"HARD WORK." Pat Nally, the Athenry manager, gets straight to the point. "You can put that in inverted commas and underline it as well."

Without any effort to hide his delight, Nally walks through the winning dressing-room freely disclosing just what it takes to beat the reigning All-Ireland champions.

"If people only realised the effort and training that goes into something like this," he says. "It's easy print it and easy talk about it, but being there to see it is really something else. That's what it's all about and that's what paid off."

Slowly, he reveals a little more. "Well, if desire will ever win anything then it won this for us today. Our approach to the game was absolutely magnificent. St Joseph's certainly showed their worth in the first half but I think our hurling in the second half went up at least two gears. We needed that.

"It wasn't as enjoyable to watch out on the line but that second-half performance was out of this world. You have to give an awful lot of credit to St Joseph's but we wanted this and it was only a matter of reaching out a little more. Every man applied himself and wanted to get to that ball no matter where it dropped."

Nally can only laugh about the talk of animosity towards St Joseph's after the disappointment of last year. "Nothing could be further from the truth. It was all about our game and playing to our potential."

Yet there was a little more eagerness in their preparations, admits Eugene Cloonan. "I still remember the dressing-room after losing the semi-final last year," he says. "It was an awful place. It took us a while to get back into it but we really knuckled down after Christmas and made a big effort to get through the Galway championship. There was a pact that we'd make an extra effort to go all the way this year. "The start of the second half today was the key," he adds, "and it was great to get a few points ahead of them. Still, St Joseph's are never beaten until the final whistle. I think it's sweeter coming back now and winning it again. We really knew what we were about this year."

With all his usual modesty, Joe Rabbitte talks only of good fortune. "We knew if we got the rub of the green then we could win this game," he says. Brian Hanley is that bit more emotional: "You can get worn out and tired but we sat down some 13 months ago and started dreaming about this day. You have to think that way now."

For St Joseph's trainer Louis Mulqueen, the long journey finally ran out of road. "You dread this moment when things don't happen on the big stage," he says. "I've been saying the bubble had to burst but if we were going to lose a game we didn't want it to be today."

"I suppose the desire to win was a little more evident in their game. We should have taken control towards the end of the first half but they took the scores when we should have. We missed positions and we missed frees and when you come up against a team like Athenry then all players must click. That didn't happen for us.

"Mentally and physically we were ready but when the ball hops, you have to devour it and they did that more than us. Still, I told the lads that losing one game in three years doesn't make them a bad team. That one step more was hard to find today but that doesn't mean we can't find it again."