BRIAN HOGAN REVEALED that O’Loughlin Gaels’ Leinster club SHC final win came on the one-year anniversary of his first management team meeting.

The story goes that the seven-time All-Ireland winner with Kilkenny was initially part of the committee tasked with finding his club’s new boss before being thrown the reins himself.

The job came at a particularly difficult point in the club’s history as the 2011 All-Ireland finalists had exited the 2022 Kilkenny championship following a Round 1 defeat to Mullinavat.

Precisely a year later, they have settled all sorts of old scores, firstly beating Mullinavat in this year’s county quarter-final before dethroning holders and All-Ireland champions Ballyhale Shamrocks in the final. Now, three games later, they are Leinster champions for the third time, extending their impressive all-time provincial record to 11 wins from 13 outings.

But did Hogan see this coming a year ago, when O’Loughlin Gaels were on the floor?

“No, in one respect, I’d be lying if I said we sat down and said this was going to happen,” he said. “But we always felt we could get out of Kilkenny and you don’t know what could happen after that.

“Obviously the Shamrocks have been the standard bearers that way, at club level in Kilkenny and at national level. For us, really it was about getting back into the mix in Kilkenny and competing for a county title first and foremost. That was our initial goal.

“Obviously having achieved that then it was about enjoying the experience from the players’ perspective but then putting the challenge to them in terms of what’s next? Is that it or do they want to achieve more?

“That this is their team, we’ve all had our chance, we’ve done what we’ve done, that is all done and dusted, so this is their opportunity to make their mark.

“To be fair to them, they’ve been very clear in terms of what they wanted to do. A couple of players have made sacrifices along the way to ensure that they can be in a position to compete at this stage of the year.

“Look, it was just about having a conversation with them and once we agreed that, okay, ‘This is what ye want to do as a group of players’, then it was a case of, right, we go and we do it and we see where it takes us.”

O’Loughlin Gaels will be strong favourites to win their All-Ireland semi-final in a fortnight against the Ulster champions, Slaughtneil or Cushendall. It remains to be seen where that game is played though Croke Park appears unlikely with ladies football and camogie fixtures pencilled in for that weekend of 16/17 December.

“I think if we get to play here again, the surface is good,” said Hogan of Croke Park. “The surface in pretty much every other pitch in the country is not great. The groundsmen are doing the best they can but with the frost that was there this morning and last night, the rain that’s after falling over the last couple of months, it’s a completely different type of game on those pitches. The game today, with the ball the way it was moving on the surface, it was like summer.”