"Am I surprised? We've gone from game to game and genuinely that's the way we approached it. It's not our long-term ambition this year."

An 11th league success was not high on the agenda for Dublin supremo Jim Gavin back in February.

"What we did was we used today as part of that week's training, and today was as good as several training sessions."

The training camp in Portugal and yesterday's run-out against Dublin amounted to a good week's work for Malachy O'Rourke and Monaghan.

"Ken (O'Halloran) had to make two great saves and if either of those had gone in it could have been a different game. They were at crucial times of the game. But the overall feeling is we're happy with the progress, we'll keep our heads down and work away."

Cork rode their luck at times against Donegal according to manager Brian Cuthbert.

"We weren't geared to peak for a game today. We're out in a must-win game in Ulster (v Tyrone) on May 17 - we have to gear for that."

Cuthbert's Donegal counterpart Rory Gallagher won't lose any sleep over their semi-final defeat.

"The odds were stacked against a 2A team going up. We had to do it the hard way with back-to-back league titles. Antrim, in fairness, gave it a right rattle and we thought we might have missed our chance after the first half, we had a lot of missed goal chances."

Kerry hurling boss Eamonn Kelly celebrated a landmark victory on Saturday.

"I'm absolutely 100 per cent committed up until the end of next year."

The pressure is on Antrim manager Kevin Ryan but he's going nowhere.

"These guys must feel like the Queen of England where everything smells of paint or something. They have an awful lot of silverware collected over the last few years."

The students of Pobascoil Chorca Dhuibhne can do no wrong and manager Ciaran O Morain reflected on back-to-back Hogan Cup successes.

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