Moran still to decide on his Limerick future

LIMERICK veteran Ollie Moran has not decided whether or not he will don the green jersey next season.

The Ahane clubman, who has played senior hurling for Limerick since 1997, was speaking in the wake of the Shannonsiders’ 24-point loss to Tipperary in Sunday’s All-Ireland SHC semi-final.

“I was reluctant enough coming back this year, the commitment now is so big and if truth be told I found the season very tough. “But there’s no point in making definite decisions about playing next year now, because things could change again in the coming months.”

Moran said he and his team-mates hadn’t seen the heavy defeat last Sunday coming.

“There’s no point in saying we did. I felt coming up to the game that while Tipperary would be favourites, we’d have a fighting chance,’’ Moran said.

“I felt we’d made progress even from the Dublin game, we had our plans made and we were ready for the challenge. “To be fair, though, after about 20 minutes on Sunday it was a matter of containment, you were chasing respectability more than anything.”

Moran felt Limerick opened brightly enough before Tipperary turned the screw with their three first-half goals.

“For the first 10 or 12 minutes it was going well enough for us, I thought Tipperary weren’t playing with much fluency,’’ Moran said.

“Against that, though, when we had possession we were probably guilty of aimless ball into our forwards. At times it looked like there were three Tipp backs on one of our forwards, almost like a soccer match.”

Moran conceded that Tipp’s first-half goal rush “opened the floodgates” and put Limerick on the back foot.

“The first Tipp goal was hugely unfortunate for Stephen (Lucey), he’s been very good for us all year. Tipperary have serious finishers up front and once they got a sniff of blood they really went after us and the floodgates opened, if you like.

“They probably had extra motivation, too, in that a lot of commentators were saying that Tipp have been guilty of fading out in the second half of their games this year, and they were obviously determined not to let that happen in this game. And you’d have to say they didn’t give their critics much ammunition the way they played on Sunday.”

Moran admitted that it was difficult playing in a game like Sunday’s, with no chance of winning from early on.

“It’s soul-destroying, because if you take a second or two in the middle of the game you realise all of a sudden that you’re in an All-Ireland senior hurling semi-final but that you’re only playing for pride, really.

“Tipperary had their dander up and everything that could go wrong for us was going wrong.

“Even though Limerick aren’t that bad, the game still reminds usTipperary are a good bit ahead of us and there’s a lot of work to be done in Limerick to get up to that level.”