Former Tipperary All-Ireland SHC winner Shane McGrath believes Ballygunner will be talked about as one of the greatest club hurling teams of all time if they beat Loughrea in Sunday’s All-Ireland senior final.<\/p>\n
The Waterford men square up to their counterparts from Galway at Croke Park aiming to cement their status as a Munster and national powerhouse.<\/p>\n
Loughrea will certainly be no pushovers. They head for headquarters with young blood and plenty of pedigree, but McGrath is struggling to see past Ballygunner on the big day.<\/p>\n
“Loughrea have done back-to-back in Galway,” he told RT\u00c9 Radio 1’s Inside Sport. “People maybe forget that they lost out narrowly to Na Fianna last year who went on to win the club title. So I think they’ve been there now for a few years and they’ve been steadily building.<\/p>\n
“But when you look at Ballygunner’s record… they’ve won 12 in a row in Waterford, they’ve won six Munster titles, so four in the last five years, and they won their All-Ireland club title in 2022. If they go on and they win another All-Ireland cub title… Ballyhale for me are the greatest club hurling team ever, and Ballygunner, they really do go into that conversation if they win this All-Ireland club title.<\/p>\n
“I do see Ballygunner as the stronger side.”<\/p>\n
Loughrea are sweating on the availability of Cullen Killeen, who was sent off in the semi-final against Sleacht N\u00e9ill but has appealed the decision to the Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA).<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, McGrath sees plenty of quality.<\/p>\n
“Tiernan Killeen is a top player, Anthony Burns is a top player, Vince Morgan and Jamie Ryan, the four of them are serious forwards. And then if you’ve Darren Shaughnessy to throw back into that who didn’t feature in the semi-final, you know, he’s a big-game player for them too.<\/p>\n
“One of their older statesmen, Johnny Coen, I believe his nickname is ‘the Hoover’ because even when he was playing with Galway, he just sucked up, gathered up everything that came in, got it, did the simple thing with it and did it well. I believe that’s what he is and he’s continued that vein of form playing full-back with Loughrea.<\/p>\n
“But when it comes to the Ballygunner it’s like trying to put out fires, and I don’t know, do they have enough firefighters for all around the field.”<\/p>\n
\n
One man is particularly key to Ballygunner’s rhythm, according to McGrath: “If I take Stephen O’Keefe in goal, I think he’s still in my top three goalkeepers in the country, even though he stepped away from inter-county for some time now. But he has changed the way goalies play the game, in my opinion.<\/p>\n
“If they ever change the rule that you can’t do a back pass to goalies, I think Stephen O’Keefe would be one of the main reasons why.<\/p>\n
“Every Ballygunner lad knows if they can’t get it up the field or it’s not on, they’ll either switch the play or they’ll go back to him. So where it’s gone with Stephen O’Keefe now is that you nearly have to say as a forward, let the corner-back have it and I’ll actually go and man-mark the goalkeeper, which sounds mad, but that’s just the influence he has in the game.<\/p>\n
“I think the more influence he has on the game, the better Ballygunner play.<\/p>\n
“Then at the other end of the field, the better Dessie Hutchinson plays, the better Ballygunner are. He took 10 shots from play against St Martin’s in the semi-final, scored seven pints from play. So when Dessie ticks, it ticks up front, and when Stephen O’Keefe ticks, it ticks at the back.<\/p>\n
“My gut feeling, honestly, is with the way Croke Park plays, the space and how they use the space, and the quality of ball that they’re able to give in, and if Loughrea go with a sweeper or not with a sweeper, they’re still able to negate that sweeper so well, I just think that if they come and they perform, I couldn’t see anything but Billygunner winning.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Tipperary All-Ireland SHC winner Shane McGrath believes Ballygunner will be talked about as one of the greatest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-248575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}