“Look, I’ve said it many times, this group doesn’t care what’s said outside of the group. We can’t control that, we just try to control what happens in Athenry when we’re training. What’s said about us, what’s wrote about us, is irrelevant. We’re just always trying to get the performance and anything said outside of the group we can’t control.

“We took some learnings from last week and implemented them today. It was another physical, intense game, typical of Galway-Kilkenny. There are areas we need to improve so we’ll just get back to the training ground next week and push again.”

Galway may have been 12 points up at one stage but Donoghue never felt the contest was over. “Anyone that thinks a hurling game at this level, you’re going to dominate for 70 minutes, knows nothing about it.”

Moving on from the draw was key to Galway coming out on top as was withstanding Kilkenny as they came back at them in the second half.

“I’ve said it many times, and I said it a good bit back year, these guys always draw from the good and bad experiences, and we just had to draw a line under it pretty quickly. We obviously did our recovery analysis on it.

“Look, we knew today was going to be a tough game as well, Kilkenny came back massively in the second half. Who knows if there had been another goal, how it would have went. We 100% expected nothing less, and maybe outside of us people expected something different. We’re just happy now to move forward and work really hard for the next three weeks.”

Joe Canning hit six wides in Thurles as he did in Croke Park the Sunday before, yet gave a valuable contribution with 10 points, four from play. The documenting of Canning’s displays seemed to touch a nerve with Donoghue.

“It’s easy for people, reporters, to look and see what Joe does on placed balls, you have to look at the work he does off the ball, an integral part of our team, and we measure him by what he does off the frees as well and we’re very happy with what he does.”