Galway's young guns will have 'learned in the fire'

Galway manager Micheal Donoghue feels his younger players will have "learned in the fire" of their 11-point defeat by Limerick in Sunday's All-Ireland hurling final.

The Tribesmen arrived at Croke Park with high hopes following an impressive wins over Dublin and Cork, but were unable to hit anywhere near the same heights against a Limerick team that was at its most ruthless best.

While Jason Rabbitte and Aaron Niland - who also lost this year's All-Ireland U20 final - enjoyed productive afternoons, overall Galway just couldn't get into any flow as Limerick lured them into the trap and capitalised time and again.

It proved a day in which some harsh lessons were learned, but Donoghue is confident his players will be better for the experience.

"For the first quarter I thought we were ok, but forcing it a bit and not playing our game," the Galway manager said.

"You have to give full credit to them as they nullified it, closed us down and the amount of turnovers they had gave them a massive platform.

"It's bitter today and will hurt for a few days, but I said over the last number of weeks the younger fellas have to be exposed to big games. They learned in the fire today and it's a tough one to take, but we'll soak it up and go again."

While Galway stormed into the final, Limerick squeezed home in a Munster final against Cork and again in the All-Ireland semi-final against Clare.

The form guide suggested a close encounter was on the cards, but Limerick tore into the game to win the early battles which saw them build the platform to dominate the overall war.

"You have to give Limerick huge credit for their performance and consistency over the 70 minutes," Donoghue added.

"We were five down [as half-time] and at that stage we probably would have taken that in hope we'd produce a bigger second half.

"When you reflect on Limerick and the season they've had up to today, you were measuring it against lesser performances, so fair play to them as on the biggest day, they produced their best performance."

Earlier in the campaign, Cathal Mannion's deeper role than the number 11 on his back relates to proved a key cog for Galway's style of play, creating space in attack to thrive on the counter.

Mannion didn't fulfil either role but Donoghue accepted anything his players tried, Limerick had an answer for.

"In games we had Cathal coming back, our best periods were when we pushed up.

"That was unnoticed a tad, but if you go back to the Dublin and Cork games, we were better when we pressed and today, we dropped off early at one side and they still hurt us, pressed and they still hurt us, so today is about crediting Limerick."