Early goals were killer blows, admits Bennis

THERE was to be no repeat of 1973 for Richie Bennis in Croke Park yesterday.

Thirty-four years ago he won an All-Ireland senior medal at Kilkenny’s expense, but he had to endure a seven point defeat at the hands of the Cats as Limerick’s manager, and he was clearly hurting.

“The whole country had us written off before we ever set foot in the stadium, but we came up here confident in our ability that we could win the game. There was no point in coming otherwise, but unfortunately for us it didn’t work out the way we had planned.

“Our plan was not to concede early scores to Kilkenny but we let them in for two early goals and were playing catch up for the rest of the match.

“If were to have any chance we needed a similar start to the one we got against Waterford, or at least prevent Kilkenny from starting well. The two goals were killer blows, but credit to the lads they got stuck in and made a match of it.

“Today things didn’t go as well as they did in the semi-final. We missed a couple of frees; hit a couple of bad wides from far out, and against a team of Kilkenny’s calibre no team will get away with that.

“I’ll have to concede that we were beaten by a far better team. The one good thing we can take form the game is that we didn’t die. Another team might have after the kind of start Kilkenny got but we didn’t.

“With a massive effort we got the deficit down to six points in the second half and were hurling well without ourselves. We needed a goal at that stage if were to win, but Kilkenny always has the facility to go down field and get a score

“They never allowed us to build on the scores we got, and found it far easier to score than we did and that was the main difference between the teams overall.

“We got big games from a number of our players like Mark Foley and Ollie Moran. To be fair all our players tried their hardest but it didn’t work for some, for others it did, but you need every player on song on All-Ireland final day and we hadn’t.”

Asked if Limerick can bounce back from the defeat, Bennis said he expected every one of his players would make themselves available again next season, but agreed it’s a long road back.

“We’ll take stock of the defeat in the coming weeks and see where it leads to. They are a young team and they know there is more in them. We’ll drown our sorrows tonight and begin to think about next season later on.”