Spur-red on by venue!

“We know they are an unbelievably good attacking team so we paid the price for that in that purple patch for them.

“You are constantly looking for dead-stops. Try to buy a bit of time in the tackle and then hopefully get your defensive line set and getting ready to go again.

“But what they are really good at is shifting the point of contact, and keeping the ball alive with offloads or whatever.

“So, it was tough, but I think it just goes to show the quality

of their attack. But it’s great for us now that happened. Loads of learnings are going to come from that game.

“Look forward to getting back to work on Monday and trying to fix a lot of the wrongs.”

Occasion

ever since.”

It is a contest between the two teams that have topped the competition betting since before a ball was kicked.

“It’s a final, it’s on the day, you’re up against top teams now whoever you face, it’s going to be a serious challenge, so it’s about making sure that we are the best versions of ourselves.

“For us, we just need to focus on ourselves and how we improve over the next few weeks and there’s lots of areas

There was a slender lead, three points is just one score, to be protected for the last five minutes.

Kelleher admits he was delighted to hear the final whistle: “Mix of everything we can improve upon.

“So it’s making sure the players have the right mentality in who they attack training and go after improvements and hopefully that will lead to a positive performance.”

Delighted

Cullen (right) was happy to ‘deliver’ a day out for his dad Frank and noted one player particularly delighted with the final venue.

“My old man is a Spurs fan, Garry Ringrose is a Spurs fan as well,” he said of the 62,850-capacity

really. Happy to get over the line, nervy ending, but I suppose we kinda parked it and enjoyed the occasion because we hadn’t really been able to soak much of it in.

“You’re playing at Croke

Park, it’s obviously a massive occasion for so much of this group, who would have grown up playing Gaelic football.

“It was just incredible. I didn’t really read too much into it at the end, so we will probably get our learnings on Monday and try to kick on.”

TH stadium.

“It’s an amazing stadium there so it will be a great occasion hopefully. We just need to embrace it for the challenge it is. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get to this point and now we are there it’s making sure that we deliver.

“For us, for the players that are lucky enough to get selected on the day, it’s about putting out their best versions of themselves and they’re able to show what they’re made of and the character that they have.”

HARD TO STOP: Ronan Kelleher is outnumbered in the tackle on Saturday