O’Mahony: Treaty fans must catch up

Limerick’s players have learned to stop dwelling on the past, according to wing-back Gavin O’Mahony. Now he’s urging supporters to do likewise.

On Sunday, Shane Dowling hit 1-9 from frees, a return of 10 from 10, excluding an out-of-range strike, which was a marked contrast to Declan Hannon’s poor afternoon against Clare last August.

In that All-Ireland semi-final, Dowling took over dead-ball duties and recorded a 100% return, but there were no recriminations directed at Hannon within the group afterwards.

After the abusive text sent to Dowling on top of the hate mail received by Donal O’Grady, O’Mahony believes people have to move on with the team.

Admiring Dowling’s performance in Thurles, he said: “At this level you have to take your chances. You only get so many and you have got to take 80/85% of your chances. We didn’t against Clare and they did and it paid off for them. But you can’t keep looking back.

“We are looking back for 40 years and it is time to just put a bit of belief into this group, keep our feet on the ground, keep our focus and the sky is the limit.”

TJ Ryan spoke of Sunday’s game as being one of four Limerick hope to win this year. The All-Ireland title is the goal. O’Mahony doesn’t exactly disguise that fact either.

“People talk about transition and we were in transition for a few years. But this group of lads they’re not young anymore and you only get a year or two of a window to win something.

“There is a fierce hungry bunch of lads here and they work unbelievably hard. You don’t do that year-in, year-out just to compete. We want to try and win a medal and thankfully we have a chance of that now again.”

Kevin Downes played down the significance of the perceived change in Limerick’s style from the league where they were adapting more of a short passing game to Sunday when they were varying things.

“People, I suppose, feel it’s a traditional Limerick style and maybe we’ve gone back a bit more to that kind of game-plan. But we’re just looking to play the right ball. There isn’t too much to it really, no real science behind it.

“It helps with the forwards there we can all move around, we can all play in a few positions, so we’ll keep moving around and keep the defenders on their toes.”