Ryan ready to sparkle as Limerick bid to end the great hunger

IT’S only two years since Ian Ryan first entered the national consciousness, streaking across the football sky like a comet.

His Limerick senior football debut was in the modest setting of Fermoy for the 2008 Munster first round clash against Tipperary, and he kicked over three frees in a mundane encounter. For the rest of the summer he sparkled, blitzing Cork for five points in the provincial semi-final and then striking an astonishing 3-7 in the qualifier destruction of Meath in July. Those were snapshots of his burgeoning talents and since then Ryan has provided further irrefutable evidence that he is an attacker of some stature.

But in keeping with the county where he hails from, all Ryan has harvested from senior football fields are tales of sorrow and woe. That 2008 Munster semi-final saw Cork mug them with two late goals, last year in Páirc Uí Chaoimh even more gut-wrenching as Limerick lost by a point a game they owned and their summer ended with defeat by a wafer-thin margin in Portlaoise against Meath.