St Lachtain's land junior hurling title at Croke Park

St Lachtain's 1-18 Russell Rovers 0-16

Kilkenny's stranglehold on the AIB All-Ireland Junior Club Hurling Championship continued on Sunday afternoon in Croke Park, where St Lachtain’s outplayed Russell Rovers for long stretches of the 2025 final and were full value for their victory over their East Cork opponents.

Russell Rovers had one first-half purple patch where they replied to the concession of Shane Donnelly’s game with three points in succession in the space of five minutes, and they went on a similar run in the closing stages when a 1-16 to 0-12 lead was cut back by four consecutive points, two each from Josh Beausang and Luke Duggan Murray.

But outside of that the Kilkenny side was more accurate, more balanced and simply that bit better in the majority of individual battles.

The Leinster champions led by 1-07 to 0-07 at half-time, but it was notable at that stage that they had eight different scorers; each of the starting forwards and midfielders had raised one flag, all from play.

Meanwhile Russell Rovers leaned heavily on their star inside forward duo of Ciarán Sheehan and Josh Beausang, with neither player managing to make a strong impact from open play.

A finger injury that forced the withdrawal of starting centre-back Paul Lane didn’t help the Cork club’s cause, but in the trenches they struggled to compete, with the St Lachtain’s midfield duo of Brendan Quinn and Mark Donnelly playing a key role in their side grinding out that early lead.

The key score was a route one goal, an 80-metre delivery from Brian Kennedy that broke off Liam Hickey and was snaffled and whipped to the top corner of the net by Shane Donnelly.

After a comparatively low-scoring first half, the contest exploded into life at the start of the