Darker days when Kiely hurled as Limerick struggled to return to light

Tom Ryan started to go about picking up the pieces in an Oireachtas opener against Wicklow.

Limerick Hurling 1994. John Kiely. © Tom Honan\INPHO

Salubrious, John Kiely’s inter-county hurling career never was nor has he ever made it out to be.

“I was a fringe player,” he told the Irish Examiner in 2018. “I was an extended panelist in ‘94 and I was a sub in ‘96. I would have been called in and out of the panel, left go, brought back in, played intermediate.”