Hogan admitted that beating All-Ireland champions Ballyhale Shamrocks made last Sunday’s Kilkenny SHC final success all the sweeter.

Paddy Deegan’s injury-time point secured a fifth title for the city side and first since 2016 when the seven-time All-Ireland winning defender with Kilkenny was still playing.

"It's huge to win the senior county title in our own county but when you beat a team of the calibre of the Shamrocks, who have been the standard bearer in club hurling in the country for so many years, it just makes it that extra special," Hogan said in an interview with RTÉ.

"We have huge respect for them. If you're going to go and win it, you want to beat the best. We've done that. We always had belief. To be fair to the lads, they were there two years ago. They learnt a lot from it. We came within a puck of a ball of beating them.

"We've beaten them a couple of times. Some of the players would have been involved in 2015, 2016. And some lads would have played against them underage. So, there's huge respect there for them.

" We said to them that it wasn't going to be over until we were back in the dressing room with the Tom Walsh Cup sitting in on the table. Because of the calibre of the opposition, we knew it was going right to the wire."

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