Horan: They pushed us all over the pitch

At half-time and facing a nine-point deficit having only managed two points from play Limerick manager Maurice Horan put one simple question to his players — “what are ye doing?”

Having forged a reputation as a side comfortable taking teams on in the physical stakes, they allowed Clare run through them like the All Blacks did against Ireland that Saturday morning.

There were gaps everywhere and Gary Brennan Alan Clohessy and Gordan Kelly exposed the space to telling effect. By the time Derek Fahy blew his half-time whistle, Horan and his management team were left with an almost impossible task to salvage the game.

“We were furious about it at half time,” he said after the match.

“We just didn’t put in one decent tackle in the first half. It’s straight forward, you don’t have to be a good footballer to put in a tackle out the middle of the pitch.

“We don’t know why but we stood off them. They pushed us all over the pitch.

“They wanted it more. They horsed us out of the way. They broke the tackles. All we had talked about doing we just didn’t do it.

“We went in and asked the questions why weren’t we doing it. Why were we letting them break tackles?

Why were we going lateral? Why were taking the balls into tackles repeatedly? Why were we forcing shots?

“The players are intelligent. Despite that loss there’s a lot of experience and brain power in that dressing room.

“We asked them a simple question, why they weren’t putting in tackles. In spite of what we talked about coming up to the match about slowing them down, why we weren’t doing that.”

Beginning the second half like the Limerick team that reached the All-Ireland quarter-finals last year, they started to claw back the lead.

When it looked like salvation was possible the crowd started to wonder when John Galvin would be brought on.

The talismanic midfielder made a miraculous return during the week from a second cruciate knee ligament injury and if he appeared it would have lifted the team and supporters.

“We just felt with the nature of the game we wanted people going in putting their bodies on the line and felt if John went on and had to come off again it would be a body blow to us,” said Horan.

“If it was a more open game maybe, we had discussed the scenarios of bringing him on beforehand, we probably would have brought him on. It’s probably a week or two too early for John.”

Now facing the qualifiers on July 14, Horan will release the players back to the clubs for championship action this weekend.

Oddly though, despite their first loss to Clare since 1984, he feels they are in a better position now than last year.

“It’s going to be tough. But it was tougher last year after the trouncing we got against Kerry.

“That was a heartbreaker there, there’s no two ways about it. I thought when we got the point up we should have kept pushing on but we just sat back too much at a time when the finish line was in sight.

We just didn’t go for the jugular.

“If we played the second half like the first half we probably would have won but that first half was desperate.

“We didn’t underestimate Clare at all. We talked about it long and hard. We just didn’t do what we wanted to do in the first half.

“When our backs were against the wall at half time we realised we had to start doing it.

“That was the do or die nature we were in at half time.”