Fitness not an issue for Limerick

Earlier on this season, as Limerick’s senior hurlers fell away in their two league games against Clare in the league and against Tipperary in the championship, questions were asked about their fitness levels.

Donach O’Donnell and Joey Gallanagh are the two men responsible for the strength and conditioning of those Limerick players; they too were asking questions.

“You look at yourself and at what you’re doing,” said O’Donnell. “Joey Gallanagh has worked with Munster rugby for five or six years. He’s a top-class coach, a great manner with the players, really knows his stuff.

“We looked at it and felt we were doing the right thing from day one. For young guysparticularly it just takes time.

“The running side of it, the conditioning, is usually good enough because they’re not carrying any weight but the strength side takes longer to build up. We were trying to time it right, that’s all. You work on it, work on it, which is what we’ve done.

“The ironic thing is that after our win last week [against Clare] people are now saying our conditioning is better than Clare’s, which is some turnaround in six or eight weeks.”

It wasn’t fitness that was catching Limerick claims O’Donnell, a Mallow native but now living in Nenagh where he managed Nenagh CBS this year to its first All-Ireland colleges title, it was injuries.

He recalled: “Injuries played a major role in our early games. Our forward line particularly was disrupted, a lot of injuries all through the league, guys coming on and going off. As soon as one guy was back from injury another was gone, and that was a big problem for us.’’

Their conditioning will be fully tested this Sunday, that’s for certain, Kilkenny in Thurles, an All-Ireland quarter-final.

“Kilkenny are all very good hurlers, extremely strong, very physical, in tremendous condition, but they’ve been at this for over a decade now. We’ll attack them, that’s the Limerick style.

“We’ve discussed it with the players and they’re very happy with that, they’re comfortable with the system we’re playing and we’re not going to change that now. We’ll play against Kilkenny the way we’ve played against every other team up along, but obviously we’ll be trying to improve on our performance.”