Henry Shefflin could not have hoped for a better start to his first championship campaign at the helm of Galway.
Under the Kilkenny legend's watch, the Tribesmen went through the round robin unbeaten to set up a provincial final showdown with his native county.
Galway sealed their final berth with a 0-27 to 0-21 win over Dublin, but the 10-time All-Ireland winner says they must improve if they are to regain the Bob O'Keeffe Cup.
"Not brilliant. It wasn't a good performance by us or Dublin," Shefflin told Sky Sports.
"It was a very cagey game. Most of the games up to now I'm looking for a performance, whereas today, it was just about getting the two points and getting to a Leinster final.
"That was the objective and we achieved that. And I thought the second half was a little bit better. In the first half, I thought they worked extremely hard. But we never really flowed, we never really opened up. There's a good bit of work to do.
"But it's been a tough schedule on all teams, five games in six weeks. Maybe the guys were a little bit off it tonight."
The intense schedule in recent weeks, as Galway played five group matches across six weekends, led to stuttered performances at times. And the Cats legend knows that impacted his team's performances.
"It's physically demanding. Look other sports they're well used to playing week in, week out. From a mental point of view, it's very hard to get yourself up, get used to getting yourself down and then back up for a game again," he said.
"From that perspective, it can be difficult.
"But for us, when we started the Leinster campaign, if you were to say we'd get to nine points, we'd be very happy with that. So that was the objective: reaching the Leinster final.
"Will the performance we had this evening win a Leinster final? I do not think so. We have work to do, and that's what we'll focus on doing now.
"I'm looking forward to seeing how our injuries get on, and we've a couple of knocks after today. Just recovering and getting the bodies right. We have two weeks again. So it's to focus on that, and look forward to the Leinster final."