Galway manager Micheál O’Donoghue says he’s delighted for his players after the Tribesmen triumphed to their first Leinster senior hurling championship title in eight years yesterday evening.

Darragh Neary, Aaron Niland (penalty), Conor Cooney and John Fleming struck Galway's goals in a 4-29 to 4-15 victory over Dublin at Croke Park – a result which also sees them cementing their place in the All-Ireland semi-finals.

Speaking to RTE Sport afterwards, O’Donoghue said that getting their hands on the coveted Bob O’Keeffe Cup had been a chief objective for his squad.

"If we go back a couple of months it was our number one target, our number one aim to get back to a Leinster final and obviously win it," he said.

"Coming into it, the build-up, I've probably never been involved in a game where we had so many injuries coming into it and you know in fairness to the lads, to a man they were absolutely brilliant today.

"I think when you come to a final ultimately you want the biggest performance and if we reflect back on last year (when they were beaten by Kilkenny) we were really disappointed that we didn't give the performance that we wanted to bring and I thought today we did.

"The team is in a fair transition. Because we hit a decent stride early in the league there was a lot of expectation where the lads were still learning their stripes if you like. Six lads got their first Leinster final today."

The 2017 All-Ireland winning boss added: "As both competitions grew, I think we got better and really just I'm so happy for the lads, they deserved it so much. Yeah, we're in a good position but as I said our number one aim was to to win this. We've our target accomplished and we need the month now to recover and get some injuries back and have a right go in four weeks time."

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