O’Mahony likes the look of Limerick under boss Allen

Gavin O’Mahony mulls over the question of what John Allen has brought to Limerick.

“What you have to like about John is that not too much has changed, he’s got a similar enough approach to Donal O’Grady last year,” he said.

“As regards replacing Donal it was ideal. There was a lot of continuity there, but the difference, I suppose, is that with John there’s an onus on the players to take the thing on. That’s probably what’s needed in Limerick as well at the moment — to take the bull by the horns, and John provides a platform to do that.

“I suppose it’s a modern approach, something that a lot of modern managers would do, and it’s enjoyable; you can have an input.”

They’ve needed to drive it on. O’Mahony admitted the defeat by Clare in the Division 1B final was disappointing.

“It was, to lose the league final when your one goal from the start of the year was to get up to Division 1. At the same time, though, you have to be sure you have enough training done, you have to be looking at the bigger picture too.

“The one thing the Clare game gave us was a clear picture of where we were. We knew exactly where we went wrong, it gave us a lot to work on. Winning the league final was a goal, obviously, but we’ve to take the positives out of it and in our analysis we saw a lot in that game that we can work and improve on.”

Does that analysis involve the players speaking frankly to each other? We hear a lot about Munster rugby’s searching video sessions.

“No, it’d be more general,” says O’Mahony. “You’d talk about lines on the field and so on. The last 20 minutes of that game we all fell behind a little, but at the same time you can’t go into it in too much detail, because every game is different.

“Tipperary this weekend is going to be an entirely different game again. You could be poor in the first 20 minutes instead of the last 20, as happened with Clare.

“We’ve to correct those little mistakes. Looking back, we had some individual discussions on it, there was a lot to take out of it and there were a lot of positives as well — we were well on top for most of it but we ran out of steam and started to lose puck-outs, and that’s where we have things to work on.”

O’Mahony is hoping Sunday’s referee lets the game flow, in keeping with the traditions of the Munster championship.

“Fellas are definitely better conditioned and stronger, but with the Munster championship all you want really is for a referee to go along with the game and leave it flow.

“There’ll always be the odd fracas but once no-one’s injured and fellas can get up and play away, that’s the main thing. That’s why people love the Munster championship — similar maybe to the Ulster football championship, maybe — every team feels on their day they can turn over the opposition.

“When it comes to refereeing, as long as we feel we can give it a fair lash, that’s all we want.”