Cuala boss Austin O’Malley hailed his side’s composure after they withstood a second half fightback by Coolera-Strandhill to reach the All-Ireland club SFC final against Errigan Ciarán.

Leading by seven points at half-time, the first-time Dublin and Leinster champions saw their advantage reduced to two midway through the second half before finishing strongly to win by five.

“I was confident,” O’Malley told reporters.

“I knew when they came that we'd had enough of intelligence out there and we'd spoke about different scenarios probably that we would need to be clever on and it was a matter of getting momentum back and building better phases and maybe for ourselves to be a little bit more clever in terms of dropping the tempo of the game.

“We rushed a couple of little bits on our transitions and our counters in the second half and left a little bit behind us in terms of poor shot execution. We got caught with a couple of turnovers and that's the stuff that feeds and gives energy to teams.

“So we need to be a lot cleverer on that going and it's something we really have to look at this week.”

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