O'Loughlin Gaels manager Brian Hogan said his side had "beaten the best" in dethroning All-Ireland champions Ballyhale Shamrocks to win their first KIlkenny SHC title since 2016.
The Kilkenny city outfit blew the club championship wide open with a dramatic one-point win, county star Paddy Deegan nailing a score two minutes into injury-time to break Shamrock hearts.
Manager Hogan, a decorated Kilkenny star of the 2000s and 2010s, was part of all four previous county championship triumphs as a player between 2001 and 2016 and has now guided the club to their fifth title.
"It's huge to win the senior county title in our own county but when you beat a team of the calibre of the Shamrocks, who have been the standard bearer in club hurling in the country for so many years, it just makes it that extra special," Hogan told Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1.
"We have huge respect for them. If you're going to go and win it, you want to beat the best. We've done that.
"We always had belief. To be fair to the lads, they were there two years ago. They learnt a lot from it. We came within a puck of a ball of beating them.
"We've beaten them a couple of times. Some of the players would have been involved in 2015, 2016. And some lads would have played against them underage. So, there's huge respect there for them.
"But there was a belief there and we would have talked about that. Playing the way we want to play. Making sure as much as we can that we impose our own game. We said to them that it wasn't going to be over until we were back in the dressing room with the Tom Walsh Cup sitting in on the table. Because of the calibre of the opposition, we knew it was going right to the wire."
Ballyhale's A-list forwards, TJ Reid, Eoin Cody and Adrian Mullen, racked up 0-14 (0-08 from play) of the defending champions' tally of 0-19, but Hogan's side crucially prevented the concession of a goal.
Here, Hogan was quick to credit the forwards, who served as the first line of the defence.
"Our defence started in the forwards because you have to inhibit the supply of ball coming into Eoin Cody and TJ, to give our lads some chance. And I thought our forwards did really well in that respect.
"The Shamrocks go for the jugular. There's no team better than them when they get a run on you, they do try and kill you off. We were aware of that and it was important we kept it tight.
"But when you've got lads on the edge of the square like Huw Lawlor and Tony Forristal, you know you're in a good position. Outside him, you've the likes of Jordan (Molloy) and Paddy Deegan, the list is endless. We had Conor Heary, wing-forward, back in the last play of the game catching a ball in the square and coming out with it."
Up front, Mark Bergin landed a total of 0-10, three coming from play. Bergin, who was appointed Kilkenny captain for 2017 in the wake of O'Loughlin Gaels' last county championship win, had been on the edges of the county panel but played a starring role for the club as they returned to the summit.
"He was phenomenal. I hurled with Mark for years, he was inside in the Kilkenny panel with us.
"He really played a captain's role. He's given huge service to the club. He led by example there in the forward line."
