Collecting a third title has elevated Ryan ahead of hurling luminaries and two-time winners like Davy Fitzgerald (Clare), Pat Hartigan (Limerick), Albert Shanahan (Limerick), Cillian Kiely (Offaly) and Fion\u00e1n Mackessy (Kerry).<\/p>\n
“It’s a great competition, the last couple of years have been so close, the same again today with myself and Bobby,” said Ryan. “There was only a shot between us. There were some big hitters out there.<\/p>\n
“I shot well from the very start. I thought I was in the lead from the first turn on the course. I knew that if I just kept tipping away with solid strikes that I had a good chance.<\/p>\n
“Coming towards the end then, I knew that I had seven shots to get home and from just gauging it in my head, I kind of knew that I’d get home within that shot range.”<\/p>\n
Ryan said it was sheer relief after completing his final puck having set the pace all afternoon.<\/p>\n
“You don’t breathe out until you’re over the finish line because if you mess up one strike, or miscue it, you’re in trouble,” he said. “Last year it came down to metres in the end, so you need to make the most out of every single strike.”<\/p>\n
Ryan said it was nice to do it over the full 5km course having come out on top in 2021 and 2025 across a shortened track.<\/p>\n
“It was nice to do it over the full course and in good weather,” he agreed.<\/p>\n
Ryan, who played at midfield for a star-studded Limerick U-21 team when they won the All-Ireland in 2017, and who won his first senior medal in 2018, thanked friends and family for helping him get over the winning line in the north east.<\/p>\n
“I have to give a mention to the boys, Conor McCarthy, Conor Roche, PJ Butler, Noah Deere,” said Ryan. “My girlfriend, Grace, her mother, Kate Kelly, Ned Gammell, Dan the Man, Kate’s young fellas, Eoin and Se\u00e1n, I had a really good crew of lads helping me, and Jerry as well, Grace’s father, so a great crew, which you need. Hopefully I’ll be back up to defend the cup again next year.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Westmeath’s Conor Raleigh held onto the U-16 title, requiring just 22 pucks to complete the course and seeing off Antrim’s Damien Laverty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collecting a third title has elevated Ryan ahead of hurling luminaries and two-time winners like Davy Fitzgerald (Clare),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-582204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582204","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=582204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}