Lucey hoping for a rub of the green against Cats

POOR Limerick. Underneath all the usual managerial traumas and intermittent player disturbances, there is a pretty nifty hurling team screaming to get out and the statistics bear evidence to that.

Only Cork and Waterford have managed to put more than 14 points on the board against them in 13 games this season and the 1-20 they coughed up against the All-Ireland champions can be virtually discounted as it came in the dying throes of Padjoe Whelahan's ill-fated tenure.

At the other end, Limerick have been putting together a nice collage of numbers too 3-11 against Tipperary in the league, 17 points against Wexford, 18 in the defeat to Waterford and 1-18 in their last outing against Galway.

Going by those figures, they should be winning more games than they are. What's holding them back is an unfortunate predilection to ship goals. Tipp hit them for eight in three games, Wexford stung them for three and even Laois and Dublin managed five between them.

Why that should be is difficult to explain. When the annual Munster Allstars team was named over the weekend Stephen Lucey and Damien Reale took two of the three full-back positions, while former Allstar Mark Foley is the third of a capable trio manning the last outfield line.

Screws need tightening somewhere though Kilkenny aren't shy about taking advantage of careless gaps in a back line.

"What everyone knows about them is they're very good in the air and they have good forwards," said Lucey.

"They always get goals and they always seem to work up a total of about 20 points.

"You have to keep tight to their forwards, you can't allow them any space to work with and you need a bit of luck against them as well."

Luck is one ingredient Limerick have missed. Twice they let a win against Tipperary slip through their fingers and they somehow conspired to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory against Galway.

Having lost out so often with the footballers, Lucey is more frustrated than most with their inability to nail down a big win.

"It's devastating to be losing matches by a point or two all the time," he said.

"It was ridiculous how we ended up losing to Galway. We were unbelievably down after that game. We just went back into the dressing room and said 'lads, what the hell are we after doing out there?'

"It was the same against Tipp as well how many chances did we need to put the ball over the bar at the end? It's our own fault."

Though the cycle of defeats seems endless, the former UCD student points to his own experiences with the county's three-in-a-row U-21 All-Ireland-winning teams as how success can snowball when players develop a taste for winning the big contests.

Few people on Shannonside expect their fortunes to pick up on Sunday.

"It's Kilkenny's own pitch. They play there the whole time, we've played there once since '96. Nobody expects us to win, but I heard one fella say it on the radio, there's no great mystery to beating Kilkenny.

"They're a seriously good team and you just have to play to your peak to have any chance of getting a result."