IT WAS NOT always a time of victories and trophies and widespread acclaim.
The flipside for John Kiely came early in his Limerick hurling managerial journey.
In September 2016, he was installed in the senior hotseat. The summer of 2017 brought a four-point loss to Clare in Munster and a three-point defeat to Kilkenny in the All-Ireland series.
Two games, two defeats and a winter of soul-searching ensued.
“’17 was very difficult – very, very difficult. But I suppose the first year you get involved is always going to be the toughest year, trying to put your stamp on things. You’re learning on the job as you’re going. You just don’t know what it’s like until you’re in it.
“Had a lot of issues that I needed to fix myself at the end of ’17 – things that I hadn’t maybe put in place in quite the right way. You learn about the people that you’ve got with you, helping you to do it, and you figure out their skillset.
“Yeah, you know, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to me had I got a phone call at the end of ’17 to say, ‘Listen, thanks very much, you’ve done a great job, you’ve done the best you can, but we’re moving on.’
“But thankfully they kept trust in us, and gave us a chance to keep going and see what we could do with the group. Like, I’m very glad of having had that opportunity.
“There was nights when I was pacing the yard out the back, wondering, ‘Am I the right man for this job? Have I got the capacity to deliver what I would expect from myself in terms of the quality and the standards and the success that’s required?
“And losing two championship matches in two in ’17 – that wasn’t tenable for me.
“So, losing any more championship matches after that was simply not tenable. If I did, I was gone.
“Not by anybody else’s volition but my own.”
Losses have been rare occurrences since then. Kiely takes his Limerick team to Sunday’s All-Ireland final with a championship record of 21 wins, three draws and four defeats since the outset of 2018.
Drill deeper into that run of results and Limerick’s last defeat occurred in the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final, at the hands of Kilkenny.
13 wins and a draw, in May’s thriller in Ennis, point to a team that has been phenomenally consistent and explains why they are on the verge of their fourth Liam MacCarthy Cup triumph in five seasons.
The secrets of maintaining those high standards?
“They’re a group of players who are highly motivated,” says Kiely.
“They enjoy what they’re doing, very much. They are like a band of brothers because they have been together for a good number of years now, from underage right the way up along.
“They’re the best of friends. They go for coffee together, they go for dinner together, they holiday together. These guys are going to be together for the rest of their days, that’s just the way it is.
“In a match, they’ll die for each other outside there and in training they’ll cut each other to bits. They have a great respect for each other and that’s what really defines this group. They’re great fun to be around and I think when you’re enjoying what you’re doing you’re likely to do it fairly well.”
Kiely’s relationship with the group can be traced back to before taking the senior managerial reins, steering a bunch to U21 glory in 2015.
Was that unity always evident?
“It has grown out of the fact that they spent so much time together, be it in the gym together, in a bus heading to matches, here on the training field, in Rathkeale on the training pitches.
“When you’re together five nights a week for six, eight months, 10 months of the year as it was before, you’ve no choice but to become very, very close. There’s a special gel that runs through the group then.”
The next test that will be posed to that group comes in the form of Kilkenny, the last county to take them down in the championship arena and the one they defeated for a major breakthrough in the 2018 quarter-final.
The relevance of those games are debatable in Kiely’s eyes.
“You can go back and look at those games and obviously they were huge. The one in the quarter-final in ‘18 was a very important milestone at that stage for us.
“Those are irrelevant really coming into the next day. They’re so far back. Manpower has changed, management have changed, the game has moved on. Everything has evolved. I’m sure it’s the same on the Kilkenny side.
“We’ve no measure of each other at all for the last three years. We haven’t played since 2019 so we’ve no measure of each other. We’ve 14 players from the 2018 panel who are no longer playing with us so there’s a huge change.”
The spike in Kilkenny’s recent form does not surprise Kiely.
“A very devastating performance (in the semi-final), we know how difficult it is to beat Clare. For Kilkenny to have done what they did was a serious stamp of authority. They were devastating in terms of their ruthlessness and their efficiency on the ball and obviously in the tackle as well.
“They’re Leinster champions. They beat Galway in the Leinster final and we knew how hard it was to get the better of Galway in the finish. Kilkenny’s performances have been incrementally getting better as the season has gone on. It’s going to be a huge challenge.”
It is the first time since 2019 that Kiely’s team have moved into the All-Ireland series after a round-robin in their province, yet it occurs after a campaign which has been shortened and had a relentless feel to it.
For managers, the intensity has been ratcheted up. Kiely would have preferred a little more room after the semi-final win over Galway but he has adapted to the changing circumstances.
“Listen, it’s a busy season. You’ve two games, blank, two games, Munster final … so it has been challenging. I suppose coming in April and May, when it’s a busy time in school for me as well (as principal of Abbey CBS), just added to the difficulty in it as well.
“It is what it is. We’re out of it now, school is closed; we focus on this job and give it everything we can. Is it the way I’d set it up? No.
“I think it would have been nice to have had the three (weeks) after the Munster final and three now before the final and maybe have it a little bit later, a couple of weeks later.
“That would be my preference but we’ll get on with it. We’re thrilled and privileged to be there and whether it’s held on a Monday or a Sunday or whether it’s in July or December, I don’t care once we’re there.
“That’s really what we’ve set out to do at the start of the year is to be here where we are right now. We’re going to enjoy every minute of the next 10 days, try and put in the best performance we possibly can come up with on the day and hope that it’s good enough.”
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