Moran: Honest management is key

Ollie Moran believes the policy of openness which manager Richie Bennis operates within his squad has been key to Limerick making the breakthrough to their first Munster SHC final appearance since 2001.

Moran, one of Limerick's heroes from the three-game saga with Tipperary, has given a ringing endorsement to Bennis' managerial methods ahead of Sunday's provincial decider against Waterford.

"Richie is a very honest individual first and foremost and he brings a huge passion to it," said Moran.

"Like any good manager he has built a good backroom team around him too and one of the first things Richie set out to do was to get the views of players and find out, as players, what we felt we needed from the set-up and I feel we reciprocated that.

"We respected the fact that he gave us that freedom and both Richie and the players would talk very openly if things weren't going right or wrong. He has brought in a huge openness and I think he has earned massive respect because of it."

Centre-forward Moran, who hails from the Ahane club, was in Dublin today to pick up the Vodafone GAA All-Stars Hurler of the Month award for June.

It is the second such accolade that he has received this week, having also been honoured by the corresponding Opel GPA scheme yesterday, which is voted for by the players.

However Moran would gladly trade in all of those personal awards for a Munster winners' medal this Sunday.

"It's not everyday you get accolades like this, so in one sense it gets me out of Limerick and from that point of view I was happy enough to come up," he said.

"There has obviously been a lot of talk and hype in Limerick but I think everybody is trying to stay as focused as possible and it's great to get these awards, but you would nearly hand them all in for a Munster medal next Sunday with due respect to the awards."

Although Limerick gave stirring displays in their recent trilogy with Tipp, the 31-year-old believes that his side will still have to raise their game if they are to overcome league champions Waterford this weekend.

"They are very classy hurlers, Tipperary were very formidable opposition but we know that if we are to beat Waterford we have to go 20% above any of those performances again. Waterford are the form team in the country and I don't think you need me to talk about how good they are."

Moran believes that Waterford have made the transition over the last few years from having some very talented individual players to being a strong team unit, which has brought them to the level they are currently at.

"They are an exceptional team. They know each other's game very well and their style is very hard to break down because they play a very unpredictable type of a game," he explained.

"It will be our first time meeting Waterford in about four years and our first time in 70 years meeting them in a Munster final so it will be a novel pairing but hopefully we will come out on the right side of it."

Moran knows that both teams will not be lacking for hunger heading into the final.

The Shannonside star added: "Waterford had a very long barren period from the fifties to the late nineties but since then an unbelievable crop of players has come up. They instinctively know where each other is on the field, which is hard to break down. I think a lot has been said and made of their players and everyone knows the calibre that they have."

In his eleveth year of senior inter-county hurling, Moran feels that finally Limerick have the right blend of youth and experience to challenge for top honours.

"If you look at the age profile of our team it goes from 19 to 32 and I think there is a fairly even spread over those ages. It's like any team, when the Under-21s came on stream first they were in a habit of winning and winning is a habit.

"They found winning an awful lot easier than other teams but unfortunately the opposite of that is that we started losing games after 2001 and fell into that habit and that's a hard habit to break," he added.

"The team has been getting on well in the last couple of years but I think that it just came to a head this year. We all have to try and get on and get the most out of ourselves as a group. Maybe that is beginning to happen anyway."