DESPITE LOSING THE 17-game unbeaten streak to Clare in Saturday night’s Munster hurling championship game, Limerick manager John Kiely is hopeful that no lasting damage is done to key playing members.
Sean Finn was forced off at the half time break, and his situation is undecided with Kiely revealing yesterday he was due a scan on Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile, Cian Lynch had what Kiely described as, “a minor hamstring injury, should be no more than a week or so.”
With their aura of invincibility gone for now, the All-Ireland and Munster champions have three weeks off until they play their third game in the series against Tipperary on 21 May.
However, there was no change of plan or process because of the weekend’s result.
“We have our schedule made out months in advance. I’d have the schedule made out before the season even starts,” revealed Kiely.
“Any tweaks that would happen after that would be only very minor tweaks. We are actually a group that really believe in our routines, we go after them.
“The result is the result. We won’t do anything different, whether it is a win or a loss, we’ll analyse the game the exact same way as we always would. We’ll report back to players and management the same way we always would, we’ll take the learnings from it, we’ll take the positives from it, and we’ll move on and focus on our work for the next couple of weeks.”
The extended break will give them time to get whatever they need to get right, but Kiely believes the time frame is not the luxury many might feel.
“The three weeks will fly. You can’t have enough time most of the time in this game. That is the reward we got for the six-day turnaround; we get an extra week of break now.
“Whilst you are paying it forward before the Clare game, you are getting the time back now. We’ll take a few days to refresh, we’ll get back to the training ground, and work hard again.”
With the luxury of time, there is no immediate need for prolonged soul-searching or frantically trying to wipe off the glitches in their system.
“I’ve left the players off for a few days. There is no point in badgering them or going after them to find out what they thought about different bits and pieces,” insists Kiely.
“More important is that they get away and relax and do their recovery. In terms of the review of the game, that will all happen in the next couple of days. We’ll present it to the players and we’ll move on.”
