Anthony Cunningham says he was "well buoyed" by Galway's display against Kilkenny in the Leinster SHC final.

The Cats claimed the Bob O'Keeffe Cup for the 70th time with a 1-25 to 2-15 victory on July 5th but Cunningham was pleased enough with the Tribesmen's efforts to tell opposition manager Brian Cody after the final whistle that he'd see him again in September. His convictions were not misplaced as the two teams are due to meet again in Sunday's All-Ireland decider:

"There is no point in being here if you don't believe you are good enough to win the All-Ireland," the Galway manager says in The Irish Examiner. "If someone says at the start of the year, 'what's your ambition?' For us, it is always the All-Ireland. So if you are still in the competition on July 7th, for me it is the same as January 1st. We had gone quite close. There was only three in it in the 62nd minute. So for us…they are fine lines.

"The big thing that is staring you in the face is that you are in Croke Park, you have played the All-Ireland champions. If you say we are finished for the year, the wheels would come off. You wouldn't do that.

"It is a step backwards only if your performance is really, really low and you couldn't buy a performance - as has happened in some years, to be honest. But we were well buoyed by the performance. While we would have been unhappy with a lot of aspects in play, there was a huge basis to build on."

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