Limerick boss Kiely says new format will revive fans’ waning interest
WHILE there has been the odd grumble about the magic of the Munster SHC being diluted by the move away from straight knockout to a round-robin system, Limerick manager John Kiely isn’t having any of it. He can see untold possibilities in the radical switch to a Champions League style system of the top five teams in each province playing four games, two home and two away. It starts this Sunday with a glamour double bill of Limerick versus Tipperary at the Gaelic Grounds and Cork versus Clare in the revamped Páirc Uí Chaoimh. ‘It will be challenging,’ admits Kiely. ‘But I think it’s going to be very exciting. An awful lot of the people will buy into it. It will be really good for getting Joe Public back involved in Championship because we’ve seen the numbers decline in recent years over Championship matches. ‘It’s not what anybody wants to see. The Championship just needs something different about it — we have it now. Let’s see how they respond. ‘Listen, if you win a couple of games early on you won’t be short of supporters. If you’re not so successful early on, you could be giving away the tickets for free and you mightn’t get them to come. ‘It could be down to getting a bit of momentum and a few results. Somebody is bound to get off to a good start, win a couple of matches. They’ll have the momentum and that will be a very significant factor in the Championship.’ Talked up as dark horses for Munster glory after finally clinching promotion from Division 1B of the Allianz League, Kiely is not sure the tag is fully deserved. His first season in charge saw Limerick crash out of Munster before suffering an early exit in the qualifies against Kilkenny. ‘Not on Championship form from last year and the year before. Listen we know we have improved from last year. We had a very poor Championship campaign last year. We made some poor errors against Clare, conceded some soft goals. Probably we played quite well against Kilkenny, but we weren’t efficient enough with the ball that we had. We hit a lot of wides on the night, but the team has evolved a lot since then. I think we are a lot stronger and we are better prepared to take on the Championship now.’ As a county, Limerick availed of the ‘club only’ window in April. While other counties like Clare opted to use it for league rather than county championship fixtures, Kiely said the impact of it won’t be known until summer’s end. ‘I wasn’t going to go tell 78 clubs in Limerick, “Sorry lads, ye ain’t going to have championship matches because I have decided this is what is best for Limerick hurling and we’re going to hold on to the lads for the month of April and stuff ye and stuff all the players in the county.” ‘I have to go back to my club. All the players do, after all this is over. This is the route we went for Limerick. All I’m concerned about is Limerick. If it works for Limerick, great. If it doesn’t, we’ll look at it again. ‘I can’t comment on the structure. I have no power high up or low to change it. ‘I think three weeks is plenty to get ready for
championship. Sure we’ve been at it for months. It wasn’t like they were gone off playing table tennis — they were hurling with their clubs. They are expecting a lot from them so there is pressure there as well.’ With Munster looking so finely balanced, he can easily see the final standings in the group coming down to head-to-head meetings, or score difference in the event of more than two teams finishing on the same points. ‘I think the head-to-head is very fair. If they’ve beaten you in the Championship, they’ve beaten you in the championship — they deserve to go through. That’s the bottom line. If it goes down to score difference, well, they’ve scored more than you. So they deserve to go through. I take that for what it is. ‘You can imagine everyone listening to their radio listening to the other game that is on that day, there is going to be an amazing reaction. ‘There is going to be some crowd very disappointed and another crowd jumping around the places that they have got through. ‘It will be horrendous, there could be messages going in about the last 21-yard free, we need the goal because of the score difference. It will be very, very interesting.’