‘By Jesus we have a lot of improving to do’ – Kiely fumes

John Kiely reflected afterwards on whether it was Limerick’s worst performance under his baton.

Statistically, it was near the bottom of the barrel. Their 1-15 was their lowest return in a knock-out tie since posting 0-17 in an All-Ireland qualifier loss to Kilkenny in his first season of 2017.

Kiely turned up at the post-match press conference having sat in on a 15-minute post-mortem in the dressing room on his team’s first loss in a knock-out tie in five seasons.

“There’s just no excuse. Had we trained today I would have expected to get three times more out of them. It’s just not good enough. We were poor on the ball, we were poor in defence, we were poor at the things we’re usually pride ourselves in terms of our intensity and our work rate, use of the ball, efficiency, all of the things we would pride ourselves on we were poor. Our performance was embarrassing at times.

“We have four weeks now to go and put our shoulder to the wheel and by Jesus we have a lot of improving to do,” said Kiely referring to his side’s opening Munster SHC round-robin tie against Clare in Ennis on April 21.

An already fascinating provincial race in Munster has taken on a whole new dimension in the wake of this insipid Limerick performance in which their starting forwards scored 1-4 from play, while key figures including Cian Lynch, Declan Hannon and Gearóid Hegarty were all replaced.

But as Kiely pointed out, Kilkenny deserve credit. It was a throwback to a different era as Kilkenny’s insatiable workrate and capacity to go for the jugular – they scored three goals in a 20-minute spell in the first half, and could have ended up with six – saw them dominate every sector.

All this was achieved despite conceding 1-2 in the first five minutes,playing with 14 men for 17 minutes and only scoring 0-2 from play in the second half.

“I thought we responded very well to the start Limerick got. I thought we hurled well and we hurled our way back into the game. Eoin’s (Cody) goal was very important and it gave the whole team a bit of a boost. There was good energy there after that,” said Kilkenny boss Derek Lyng.

Limerick were tactically outmanoeuvred. Kilkenny’s ability to isolate the Limerick defender nearest his own goal and the effective policing jobs Cian Kenny and Jordan Molloy did on Lynch and William O’Donoghue were key elements in their win.

Time will tell whether this is the blueprint to end Limerick’s dominance of the All-Ireland series.

Perhaps Limerick, who started eight players from their 2018 All-Ireland final-winning team, have all aged together. Alternatively it could be the jolt they need to kick-start their drive for five. Time will tell.