Ever the perfectionist, Limerick manager John Kiely bemoaned the goals his side left after them yesterday, despite their double-digit hammering of Tipperary.
“We did leave scores after us, there’s no two ways about that. Believe me, we left too many – it’s the only possible stain on the performance for me, that we didn’t put it to bed earlier.
“There was a three-four point swing after half-time when we could have six points up, they came up the field and got a goal – a swing of four or five points in about two minutes, and I said to myself, ‘yeah, we’re destined to make this a really tough slog’.”
That said, Kiely was happy with his players’ workrate, particularly with a Munster final being played in their home ground.
“We worked really hard and just didn’t give the Tipp half-backs and midfielders the time to pass in quality ball to their forwards. I think that’s reflected in the scoreboard.
“When you can apply yourself, that high level of work rate, you are going to compromise their ability to get the ball in.
“It’s going to have an impact on the game, and you’ll probably create some chances yourself. We got a good few scores on turnovers as well.
There was (increased workrate), but you’d expect that. We were coming off the back of two very tough games before that (round robin game) with Waterford and Clare.
“We won by big margins but we put ourselves under tremendous pressure to get those performances out of ourselves to get a chance in the final game.
“But that final game of three in a row is a tough one – I don’t know if we’ll ever crack it, but it’s a tough, tough gig. You’d have to expect the intensity levels to go up given the two-week break.
“When you’re playing at home . . . you don’t get too many opportunities – these are things you’d carry with you for a long time afterwards.
“If you were to look back on a fixture like this – a Munster final at home, with the team we have and what we know we can produce in terms of the level of performance . . . if we didn’t produce that today it would have been very disappointing.
“For that reason it probably did put us under a lot of pressure, but the boys react well under pressure.”
Kiely wasn’t expecting a twelve-point winning margin: “Absolutely not, no. It’s hard to know what to expect from Munster finals, they can become a slugfest, and other times they can be like that one.
“I thought the game was full of quality right up to a few minutes before half-time, I felt we were wresting control of the game at that stage but up to then I thought it was really high quality stuff from both sides.
“We began to find our rhythm, our intensity levels went up and we were able to maintain them.”