Brian Hogan on O'Loughlin Gaels triumph: 'You want to beat the best - that's what we've done'

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,