Galway manager Alan Flynn heaped praise on his charges for the character shown as the Tribesmen claimed their second Cadbury All-Ireland Under 21 Football title in three years tonight at Limerick's Gaelic Grounds.

1-14 to 0-8 ahead with 18 minutes remaining Galway were in firm control on the score-board. However, they failed to score for the remainder of the game, with Cork cutting the deficit to three points, but the Rebels couldn't find that extra-time forcing goal as Galway held out for their fifth All-Ireland success.

"It's a measure of Cork that they weren't going to throw in the towel," Flynn said.

"They were always going to come back and really throw everything at us.

"Over the five games our guys have shown great character and that is one of the aspects of this team that has grown in particular since the Sligo game.

"The spirit, character - whatever you want to call it. They never give in and whatever is thrown at them they keep coming back and keep being positive about things. There were times tonight for instance they showed that.

"I was really pleased in the first half where Cork got a couple of scores and we came back straight away getting another score on top of it. It was really killing their momentum.

"In all of Cork's games so far they would have been getting three, four, five scores in-a-row. We never really allowed them to do that today."

Flynn was also hugely pleased to see 1-10 of his sides 1-14 tally come from open play.

"We have fantastic forwards and we would have felt that with the platform we have at midfield with Fionntain (Ó Curraoin) and Tom (Flynn), that we would get enough ball into them and if we did they were going to do damage.

"We felt that they were going to be very hard to hold because they are so good on their feet. The conditions I felt in some ways was actually suiting them, because the defenders were finding it hard to stay on their feet.

"Our guys, the likes of Ian Burke are so good on their feet that they were going to be able to get a couple of scores for us."

But it wasn't just the Galway forwards who were keen for scores, with defenders David Cunnane and Paul Varley also getting on the scoresheet - all part of the plan according to Flynn.

"It was part of the plan to go for it and go on the attack," he said.

"Our mantra is to it's very hard to stop a team that is coming at you all the time and coming forward at pace.

"Between them and the pressure and the tackling that we have at the back, lads doing a lot of running and a lot of tracking, but they are willing to do that for the team and thankfully it worked out today." Tweet

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