Owens slams ‘harsh’ red card

WATERFORD manager John Owens admitted Limerick were worthy winners in yesterday’s Munster SFC semi-final but was unhappy with referee Syl Dolan’s decision to dismiss Tommy Prendergast after just 13 minutes.

Prendergast earned a straight red card for a challenge on Limerick’s James O’Donovan a decision that angered Owens.

“Over the entire game Limerick well deserved their victory,” Owens said before adding, “to be absolutely honest I thought it was a very harsh decision and a very unjust one too.

“Tommy collided with his opposite number as they rose together to field the ball, but no way was there any intent to cause any harm.

“I am not into referee bashing and never will be, but if you are asking me did he get this particular call wrong my answer is an emphatic yes. It was both a crucial and critical decision and one I most definitely would not agree with.”

Owens said Prendergast had been left traumatised by the referee’s decision to send him off.

“I am not offering it as any kind of excuse for our defeat however,” he said. “but it certainly altered the trend of the game in a major way and left us with a near impossible task against a very good Limerick team.

“The lads that I have are a great bunch, they are totally committed and despite being a man down they were still in the game with a decent shout until the closing 10 minutes when the extra man really told in Limerick’s favour.”

Goalscorer Gary Hurney agreed with his manager on the sending-off decision, and coming as it did so early in the game it delivered a massive blow to them.

“No way in the world was Tommy (Prendergast) deserving of a red card,’’ said Hurney.

For his part Limerick manager Mickey Ned O’Sullivan admitted that it could be awkward for him personally facing up to his native county if they come through in the replay against Cork.

“I would have difficulty with Kerry,’’ he stated, tongue-in-cheek.

Limerick team captain Seanie Buckley said after a performance in Fraher Field yesterday where the Shannonsiders were not overly impressive, it would be ‘a huge uphill battle’ irrespective of the opposition.

O’Sullivan had no difficulty in conceding his team didn’t play up to standard, but was diplomatic.

“We have a lot to work ahead of us. We didn’t put the place on fire,’’ he commented. “We didn’t particularly play brilliantly, we played effectively. I thought our defence coped admirably.’’

Accepting Waterford had asked a lot of questions of his team, he agreed it was an obvious concern that they had difficulty in imposing their will on the game after Waterford goaled shortly after losing midfielder Tommy Prendergast.

“That’s something we have got to work on,’’ he said.

“There was probably an element of tension there as well. Hopefully the game will do lads a lot of good. (But) we will require a major improvement.

“There is no way on today’s performance we will come remotely near Kerry or Cork. We are aware of that, but then again we’ll work on it. We’ll work on our shortcomings.

“Put it like this, we have no business going up against Kerry or Cork if we can’t lift a 100% to be able to compete.’’

Captain Buckley felt that their game-plan was affected by having an extra man: “It probably would have been better off with 15 against 15. That’s easy to say now, we didn’t complain at the time.

“It made us change our format from the way we wanted to perform.

“Overall, it was unspectacular, we just did enough on the day. We were probably comfortable enough through most of the game. We had a four or five point cushion. If it had come back to one or two points we would really have been tested in the second half, but it didn’t happen.’’