Cats pounce at the death to win Leinster title and break Galway hearts

Cillian Buckley, once an All-Ireland winning colleague of Henry Shefflin's, drove a stake through his old pal's heart with a remarkable additional time goal to keep the Leinster SHC title in Kilkenny.

In a quite remarkable provincial decider, Kilkenny let slip an eight-point 50th minute lead to trail by two with the allotted five minutes of stoppage time up almost up.

It amounted to a 10-point swing on the scoreboard and left Galway manager Shefflin on the cusp of his biggest achievement since taking charge of the Tribesmen.

But with only seconds left in the contest - played out in front of a poor 24,483 attendance - a panicked kicked clearance by Galway defender Padraic Mannion sent the sliotar straight to an unmarked Buckley who returned the ball with interest to the net.

The incredible ending and one-point win means Kilkenny are four-in-a-row Leinster champions and advance through to a 9 July All-Ireland semi-final.

Galway, meanwhile, are still in the race for the MacCarthy Cup and will play the winners of Offaly or Tipperary in an All-Ireland quarter-final on 24 June.

Whether Galway can lift themselves up from this punishing defeat remains to be seen but they at least had the Player of the Match in Conor Whelan who struck 1-06.

TJ Reid finished on 0-09 for Kilkenny while Martin Keoghan, Walter Walsh and defender Mikey Butler grabbed the other goals for Derek Lyng's Cats.

Both sides were much changed from their final round-robin outings with Lyng making four changes to the Kilkenny team that lost to Wexford.

Conor Fogarty and Cian Kenny were both late additions to the team and lined out at midfield while Paddy Deegan wore number nine but came in at centre-back with Billy Ryan also back in attack.

Shefflin welcomed back the