In their second championship outing, Watergrasshill saw a nine-point lead over Castlemartyr 10 minutes into the second-half whittled down to the minimum in injury-time.

In the county final against the aforementioned Carrigaline, they trailed for plenty of the third quarter.

In Sunday’s All-Ireland final, they saw a five-point first-half lead become a one-point deficit at the end of the third quarter.

In each of the above four games, Watergrasshill either clung on and powered through or they clawed back and powered through. Their defining trait from 2021-23 was an inability to squeeze through in tight games. Nine championship group outings and not one win. In 2024, and the second Sunday of 2025, they couldn’t stop shading contests where momentum had swung from them.

“Never letting the game get away is something we’ve done throughout the year,” said Watergrasshill captain Seán Desmond.

“We did it against Carrigaline at the start of the year. We were down ten points at half-time in the first game, things weren’t going right, and we just 

stuck with what the boys had been telling us to do.

After a series of close calls in Cork, as outlined above, Watergrasshill allowed nobody to get close to them when leaving behind the local scene. Well, until Sunday, at least. Their average winning margin across the Munster semi-final, final, and All-Ireland semi-final was 11 points.

“The monkey was off the back when we won the county, but when you get a chance to win a Munster and an All-Ireland, you have to just take it with both hands. That’s something that we really took on,” continued Desmond.

Shane Moloney, Ben Moran, and the rest of the Tynagh/Abbey-Duniry cast asked questions of the Hill they’d not been asked since the Cork championship. Level six times in the final quarter, it was Desmond’s 65th minute goal, after possession broke kindly in behind the cover for him, that decided the outcome.

“The risks, especially in games like this, they’re the ones that matter. I had it in my head to get on a breaking ball. I said at the start of the game that if I got on a lucky break, I was going straight for the jugular. Thankfully I did it and got it into the back of the net.

“I saw the keeper making a little move to one corner of the goal and I said, ‘Right, let’s get it into the bottom corner on the other side'. Time was fairly close then, we kind of knew we were nearly there, but we’re just delighted, absolutely thrilled to get over the line.”

“We’ve stuck with it throughout the year – they didn’t get us to an All-Ireland final for no reason either, it was by sticking to what they tell us. That goes down to commitment from the lads, listening to what they’re telling us to do, and it got us over the line.”