Some of the stars of Kilkenny's All-Ireland win were to the fore as Graigue-Ballycallan reached their first Leinster hurling final at the expense of Catletown of Laois at Dr Cullen Park, Carlow on Saturday.
Castletown, who had a superbly accurate dead-ball expert in David Cuddy - he scored 0-5 in total - led 0-5 to 0-2 after 18 minutes. But slowly the class of the Kilkenny champions began to show and in the 30th minute county panellist Eddie Brennan put them in front for the first time, 0-6 to 0-5.
Denis Byrne was fouled in the large parallelogram deep in first-half injury time, but his fierce drive from the penalty rose high and over the bar.
However, within half a minute of the restart Byrne found the Castletown net. Lovely interplay between Adrian Ronan, Michael Hoyne and John Hoyne set him up for a close-range goal.
Castletown lost the plot after that, going 33 minutes without a score. Their opponents were rampant, with substitute Tomas Dermody scoring his side's second goal in the 41st minute while Ronan picked off some trademark points from play.
The Graigue defence, in which Johnny Butler was outstanding at right corner back, rebuffed the efforts of the lightweight Castletown attack to reduce the deficit.
GRAIGUE-BALLYCALLAN: J Ronan; J Butler, P O'Dwyer, J Ryall; T McCluskey, T Comerford, A Hoyne; James Young (0- 1), E O'Dwyer; D Byrne (1-1), J Hoyne, M Hoyne (0-4); A Ronan (0-3), Joe Young, E Brennan (0-1). Subs: T Dermody (1-2) for J Young; D Hoyne for Byrne; S Millea for J Hoyne; D Cleere for Brennan.
CASTLETOWN: J Lyons; M Phelan, Paul Cuddy, J Hanlon (0-1); R Delaney, C Cuddy, J Palmer; D Cuddy (0-5), O Dooley; Pauric Cuddy, J Sullivan, M Butler; JR Kingston, F O'Sullivan, P Phelan (0-1). Subs: B Ferns for Kingston; M Cuddy for Butler.
Referee: B Kelly (Westmeath).
