Hickey: We threw kitchen sink at it

“LIKE trying to climb Mount Everest when you’ve been practising on Carrantuohill,” was how Limerick boss Donal O’Grady described how Division Two hurling would prepare his side for their June 12 Munster championship semi-final with Waterford.

In game terms this was no Mount Everest, admittedly, but neither was it Carrantuohill – we prefer the summation of magnificent centre-back, Seamus Hickey.

“It was a cauldron,” said Hickey. “They came at us, but the prize (today) was huge and I think that told in the frantic nature of the game. A lot of the game, if you weren’t fully tuned in, it passed you by.”

Though only 23 himself, Hickey saluted his side’s youthful attack. “You look at our six forwards, their ages don’t amount to much but they showed massive maturity in those final minutes. You could name any one of them, they were immense when the need was greatest.

“So we basically emptied the tank, threw the kitchen sink at it, asserted ourselves with authority. I was impressed with the maturity of the guys. Everyone in that dressing-room is just drained.”

That was more like it, because this was a humdinger of a match with two fine hurling teams driven to great heights by the fear of losing, the fear of spending another year away from hurling’s top table.

The championship is the priority for most teams most years, but this was one of the exceptions for Limerick, and for Clare. Both have a lot of young players, both know that the best place for those players to develop is in Division One, thus Donal O’Grady’s mountaineering references.

Limerick skipper Gavin O’Mahony knew the importance of this game, however, knew of its quality also.

“We didn’t set any goals for ourselves about winning the league or anything like that, we just took it one game at a time. It was the same (today), we were looking at the win, nothing else. We knew after winning all our league games that if we came here and lost it was all for nothing.”

Clare, – for the second year in a row – came so near, and are not that far away.

“You’re not going to win too many matches when you concede four goals, and that was the most disappointing part,” said manager Ger O’Loughlin, “but I’m very proud of the lads, I thought they tried hard. For a long time we took the game to Limerick, looked the better team, but just needed to be more clinical. The young fellas they’ve (Limerick) introduced showed the bottle (tonight). That’s the future for them, that’s the future for us as well (youth), “It’s disappointing but I’m proud of the way they tried; we wanted it badly, we just lost our way in the last six or seven minutes. We’ll take a lot out of it, but that was the last thing we needed, another season in Division Two.”