‘These players have earned it’
John Allen: I know people have heard me say it over and over again, but the buy-in from the players has been fantastic. Much as we did with Cork years ago, the key thing is to get the senior players to accept what you’re doing and your reasons for what you’re doing, because it then ripples out from them to the rest of the panel. And guys like Donal O’Grady, Niall Moran, Seamus Hickey, Tom Condon, those guys all accepted our plans; they all took on board why we were insistent on hydration, on nutrition, on getting the gym programmes done, and the others followed. It’s not a static thing — you’ve go to keep reassuring guys that you’re doing the right thing, that you know why you’re doing all those things. But if the players buy in to it, and the Limerick lads have, then the whole thing ends up running itself very smoothly because of that.”
John Allen: “Was I distracted by the Cork colours? It’s funny, I did a bit for TV3 ahead of the Cork-Clare game in the Gaelic Grounds, and after talking to Kieran McSweeney I was walking down the sideline.
The guy who organises people on the sideline in the Gaelic Grounds then said to me, ‘Cork team, will you stay on the right-hand side?’ And I said, ‘I’m not with Cork any more’.
It was a genuine mistake — he knows me, obviously, from being with Limerick in the Gaelic Grounds — I’d say he just had so much on his mind that he associated me with Cork because they were playing in the game that day.
Last Sunday the focus wasn’t so much on how I’d react to Cork as how our guys would react to a crowd of over 40,000 people. Obviously enough a lot of them would never have played in front of that many people, so we discussed that a good deal in the lead-up to the game.
On the day then we told them to take it all in for the first minute or so, that they had that time for themselves, and then we’d drive on with the warm-up, get through all the things that we wanted to do. For myself — for all the management team — there’s a lot to do in that time before the match actually begins. To be honest, if you were taking in the sights and sounds of the crowd, the flags and all of that, you wouldn’t be doing your job properly.”
John Allen: “No matter what I say about it, it’s something that’s open to interpretation. I didn’t see it at the time, as I said, but I’ve seen it since. According to the letter of the law he [Horgan] struck another player on the head with his hurley. There’s no doubt it was a harsh call and there’s no point in saying otherwise. Did it change the game? I’ve no doubt that it wasn’t a help to Cork, but as I said after the game, how many times have we seen 14 men beat 15 in a championship game?
The game is so physical now, you could say there are many worse things happening, but it was a harsh call — and harsh on a guy who’s a really good hurler. I have no doubt there was no intent at all there.”
John Allen: “The key thing at the break was getting the sweeper right. That was paramount. The players had to be happy with who the sweeper would be and what role he would play, so there’d be no grey areas and no instances of players looking at each other and saying ‘whose man is that?’ We — the management — spoke to the six backs for a few minutes and the decision was taken that Richie [McCarthy] would be the spare man.
Richie himself expressed an interest in marking someone, but we felt he was the man to read the game and that he’d be the best to distribute the ball.
Once we sorted that you had a situation where we had six backs to five forwards and when the ball was played in we had the advantage — and Richie was good in the role once the second half started.
We didn’t play well in the first half — we’d have been disappointed in that we started well before Cork took control of the game, and they had some bad wides.
At half-time though, it was level, we were a man up, we had the wind, we hadn’t played well so there was room to improve...there was no way we could entertain the idea of losing.”
John Allen: Tom Kenny made it his business to find me before we left the field after the game. He’s a gentleman to his fingertips.
“When I went to the Cork dressing room it was like any dressing room after a team has lost a final. One guy I felt for in particular was Patrick Cronin, who’s a very solid guy that I’d love to see captain his county to victory, just not last Sunday. We’ve all been in those rooms: I’ve been in plenty of them myself.”
John Allen: “There won’t be much celebrating, we’ll be back training tomorrow night. There are club fixtures down for decision but given that the minors drew with Waterford in their Munster final on Sunday, and a few of them would be playing senior with their clubs, we won’t know what’s going to happen before tonight’s county board meeting.
It’d be ideal to have those club fixtures next weekend because you’d have a three-week lead-in to the semi-final.
As for the lads, there’ll be no problem getting them back down to earth tomorrow night for training.
They all know what’s at stake at this stage, and the buy-in I referred to earlier means they’re all aware that they’ve spent eight or nine months preparing for this. Losing sight of where we’re at now...there’s too much put into this now to throw it away by being caught up in celebrations.
These guys deserved what happened on Sunday. Someone like Donal O’Grady, a decent, understated person who leads by example, Niall, Gavin O’Mahony, Wayne McNamara, all of them. They deserved Sunday. They earned it.
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