In the aftermath of Saturday night’s big Munster championship match in Limerick, both managers had the consolation of knowing there was plenty of room for improvement.
This headspace was probably more pronounced for the All-Ireland champions, who from 10 minutes on were missing four of last year's All-Stars, including Hurler of the Year, Cian Lynch and fellow nominee Kyle Hayes.
Limerick manager John Kiely was particularly pleased with the contribution of his replacements and referenced young Cathal O'Neill, who replaced Lynch after 10 minutes.
“I’m pleased with the performance. It was a huge challenge. We met quite a lot of resistance – a few conundrums we had to figure out along the way. Even the injuries: Cian getting injured; we had to reset and go ahead but Cathal came off the bench and did a great job for us. We’ve had a significant impact off our bench in the two games thus far which is very pleasing.”
Tipperary are next up in a fortnight and he outlined his concerns, allowing that Limerick are now two from two, having played the counties they defeated in last year's All-Ireland final and now, semi-final.
“We’ve got to go and get a lot of work under our belt over the next 10 days. Efficiency is something that’s a little bit off at the moment. We’re working on it. There are times in the game when it looks like it’s nearly there.
“There are other times in the game like we saw in the last couple of minutes and we’d hope for a little bit more but listen, there are a lot of tired bodies on the pitch at that stage. Winning the ball was probably as much of a challenge as getting the ball over the bar.”
Turnovers
Liam Cahill’s overview was more complex. His team found two late goals to pull the match back into play but those were their only scores in the final 20 minutes. The outcome was also Waterford’s most competitive match with the champions, improving on their four-point Munster final defeat in the winter championship of 2020.
Since then they have been beaten twice by 11 points so Saturday was a step up but the manager was ambivalent.
“Did we really deserve it over the hour? I’m not 100 per cent sure. My initial feeling is that we probably didn’t if we did sneak something. Ah sure look, this Limerick team is going to be very hard to try and unlock as to what the strategy is to beat them. They are a really decent outfit.
“You can’t afford to be butchering chances the way we are doing. You just can’t against top-class opposition. If you bring the ball into contact with this Limerick team they just dominate you. We did that on a couple of vital occasions and lost it; it was turned over.
“Those turnovers are big here with a massive Limerick crowd in their home ground. They had a big bearing on the game as the game progressed.”
He was also asked about the poor turnout from Waterford supporters – the few, who did travel hardly registering in the overwhelmingly green-and-white crowd of 27,488.
“We were really thrilled for the Waterford supporters that travelled today. I suppose if I’m being really honest I thought there’d be more of them there. When we came in on the bus the colour just wasn’t there. Look, we had a kind of feeling that the Waterford people didn’t travel.
“Hopefully now they will get behind this team because they have something to look forward to this with this group of players if they get behind them and support them.”
Kiely responded to a question about Kyle Hayes’s hamstring injury the previous week in Cork and explained that it hadn’t arise because of a selection gamble on the player’s fitness.
“No, he had recovered and had trained properly for a week beforehand so it wasn’t actually in his stride that the hamstring gave him any trouble either. It was actually how he fell. He got tripped from behind and he just fell and it was how he fell. I don’t think he’s going to be too bad.”
