Tactics cost Clare

LIMERICK fully deserved their win but they struggled to put Clare away for a long time.

Clare had some bad wides in the first-half and Diarmuid McMahon missed a great goal chance. I wrote on Saturday that Clare’s best chance would be to hit high ball in and hope to score from that tactic. They kept a big gap between their full and half-forwards but persisted with ground ball, which was mopped up by the eager, quicker Limerick backs, who adopted a man-marking approach, where Seamus Hickey snuffed out Clare’s main danger man, Niall Gilligan.

Up front Limerick seemed to have a plan — to play the ball up the right-hand side, and Mike Fitzgerald and Andrew O’Shaughnessy profited from a good supply. Kevin Dilleen was a little exposed at corner-back at times, but surprisingly, Clare’s management didn’t switch the more experienced Gerry O’Grady across, when there was very little threat from Kevin Tobin of Limerick in the left corner.