‘You cannot play for two minutes and stop for the next 33’

UNDERSTANDABLY, Limerick team officials and players trudged straight to their dressing room to seek sanctuary after they failed to Tipperary in the Guinness Munster SHC.

Team manager Joe McKenna was not available for comment, but team coach Ger Cunningham gave his reasons why the team failed to fire for the second time in a fortnight in a vital game.

“It goes without saying that we are devastated. Every player in our dressing room is gutted and are at a loss as to where it all went wrong,” he said.

“It how we respond to this defeat is the worry right now. At the moment you couldn’t even think about an All-Ireland qualifier.

“We got the perfect start, but you cannot play for two minutes and stop for the next 33 — as we did in the first half — and expect to win.

“It was as if, having scored the two early goals, we thought it was going to be easy, and you cannot do that against any opposition, and certainly not against Tipp in Thurles.

“What makes this defeat all the more mysterious is that people saw what we are capable of in the league final where we played well despite losing.

“Today against shows the difference between league and championship hurling. We just couldn’t match our league final form.

“It will take a few days for this to sink in. We’ll regroup and analyse where we went wrong and if the lads have any pride, they’ll want to show that was not Limerick’s true form.”

Team captain TJ Ryan said he was at a complete loss as to why he side collapsed after such a great start.

“After scoring the two goals so early, we became very flat and couldn’t build on those scores. While goals are important, we had only five points on the board by half time, and you would not be happy with that.

“It’s not we didn’t expect Tipperary to come out with all guns blazing. That was always going to be the case.

“We got the best possible start with the two goals, but we lost our way after that and Tipp came as us in waves. The pressure on our defence was enormous and had they converted some of the chances they missed, would have been out of sight by half time.

“We know we are far better team that we showed out there, but championship is all about performing on the day and we didn’t.”

Asked if he felt hard done-by when the referee ruled out what would have been an equalising goal in the dying moments of the game, Ryan said he was too far away to judge.

“It would have been super to get a draw out of the game, but on the day we hardly deserved it,” he admitted.