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Kilkenny's Cillian Buckley with manager Richie Mulrooney at INPHO/Donall Farmer
All-Ireland U21HC

Mulrooney and McGrath set for U21 battle

Richie Mulrooney and Conor McGrath offer their thoughts to TheScore.ie on tonight’s All-Ireland U21 final.

THEY MAY HAVE won four of the last nine national U21 titles and lost two deciders in the same time frame yet Kilkenny manager Richie Mulrooney insists that his key objective is to develop players for the Cats senior sides ahead of tonight’s Bord Gáis Energy All-Ireland final against Clare.

“We would have had three aims at the start of the year and they were to win Leinster, win the All-Ireland and ensure the progression of players so they would be ready to play senior afterwards. I would say that ahead of the final, I’d regard the last one as the most important of the three. The performances of some of our lads have been very good this season and puts them in a good position to move forward after this year.
“Walter Walsh, Ger Aylward and John Power have been scoring excellently and I think they’ll have future senior careers. But while the lads are scoring inside, they were benefitting from the huge work rate out the field.

“They’re a great bunch to work with. I was a selector with the Kilkenny U21 team that won the All-Ireland in 2004 and was a selector the following year when we lost the final. But I was manager of the minors from 2008 to 2010 and it was a very natural progression to the U21′s.”

Mulrooney has been impressed with the development of their opponents Clare.

“They’re a smashing side and have some very skillful hurlers. I felt from the outset this season that to win the All-Ireland, a team would have to beat Clare. We’re still in that situation. They’ll make it very difficult for us to score given their style of play, they’re very good at protecting their goal.”

Meanwhile Clare captain Conor McGrath believes their U21 squad have benefitted from training collectively over the past month after their U21 preparations had been disrupted earlier this year by the number of players tied up with Davy Fitzgerald’s senior squad.

“We’ve been training together in recent weeks which has been brilliant. We rarely got to train together earlier in the year but it’s good now that we’ve been working together. We expected a tougher match against Antrim in the semi-final but we had club games the week after and the lads got good work outs there.

“Our management team have been excellent as well. Paul Kinnerk our trainer came to prominence at minor level over the last few years and he’s excellent. He’s still playing inter-county football with Limerick and he the commitment that it takes to succeed at this level. It’s going to take a huge performance to get over Kilkenny though but it would be great to lift the trophy.”

Clare v Kilkenny, Bord Gáis Energy All-Ireland U21HC final match guide

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