SHAMROCKS' day on a shamrock day: apt, really. Yet nice as it must be to have award-winning marquee names in the ranks, what made the difference in this All Ireland club senior hurling final was that the favourites were, like any successful team worth its salt and its silverware, not exclusively reliant on their headline acts. Here the lesser lights added generous wattage to the output.

That victory brought the Kilkenny and Leinster champions level with Birr at the top of the competition's roll of honour - both clubs have four titles apiece - was in the circumstances an afterthought.

Yesterday was all about, well, yesterday.

To indulge in the sporting vernacular of the past week, the winners got the trip better, showing their class in the second half. Loughrea were doughty stayers, but Shamrocks did them for speed and smoothness. No surprises there.

The opening skirmishes - wrong word, actually; there was nothing remotely confrontational about the exchanges in the first half - offered the usual straws in the wind. Loughrea scored in their first attack courtesy of Johnny Loughlin after 15 seconds; Shamrocks took some time to get their sights aligned and had registered three wides by the time Henry Shefflin set up Patrick Reid for the leveller in the third minute; and it was Shefflin again, taking up good positions and happy to move the ball onto a better-placed colleague, who fed Mark Aylward for the Shamrocks' second point.

This wasn't the signal for any floodgates to open. Far from it, as Loughrea came back to land the next two points per Kenneth Colleran, after Nigel Murray's puckout found its way through to him, and a Johnny Maher 65'.

Although Shamrocks were moving with a little more freedom, Loughrea's gameplan - move the ball fast and low into the forwards, thereby forcing an enemy defence that had leaked three firsthalf goals to Toomevara in the semi-final to turn and sprint - was working nicely. A Colleran point from the right left the underdogs 0-4 to 0-2 in front after 10 minutes.

They were well entitled to it.

It didn't take long for Shamrocks to find another gear, however. Michael Fennelly, TJ Reid, Patrick Reid and Shefflin (two frees) put together an unanswered patchwork of points, and nine minutes from the break the favourites took an iron grip on proceedings when TJ Reid won possession along the left, charged forward, beat an opponent and took the sliotar into the danger zone. What to do? He knew, letting the ball bounce and making sweet left-hand contact when it hopped back up. The net billowed. Reid's decision-making was imaginative; his execution was perfect. Easy to see why he's regarded in Kilkenny as the next big thing.

We didn't expect Loughrea to lie down at the first sign of trouble and they didn't. Johnny Maher and Brendan Dooley responded with points, which meant that each member of the Galway champions' full-forward line - and four of their six forward besides - had found the target from play in the first half.

Eoin Reid closed out the scoring with the last point of the period to leave Shamrocks five points to the good, 1-9 to 0-7, at the interval. They had every right to feel satisfied with themselves. For their part, Loughrea had no right to feel dissatisfied.

But that iron grip became a vice three minutes after the restart. Shefflin went low with a 65' to Patrick Reid who, 10 metres out, turned and hit a shot that only the most generous-minded would describe as a screamer.

Unfortunately for him, Nigel Murray on the line appeared to be unsighted by one of his defenders. The sliotar crept into the corner of the net and Shamrocks were eight up.

A Shefflin free and a TJ Reid effort from play stretched the lead before Loughlin went off injured and, as if to underline the slow ebbing of Loughrea's hopes, Maher missed a free. When Maher did convert a 65' on the three-quarter mark he was scoring his side's first point of the half, yet one that neither did anything to stem the tide nor helped stop the game's slow death.

Taking their cue, Shamrocks - a team that routinely rack up 20 points a match - merely went through the motions, doing as much as they felt they had to do but no more, as evidenced by Shefflin's neat creation of a 52ndminute point for Eoin Reid.

Loughrea's bombardment of the opposition posts did lead to a Vinnie Maher goal four minutes from time. But their goose was well cooked by then, and TJ Reid rounded off matters with a goal in injury time. Johnny Maher's goaled free at the other end with the last puck of the game was nothing more than a statistic.

BALLYHALE SHAMROCKS J Connolly; P Shef"in, E Walsh, P Holden; K Nolan, A Cummins, B Aylward; J Fitzpatrick, M Fennelly (0-1); E Fitzpatrick, H Shef"in (0-3, frees), TJ Reid (2-2); E Reid (0-3), P Reid (1-2), M Aylward (0-1) Subs D Hoyne for E Fitzpatrick, 59 mins LOUGHREA N Murray; T Regan, D McClearn, D Melia; J Dooley, G Kennedy, R Regan; G Keary, B Mahony; E Coen, J Maher (1-3, 1-0 free, 0-2 65s), V Maher (1-0); B Dooley (0-1), J Loughlin (0-2), K Colleran (0-2) Subs M Haverty for Loughlin, 39 mins; Loughlin for B Dooley, 45 mins; K Daniels for Coen, 51 mins.

Referee D Kirwan (Cork)