LIMERICK’S STYLE OF play in Year 2 of John Kiely’s reign is well-defined at this stage and highly influenced by the philosophy of coach Paul Kinnerk.
Kinnerk is a renowned hurling coach who played a key role in Clare’s Liam MacCarthy success of 2013 and their three U21 All-Irelands in-a-row between 2012 and 2014.
Limerick like to work the ball neatly through the lines and the half-forward line drop deep into midfield to collect possession. If their markers follow them it leaves oceans of space to play into in front of the inside line of Graeme Mulcahy, Seamus Flanagan and Aaron Gillane.
If the Limerick half-forwards are left unmarked, they can carry the ball forward and pick off scores from distance. The long-range shooting of the Treaty half-forwards was evident on Sunday – Gearoid Hegarty, Kyle Hayes and Tom Morrissey picked off 0-10 from play between them in marvellous individual displays.
Perhaps the most important score of that haul was Morrissey’s 65th-minute point which arrived seconds after Richie Hogan hit the back of the Limerick net.
“I suppose it was just one of those days,” the 22-year-old said. “Luckily it slid off the hurley and got over the bar. Maybe it just steadied us.
“Kilkenny didn’t get any momentum after that goal and it settled us down again. Maybe I’ll look back it tonight or tomorrow and give it a smile, but at the time I didn’t realise how big a score it was.
“We regained control straight away after the goal and there was no looking back. We prevailed in the end and it just shows the character in this team we never panicked we stayed doing what we do to the last-minute and it paid off for us today.
“More and more games and wins like this is going to build confidence. A test like that, to beat a team like Kilkenny, one of the traditional powerhouses of hurling will give us huge confidence going up to Croke Park to face Cork.”
The foundation for Limerick’s first championship win over Kilkenny in 45 years was built on the platform of the half-back line, with Tom’s brother Dan Morrissey in fantastic form.
He made a couple of critical late catches to help the Shannonsiders establish control and drive for home.
“You have days like that – I threw up the hand and some days you’d miss it completely, other days the ball falls into it,” he said. “Thankfully a few balls fell into my hand Sunday and I didn’t do too bad, I was delighted. Everyone on the team gave a great performance.”
The elder Morrissey believes there’s something different about this Limerick side as they look ahead to an All-Ireland semi-final with Cork in two weeks.
“There is, well hopefully there is, there are seven or eight teams and there’s very little between them. Kilkenny are a savage team, we knew there’d be a savage battle.
“The Galway game in the league was a huge game for us in that it gave us the belief we could compete with the very best. Since then we’ve been looking for incremental improvements each time.
“From the Clare game we’ve gotten slightly better with every game so hopefully we can keep that going for the Cork game.
“There’s great belief between the young and the old lads, that belief is probably the big difference between previous years, and that may come from the big result against Galway in the league.
“Any team we go out against we believe we can beat them, so going up against Cork we’ll believe we can beat them. They’re a great team but there won’t be much in it on the day, I’m looking forward to it already.”
The only game Kiely’s men lost his summer was their reverse to Clare in Ennis, which arrived on their third weekend of action in succession.
“I know some people said it was our third week in-a-row, but I think that’s more of a mental thing than a physical thing,” continued Dan, who won man-of-the-match on Sunday.
“We looked back on the video and we felt that we didn’t play well but we were still very much in that game with ten, twelve minutes to go, though they got the last seven points of the game.
“There were things in that game that we usually wouldn’t do, silly mistakes, thankfully we got those out of our system and rectified it today. Hopefully, there won’t be a repeat of that for the semi-final.”
The Clare defeat dampened the hype surrounding Limerick and perhaps brought a touch of realism to the supporters.
The Ahane clubman said: “Limerick fans are great but maybe we have a habit sometimes of getting ahead of ourselves – before the Clare game people were talking about All-Ireland finals and we hadn’t even gotten to a Munster final at that stage.
“Limerick fans are great, I’m sure they’ll be up in numbers for the semi-final, but Cork will be red-hot favourites for that. They’re unbeaten, they’ve won three Munster championships in five years, but we’ll give it our best shot. We’ll leave it all out there on the field and we can’t do any more than that.”
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