Liam Sheedy: Limerick are inside the heads of every hurling manager

Freed of responsibility for plotting their downfall since he stepped down as Tipperary hurling manager, Sheedy shared on Dalo’s Hurling Podcast his team’s approach in the Munster final against Limerick

BRAINS TRUST: Paul Kinnerk and John Kiely celebrate last month’s Munster final win over Tipperary, a match where Limerick showed their mettle with a stunning second-half display. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

Liam Sheedy has walked around the table and studied the snookers Limerick have laid from every angle.

“All of us managers are probably spending too much time thinking about them. You’re trying to see how you get the best out of your operation, but you can’t stop thinking about what they have coming out of the tunnel. They probably are in the heads of everyone else around the country.

“It’s trying to get the balance right because I don’t think Tipperary will beat Limerick by trying to beat Limerick at what they do. It’s how you can impose your game. But it’s not an easy thing to do.

 

“They have a gameplan that’s very effective. And honestly, they will kill you on restarts. If you go short, they’ll come and get you. If you go long they’ll just snap it out of the sky and come at you.

“Waterford went at them physically in the first quarter and they lived with that. We hurt them for 35 minutes and they just sat down, came up with a new plan and blew us away again.

We probably poked them with that first-half performance in the Munster final and it gave John Kiely all the fuel he needed — not that he needed much of it.

“They have been awesome ever since, every quarter. They are just a phenomenal group. They seem to be really well-grounded, excellently managed. They really have it at a supreme level and they look like a team that will be hard to knock off their perch.”

This final win brought ascension to the pantheon.

“No matter what part of Ireland you’re from, or what part of the world you are in, you could do nothing but applaud what was a five-star performance.”

Freed of responsibility for plotting their downfall since he stepped down as Tipperary manager, Sheedy could share on Dalo’s Hurling Podcast his team’s approach in a Munster final which saw him clap them in at the break 10 points ahead.

“We had a double centre forward where Jason (Forde) was playing in front of Declan Hannon and Bubbles (John O’Dwyer) was coming in behind him. We had a sort of triangle with Bubbles at the top of it. We nearly had a four-man half-forward line. With Jason dropping out to midfield to pick up Darragh O’Donovan, and Dan (McCormack) moving back in and picking up Cian Lynch, which meant Brendan (Maher) was a little bit free to be able to protect and not get our backs dragged all over the place.”

With 2-16 posted and the champions unusually ragged, it was, as Sheedy puts it, “going grand” at the interval.

“Two things, we definitely ran out of juice, it was a really hot day. And Limerick are in impeccable condition. But in that second half, I felt Limerick moved the battleground and we got caught. Limerick’s midfielders pushed back in way closer to their half-back line. They swarmed us there and we couldn’t get the ball.

“You could put a tracker on Diarmaid Byrnes and Declan Hannon and they’d probably be more or less in the same position of the field every time they play.

“But in the first half we had their half-backs going back towards their goals and I felt we got a lot of return from that. If they are facing out all the time and in control, you have to get the ball over them.

They shifted that, as a result our half-back line got dragged out and all of a sudden the space was created inside and obviously they battered us in that area 30 yards to 65 yards. They sucked the life out of us.

“They have it well sussed. There is never any panic. Even when they are 10 points down they never feel like they are out of the game.”

Having surrounded himself with coaching intellectuals, Sheedy is well placed to admire Paul Kinnerk, the man moving the counters on Limerick’s tactics board.

“I wouldn’t know the inner workings, but even the way he takes control of the quarters. He just seems to be technically on a really different level. They rave a lot about his games-based approach to coaching, but everything he does he seems to have a purpose. They are so comfortable in the game he wants them to play and I think they actually love getting a chance to go out and show what they can do.”

Liam Sheedy: Limerick will kill you on restarts. Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

Having worked with Limerick’s performance psychologist Caroline Currid, Sheedy has an inkling too what’s behind that zest for owning the stage.

“Caroline in the background on the whole mindset side of things, they look like a group who just love what they do.

“You see the picture of Cian and Seán Finn down on the bench before the All-Ireland final and they are smiling and laughing. But when they put on the battle armour and that whistle goes, by God, they are just animals inside that white line.”

The magical Lynch slipped whatever plan Cork hatched on Sunday. Sheedy handed Dan McCormack the task in the Munster final. But this snooker might need six cushions.

“We thought we had a job for him in midfield last year and next thing we go down and Cian is posted at centre-forward and Kyle Hayes is sent back to wing back. And those two changes have really made a massive transformation of that team and I think John Kiely deserves huge credit for that.

“If anything, this year they have been further ahead of the pack.”

Limerick better than noughties Kilkenny?

Limerick have now reached that delightful place in a great team’s journey when commentators begin to rewind the calendar searching for stiffer opposition from the annals.

So are the three-in-four champions as good as the Kilkenny’s four-in-a-row noughties juggernaut?

Liam Sheedy, who arrested that drive for five, adjudicates.

“It’s hard to compare teams, they are 10 years apart. There’s an awful lot of similarities in both teams, in both squads.

“The strength in depth Kilkenny had at that time... Kilkenny would batter you, their ability to win aerial possession and kill you in the air — and if it hit the ground they would kill you there too, and the eye they had for a goal.

“It’s a match you’d have no problem filling Croke Park with.

“Wouldn’t you love to see Tommy Walsh and JJ Delaney lining up against Tom Morrissey and Gearóid Hegarty?”

Maybe it’s enough that we are arranging these mythical matches.

“Doesn’t that say all you need to know, that we are talking about this team in the same breath as that Kilkenny team we all probably hailed as the best team to play the game?

“And Limerick are far from done yet. They are up there with them. The reality is they could have four in a row in the bag right now. That’s how much they have taken over. They are a well-oiled machine that has no intention of stopping.”