Burt ace Liam McKinney savours upsetting the odds against hotly-tipped Setanta 

In years to come when Liam McKinney has long given up his hurl, he should look back on Saturday’s epic victory for his club Burt over hotly fancied Setanta in the Donegal SHC decider..

It is hard to believe that he’s still only 20 but he played with a maturity and assurance well beyond his years. And his epic point from 80 metres, into the wind when his club really needed it, will go down in the hurling folklore of the county.

Speaking after in Letterkenny, it took him a few minutes to take in the enormity of Burt’s achievement in beating Setanta by 3-16 to 1-21.

Surrounded by ecstatic teammates, McKinney referred to how little chance his club had been given in the pre-match write-ups.

“We were being given less hope than we thought we would have got from other people. I even heard that we were going to be beaten by ten points and that was motivating us.

“We knew that when we came up today in the warm-up on the pitch, there was a focus between us.

“And we started very well with a few great points and then we got a fortunate enough goal over Kevin Campbell’s head, and we bounced back very well from their goal with a goal of our own.”

McKinney added that Burt knew they were going to be playing into the wind early on and even when Caolan McDermott was sent off ten minutes into the second half it “did not seem to affect us too much.”

“We just kept playing the way we were playing and I felt we made just as good use of the ball even when we were a man less. And we never seemed to be outnumbered in defence either.”

Pre-match predictions were binned by Burt and instead of going all defensive and flooding the middle third, they decided to attack Setanta, a tactic which succeeded superbly on the day.

“We decided before the game just to go for them and I think over the past few years that we were trying to stop their key attackers.

“But today we decided to impose our own game, and you could see the skill and quality in our team in the forwards and we also had backs and midfielders getting those scores which was great.”

When asked about that epic point he said he had missed a few easier ones so he decided to “put everything into It and thankfully it dropped over the crossbar.”

And he saluted emerging talents like Ciaran Porter who he says have now come of age.

“Ciaran did not even play two years ago in the final and this means everything to Burt. Hearing the older ones talking about great days and six years is a long time to be waiting.

“This is a fantastic feeling and growing up in Burt it was always about the hurling and winning county titles. Watching the likes of older boys like Ronan and Christopher McDermott, it is nice to be like those boys now.”