Joe Canning responded to criticisms levelled at Galway in recent weeks following their victory over Clare today at Semple Stadium.
Galway were six point winners this afternoon and Canning himself notched 1-8 amid a magnificent display of free-taking.
"It's only a game at the end of the day, it's only a hobby for us," he told Newstalk Sport's Oisin Langan. "There's more important things in life. With Fitzy [Davy Fitzgerald] getting sick during the week it was great to see him on the sideline. We wish him every success in his recovery.
"I went through it last year with Mam and I'm going through it at the moment with Dad. You have more important things in life than sport. Comments that are made about certain individuals when they play an amateur sport and it's a hobby, it does hurt.
"When you go out there on the field you try and express yourself to the best of your ability. But there's way important things in life than hurling."
Joe Canning was in fine form this afternoon at Semple Stadium, scoring 1-8. Image: ©INPHO/Donall Farmer
Canning highlighted where Galway were aiming to hurt Clare and explained that improvements had to be made from the Leinster final defeat against Kilkenny.
"We set out our stall to win the game and that's all we did. There were times in the second half where they got on top of us. There's always room to improve heading into the semi-final.
"We knew that the middle third would be huge today and whoever came out on top in that was going to win the game. I think we got our match-ups right and we man-marked a couple of their key men. I think it worked to a large extent today.
"We made mistakes [against Kilkenny]. It's not as if we didn't make mistakes on the day, but they were mistakes that we could rectify. We've worked on them, we handed them eight score-able points in the Leinster final. When you're playing against the best team that ever played, they'll obviously punish you.
"We knew that in the dressing room and we worked on that today. I think we cut down a little on that, we didn't score as much as we would have liked but we'll work on that for the semi-final."
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