LIMERICK ARE HOPEFUL that star forward Peter Casey will be back fully available in the next four weeks, while a sprained ankle forced Cathal O’Neill off in the second half of today’s win over Tipperary.
The O’Neill injury is not viewed as serious by manager John Kiely, who is also pleased with the progress of Cian Lynch, who has been ruled out of the remainder of the Munster championship with a hamstring injury.
“He (Cathal O’Neill) sprained his ankle in the first half. We just wanted to give him five minutes to see could he shake it off. Inside at half time they felt that the could shake it off. But I think he went on one or two runs and it just was evident that he wasn’t. He’ll just need a few days rest.
“Cian is doing great. He’s had a couple of weeks rest and he’ll be en gaging in his rehab after that – so far, so good.”
“Peter and Barry Murphy are coming on really, really well. They’ll be integrated into full training over the coming weeks but they probably have four more weeks to go.
“Delighted with the progress they’re making and huge kudos to them for the work they’ve put in, in the last few months in particular. They’ve been training extremely hard to put themselves in the position they’re in now. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to see them contributing more in the weeks ahead.”
Limerick didn’t include Colin Coughlan and Adam English on their bench for this game, both had been involved last time out against Waterford. The pair were part of Wednesday night’s Munster U20 hurling success over Tipperary, with O’Neill having featured previously in that underage campaign.
Limerick play Wexford or Kilkenny in the All-Ireland U20 final on the weekend of 21-22 May.
“The bottom line is that we’re going to do what we’re going to do, ourselves,” said Kiely.
“If we feel we need the 20s on a given day, we’ll bring the 20s and use them. We’re delighted with the fact that they won the Munster title during the week – absolutely thrilled; it’s vital for Limerick that players coming through have that experience under their belt.
“They have an All-Ireland final to look forward to in the weeks ahead but ultimately if we need a player to play for us, we’ll be using them. This week was about using the entirety of our panel because all of our panel are pushing and even though the U20s are getting their opportunity to shine within that group during the week, it’s in our training sessions that players put themselves forward for selection on our panel.”
Kiely admitted it was a day when his team struggled to get going for a long time.
“We struggled for long periods to get into a rhythm and I think the boys to be fair knew that themselves but kept battling away. They kept the heads and didn’t panic.
“Three quarters of the way through the game Tipp had been the better team, up to that point, but the boys coming off the bench made a substantial contribution.
“All told we’d be disappointed with an awful lot of our performance today – it lacked the intensity we’d associated with our play.
Credit has to be given to Tipperary, who brought huge aggression and intensity to the game. We’re going to have to improve for next weekend. That performance won’t do next week, it’s as simple as that. It only barely did today, to be honest.
“We had plenty of scoring chances to be fair but overall our use of the ball was not as sharp as it ordinarily is, and there are some guys in there who’ll be disappointed with their performance today.
“The boys kept their composure. When things weren’t rolling as we might have liked or with a rhythm we would have liked and you sometimes have to accept that’s the case and still find a way. That’s one thing I’d take from today – that we showed tremendous composure and we worked savagely hard in the last 15 or 20 minutes.”
