O’Grady rues missed opportunities

DONAL O’GRADY refused to be drawn on his future as Limerick senior hurling manager following yesterday’s All-Ireland SHC quarter-final defeat by Dublin.

O’Grady, a former All-Ireland winning player and manager with Cork, has a deal with the Limerick county board that expires on September 20.

But it’s almost certain that Shannonside chiefs will plead with O’Grady to stay on for at least another season – with former boss Richie Bennis insisting last week that the manager should get a minimum three-year term.

O’Grady revealed: “I have an agreement with the county board up until September 20 – they appointed me on that date. I have reports to write, talk about the structures and make a few reports. In September, my tenure is up and it would be very presumptuous of me to say anything. The county board are the people who approach the next managers and as it stands, that’s the way it is.”

O’Grady admitted understandable disappointment with yesterday’s defeat and revealed that he felt confident of victory before throw-in.

He said: “The more you win, the greedier you get. We were confident we were going to win and that we were going into the semi-final. I’m not saying we’d have won the All-Ireland but the important thing was to get as many matches as we can for the group of players. There’s a lot of youngsters there and unfortunately we fell at the hurdle today that we needed to get by. Dublin were short a few of their marquee names through injury but having said that, maybe there’s not that much difference between Division One and Division Two.”

On three separate occasions during the second-half, Limerick moved to within two points of Dublin but crucially, they could never cut it back to the bare minimum. The Shannonsiders registered 13 wides, including nine after half-time, and O’Grady reflected: “We needed to draw level and we had a few chances we didn’t convert.

“When you do that at this level, psychologically it’s a blow. If we’d drawn level it might have put a bit of pressure on them. Once their player (Ryan O’Dwyer) went down injured, it took three minutes to get it right. Now, there was only three minutes added on at the end. Once the momentum was killed, there was no way back for us. Dublin funnelled fellas back, then they picked out players and got the fourth point.”

Despite this defeat, O’Grady’s season in charge must be viewed as a success, particularly coming from the set-up he inherited from Justin McCarthy last year.

A modest O’Grady said: “It’s due to the management team, people behind the scenes have been fantastic and the players have done everything we asked of them. It’s a learning curve – the biggest disadvantage was most of the players out there didn’t play last year. You lose a year’s experience and maybe that told in the end.

“But we couldn’t have any cribs – the team that scores most on the scoreboard deserves to win.”

And O’Grady, regardless of whether or not he’s in charge for the start of the 2012 campaign, expects the Treaty men to improve considerably with Division One hurling.

He said: “I would expect so but there’s rumblings about the League being looked at again. I presume that’s for 2013, you can hardly come along and make changes for next year’s League when you tell people that they’re going to be promoted and that people are going to be demoted. I presume they’re going to have the structures in 2013, top six and bottom six, and I wouldn’t have any cribs with that.”