Ciaran Kilkenny has revealed that Jim Gavin gave him a license to thrill to help secure Dublin’s five-in-a-row.
After failing to muster even a single scoring attempt in the drawn final, Kilkenny was ordered to be more ruthless.
Within 90 seconds of the replay he’d scored his first point and the Castleknock attacker was named Man of the Match, finishing with 0-4.
Kilkenny said: “Our inside forwards had been playing really well all year, they were electric, so my mindset for the first game was that as soon as I got the ball, give it to the best man in the best position, get these guys on the ball.
“We had a meeting with the guys after the game, the management team and a few players. They just said, ‘Ciaran, we need you to get scoring’.
“So my mindset completely changed for the second game. I was like, ‘As soon as I get this ball, I’m going to take my man on and I’m either going to get a shot away or I’m going to put him under pressure to try to create a free’.
“I was still trying to get the balance right of giving it off to the guy in the best position, but as soon as I got the ball my first instinct was to take my man on.”
Afterwards, Kilkenny was ecstatic, roaring to the crowd in a live TV interview, ‘We did it!’.
The 26-year-old reflected: “When that final whistle blew, I’ve never felt anything like that before in my life.”
He celebrated with his colleagues for several days before jetting out to New York on the Wednesday with fellow forwards Dean Rock and Paddy Andrews, returning yesterday.
They were having breakfast in Times Square one morning when an Irish waitress congratulated them on the five-in-a-row.
Kilkenny added: “Even Irish Americans that wouldn’t be big GAA fans, you hear them saying, ‘Hey, you guys did the five-peat!’.
“To witness how far it stretched around the world was special. And humbling for us.”
Yet back at home the debate around Dublin’s perceived advantages, financial and otherwise, raged on.
Kilkenny said: “If you saw where we train in the off-season... it’s muddy, there’s no warm showers, you have to put in the hard yards and that’s essentially it, hard work and dedication that we’ve put in over the last number of years.”
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