Shane Walsh said the Kilmacud Crokes footballers took knowledge from their hurlers in avoiding the pitfalls of a comeback as they advance to the AIB All-Ireland Club Football Championships semi-finals.The Dublin powerhouse were competing in both codes in Croke Park on Sunday.Their hurlers endured a nightmare start and trailed by 14 points against Ballyhale Shamrocks with 25 minutes remaining.However Crokes reduced the deficit to a point in the 47th minute, before a late goal helped decide the game.Having witnessed such a fightback by his club, Walsh and his team-mates moved into an 11-point advantage over The Downs at the break before extending it to 13, and withstood any plot twist.The Westmeath club did cut the winning margin to seven points but the outcome was never in doubt.The Galway star said their wisdom from competing of the latter stages of the club competition also stood to them.Speaking to RTÉ Sport, he said: "It was tough conditions.
We'd seen the hurling beforehand just how tough it was so it gave us a good platform to build our warm-up on."The good start settled us from the word go and probably our experience then to control the game and know when to push the buttons and when to hold back."We had a good lead going in at half-time and that was a credit to everyone who worked really hard.
It was the same in the second half. In fairness to The Downs, they came back into it in the second half. We were just lucky enough we had enough to sit on."We used experience from previous matches in that we know if you let teams back into matches, who knows what can happen with momentum?
We even looked at the hurling beforehand that you saw the way Ballyhale were up at half-time and in fairness to the hurlers they came back