The pain of losing last year's final to Oulart-The Ballagh drove Cuala to an historic Leinster club SHC success yesterday according to Mark Schutte. 

The back-to-back Dublin champions were like men possessed as they powered to victory over favourites O'Loughlin Gaels to become the first club from the capital to claim provincial hurling honours since Crumlin in 1979/80.

"Last year we were heartbroken to be honest," county star and goal-scorer Schutte is quoted in the Irish Daily Mirror.

"Coming back this year, it was probably hard to look past Dublin, but we knew we wanted to win the Leinster title. At the start of the year, we set that as a goal but we had to take it each step at a time. We had a couple of huge battles in Dublin, we nearly got caught there. The last three matches, we've kind of come into our own and credit to the lads, they've worked tremendously hard since losing that Leinster final last year, to come back and win it.

"You've got six games to win a Dublin championship before you think of a Leinster championship. We took it as a step-by-step process and thank God we did. We really performed in the last few matches."

Looking ahead to February's All-Ireland club SHC semi-final against Ulster champions Slaughtneil, Schutte said: "Slaughtneil have done incredible things in Ulster so theyr'e going to be a huge task for us. We'll sit down in the next few weeks and look forward to that, but we'll enjoy tonight."

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