Kilkenny stuttered to a 1-08 – 0-06 victory against Dublin on Saturday in the opening round of the Littlewoods Ireland Camogie League.
The Kittens were far from impressive at John Locke Park and left a lot of room for improvement for their next outing against Offaly in two weeks.
Despite the underwhelming performance, Kilkenny manager Brian Dowling was delighted to be back after a six month lay-off.
“It’s great to be back. We have waited a long time for it. We hadn’t seen each other since the All-Ireland weekend and getting to train again and getting the game today is brilliant,” said Dowling.
The O’Loughlin Gaels man accepted that his side will have to improve as the season progresses.
He said: “We weren’t expecting anything too spectacular. We won’t take too much away from this game other than that we have a lot to improve on.
“We have two weeks until Offaly and we’ll see where we are again after that.”
Camogie was shrouded in a cloud of discontent recently with a possible player strike on the cards due to a split intercounty and club season not being implemented, something that is in place in the GAA and Ladies football.
Dowling feels common sense eventually prevailed as the Camogie Association decided to follow in the footsteps of the other Gaelic Games associations.
“The split season makes sense. If we were to start now and then go back later in the year it would have possibly led to a lot of player burn out.
“It probably would have hurt dual counties far more than us, but it’s not for us to decide and we’ll just get on with it now.”
The 2020 All-Ireland winning manager also called on the relevant bodies to coordinate their efforts towards reducing the gap between men’s and women’s sports.
“Things need to change with regards to equality for women. With the change in grants (Government will provide equal grants to men and women intercounty GAA players) and the live streaming of games hopefully we’ll see that improve and then we’ll see more crowds at the games once the gates open again.”