A deflated Micheál Donoghue admitted that Galway’s performance against Kilkenny wasn’t good enough.

The Galway manager made no attempt to hide his disappointment after goals from Eoin Cody, Adrian Mullen and Martin Keoghan helped Kilkenny to a surprisingly comfortable 3-24 to 0-21 Leinster SHC opening round victory at UPMC Nowlan Park.

“We know first and foremost, it’s not an acceptable performance,” said Donoghue, whose side are now facing a must-win game against Offaly in Tullamore next Saturday if they’re to have any chance of reaching the Leinster final.

“It’s not what we expected. I thought first quarter of the game we weren’t too bad. We made some individual and collective mistakes and Kilkenny pounced on that and went in at half-time six points up and deservedly so.

“Second half then, where you’re chasing the game and when we turned it over like we did, you leave yourself open at the back and we got punished for it.”

His opposite number Derek Lyng was pleased with how Kilkenny played after a sluggish start.

“At times, it just takes time to settle into the game. It definitely took us 20 minutes, I thought we were not in the flow of it,” he said.

“But I felt after that we were very good. We were attacking the ball, just some weren’t coming off. As the game wore on we felt we were a lot more comfortable on the ball.”

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