Anthony Daly: Painful Limerick lesson proves Clare hurling certainly not in the place we need to be

I don’t want to be hammering lads but if you took Tony Kelly out of the team yesterday, Clare would have been whipped

Limerick’s Graeme Mulcahy shoots on goal. Pictures: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

On my way down to Thurles yesterday, I stopped off in Nenagh. It wasn’t your usual championship pit-stop, I just pulled into a layby. The exercise was as much to take the temperature and mood of a new winter championship than to somehow try and compare it to the boiling and eternal summer Sundays that we always associated with championship.

I was just so thrilled to be on the road to Thurles but stopping off was also to kind of remind myself of the new normal. The road would usually be thronged but I nearly had the motorway to myself. Borris-Ileigh was like a ghost-town. I was able to park behind Semple Stadium’s new Stand, right up close to the Dome.