Speaking on The Hurling Show on Off The Ball, Dublin hurling manager Mattie Kenny admitted that his team wasn't right mentally for their championship game against Laois.
"Our mindset wasn't right for some reason. I didn't have the guys mentally right for the battle," Kenny said.
"It's up to me to make sure they're in the right frame of mind and we arrived in Portlaoise and we weren't up for the battle."
However, Kenny didn't want to take anything away from Laois and how well they played this season.
"We need to acknowledge how well Laois did this year and they played some really good hurling," the 55-year-old said.
"We were aware of the pitfalls going in but we started very flat and went eight points down".
"When it was all over there was a huge sense of frustration and disappointment," the Dublin manager said.
The biggest regret he had was that they didn't get a chance to redeem themselves a few weeks later.
"After that game, you would love to be able to go back in two weeks. Now we have to wait six months to sort out those issues."
"It just shows you how tight the margins are like how many percentage points were Dublin off? Maybe one or two per cent," he said.
Difficult draw
Despite being dealt a tough hand in the Leinster Championship, Kenny felt they equipped themselves well going into the final day.
"The last two years, Dublin have gotten a pretty difficult draw in the Leinster Championship. We got Wexford and Kilkenny in one week."
"If we lost that game against Wexford we would have been out of it," the Galway native said.
On that crazy final day, Dublin knew they had to beat Galway at Parnell Park to stay alive.
He couldn't have anticipated how things would turn out.
"We weren't aware of the other games, but we knew we had to win our last game to qualify."
"At no point did I think Galway would get knocked out of the championship," Kenny said.
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