Portumna (Galway) 0-19 Mount Leinster Rangers (Carlow) 0-11: A comfortable Portumna side won their fourth All-Ireland club hurling title at Croke Park with a 0-19 to 0-11 win over Carlow club Mount Leinster Rangers .
Joe Canning contributed 10 points and the Galway club were able to call on the class of Damien Hayes and Ollie Canning to keep Mount Leinster at arms' length.
In the end, Mount Leinster’s fairytale journey only had so many miles in it. They made it to Croke Park by upsetting the odds and changing a lot of minds about what Carlow hurling had to offer, but when they got here they were damned by their own limitations.
They set up defensively with a view to keeping themselves in the game in the early stages and while it worked up to a point – they were only four behind with 15 minutes to go – they always struggled for scores. Their inside forwards were isolated too easily by the Portumna full back line and the ball coming into them was often aimless.
Portumna had no such worries putting scores on the board. Joe Canning played out around midfield and you always felt that if they had needed to turn the screw at all, they could have posted him at full forward to good effect. As it was, they got a steady supply of points from their half forward line of Kevin Hayes (two) alongside Damien Hayes and Ollie Canning (three each).
The Galway champions led by four at half-time and had stretched the margin out to six by the 43rd minute. Paul Coady was the best of the MLR forwards and when he and free-taker Denis Murphy reduced it to four soon after, you felt MLR had to gamble on pushing forward another attacker if they were to have any chance.
As it was, Portumna kept their cool, with Ollie Canning and Damien Hayes calmly slotting two scores in a minute to open up the gap again. Appropriately enough, Joe Canning saw them home with their last three points.
PORTUMNA: 1 K Keane; 2 C O'Hare, 3 E McEntee, 4 G Heagney; 5 P Smith, 6 M Dolphin, 7 E Lynch; 8 L Smith, 9 A Smith; 10 K Hayes (0-2) , 11 D Hayes (0-3) , 12 O Canning (0-3) ; R O'Meara (0-1) , 14 J Canning (0-10, 0-8 frees) , 15 N Hayes. Subs: 17 O Treacy for P Smith (45 mins); 20 P Dolphin for N Hayes (46 mins); 18 O Royston for O'Meara (60 mins).
MOUNT LEINSTER RANGERS: 1 F Foley; 2 M Doyle, 3 G Doyle, 4 G Kelly; 5 Diarmuid Byrne, 6 R Coady, 7 E Coady; 8 Derek Byrne, 9 P Nolan; 10 P Coady (0-3) , 11 E Byrne (0-1) , 12 D Phelan; 13 D Murphy (0-5, 0-4 frees) , 14 J Coady (0-1) , 15 E Doyle. Subs: 19 HP O'Byrne (0-1) for J Coady (36 mins); 22 J Murphy for Phelan (51 mins); W Hickey for E Doyle (55 mins); 17 B Nolan for Derek Byrne (59 mins); 21 D Greenan for Diarmuid Byrne (59 mins).
Referee: Barry Kelly (Westmeath)
