John Kiely: 'We made quite an inordinate number of errors'

ERRORS: John Kiely rued “an inordinate number of errors” as the root cause of Limerick’s five-point defeat to Clare. Pic: Tom Beary/Sportsfile

John Kiely rued “an inordinate number of errors” as the root cause of Limerick’s five-point defeat to Clare.

A much-changed Treaty side couldn’t recapture the heights of their 16-point victory over Cork for this dead-rubber contest.

“Against the breeze, our performance was solid. We just didn't come out of the blocks for the second half,” Kiely said.

“It was one of our weakest quarters of the game. We lacked intensity. We lacked a bit of energy and accuracy in what we were doing.

“We made too many mistakes and ultimately, across the 70 minutes, on analysis it will be shown that we made quite an inordinate number of errors. Just missed pick-ups, dropped balls, misplaced passes, unforced errors. That's the story of the game for us really.” Kiely believes that rustiness caught up with some of his Limerick players among their eight changes.

“It's always disruptive to make changes,” he said. “But ultimately, these guys have been playing with each other for years, so for them to be playing on the one team, it's inconsequential.

“Ultimately, the biggest issue was that these guys hadn't maybe played enough game s before today and hadn't enough game sharpness. But when do you play them then?

“Some of the changes were enforced because we’d guys with knocks from last weekend. We’d three guys that couldn't tog out in the first place.

“Then, you're trying to prepare for the season ahead. We're out of Munster now, we have a Munster final, we need to start preparing our panel for that as well.

“You can't keep relying on the same players all the time. We've great trust and great faith in our panel.

“The real piece for us was ultimately our energy levels and accuracy. We had the game maybe with 10 minutes to go. It was there for us to go after. A couple of mistakes in that period really cost us the result at the end of the day.” Kiely’s troops will be fully revved up for a Munster final rematch at home to Cork on Saturday week.

“The Cork team and our team have a great rivalry, and that's been evident for a number of years now.

“We've played some fantastic games against each other, we’ve great respect for each other, but this is a Munster final. It's on in Limerick, and we'll be giving it every single thing we have.

“These are special occasions to be a part of, but you want to be at your best. For us, the next two weeks is about preparing in the very best way we possibly can to be the best team we can be on the night.” Kiely isn’t too concerned by their injuries ahead of that final.

“I don't think there's anything too serious. Dead legs and the like. The lads that got injured last weekend are something similar. Contact injuries, as opposed to soft tissue injuries, so they'll all be fine.

“We've nobody that we would say that we won't have available at this point for two weeks' time.

“We've parked the round-robin. It's over now. We've qualified out of Munster, we've qualified for a Munster final, and we're very much looking forward to that.”