Disappointed Keane says Limerick ‘never gelled all year’

POST-MORTEM is too harsh a word for the kind of soul-searching that normally goes on in a county after a championship defeat, but it probably just about fits the bill in Limerick this week.

In 11 catastrophic days, last Wednesday week they were beaten in the U21 Munster hurling championship having been All-Ireland champions for the past three years. And then on the following Sunday they lost the Munster senior football final to Kerry by just four points, having missed two penalties and a golden early goal opportunity from play.

Last Thursday evening in Thurles despite being the popular favourites they went under to Offaly in the All-Ireland senior hurling qualifiers and, finally, to cap the misery, succumbed to a goal-fest from All-Ireland champions Armagh in Roscommon on Saturday in the All-Ireland qualifier series.

Most disappointing of all in that sequence for the Limerick supporters was the senior hurling defeat, and most disappointed of all those people was the first year manager of that hurling team, Dave Keane.

"The team never gelled the whole year, not even in one game, and apart from actually losing that game, being out of the championship, that's what's so disappointing.

"The ability is undoubtedly there, but they just never showed it. From one to 15, and whoever comes on, you have to play as a team, you have to be capable of forming a tight unit. We never did. We should have been capable of doing it, but never did."

It didn't help of course that in the run-up to the Offaly game, training was fractured, to put it mildly.

"We were hampered with the involvement of several players at U21 and with the senior footballers, and then you had the injuries on top of that. I'm not putting that forward as an excuse for the way we performed, just as matter of fact, it was something we had to try and deal with."

Something else Keane and his management team had to deal with of course, something he wasn't prepare to go into in any detail for this article, was the dissent in camp, the public airing of dirty private linen.

"Nobody went out to play badly, nobody went out to be associated with a bad performance, and that's important to say.

"But there's no doubt about it, Limerick did suffer throughout the year from very bad publicity, especially from within the camp, and that will never lend itself to a team gelling together. I don't want to go any further than that," he said.

What now, what of the future? Will Keane stay on? Is there any talk of retirements within the squad?

"No, and I wouldn't even entertain it. That's just clutching at straws, looking for excuses. Fellas are disappointed enough and down enough without talk of retirement of resignations or anything like that.

"From the management point of view, we have never experienced a loss of that magnitude in the time we've been involved together, John Meskell, Dave Punch and myself. We were successful with the U21's for three years, but this is a learning process.

"Nobody likes to be beaten, but if we can take something positive from it, it won't be all waste. I have a two year contract, but as far as next year is concerned, I haven't even thought about it yet. We have a seven month gap 'til we're back in competitive action again, and that might be no bad thing for some of these lads, to have a bit of a break, come back refreshed in the new year."

It might be no bad thing for Keane, or those stricken Limerick fans, either.