Limerick face nervous wait as Sean Finn injury to be assessed

Shane Kingston of Cork is tackled by Sean Finn, 3, Conor Boylan, 17, and Declan Hannon of Limerick during the Allianz League clash. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

All-Star Limerick defender Sean Finn will have a hamstring strain assessed this week, having left the field with the injury during Saturday night’s win over Cork.

“I don’t exactly know what the nature of it is, as in the degree of seriousness. But it is a hamstring tweak,” Limerick manager John Kiely confirmed after the game.

“We’ll have to assess it during the course of the week and see how much of a strain it is.”

Kiely has several players sitting out training at the moment with injury, but is positive most will be available in the coming weeks.

“Not overly concerned. I’m hoping most of them will return to full training. It was great to get Graeme (Mulcahy) back on the pitch.

“He had a bad ankle injury so it was great to get him on the field. That was a plus.

“We’ve another three or four coming back into the full training this week again, Kyle (Hayes) is returning to full training. Gearóid (Hegarty), there’s fear of him, he’s fine. He’ll be okay.”

Cork manager Kieran Kingston accepted his young side couldn’t cope early on as Limerick led 0-17 to 1-4 at one stage of the counties’ Allianz Hurling League meeting at LIT Gaelic Grounds.

“The first 20/25 minutes we were totally outplayed and in many ways we were lucky to be only down 10 points at half-time,” Kingston told RTÉ.

“We regrouped, made a few changes, and I was proud of the way the lads reacted in the second half, to be fair. Playing into the breeze.

“Basically, what we said to them at half-time, let’s try and win the second half, and we succeeded in doing that.

“I think that was pleasing. We showed good attitude. Got it down to seven points but never really looked like kicking on from there.”

Kingston noted Cork had deviated at times from the passing style they had vowed to stick with.

“We changed around our formation a little bit.

“We were crowding areas we shouldn’t have been crowding, not working the ball out the way we agreed we’d work it out.

“But we had a lot of young guys playing today and they’ll learn a lot from playing the All-Ireland champions at home.”