'Embrace it or you ignore it at your peril': hard chats the basis for Limerick return, says Kiely
SEASON 10: Limerick boss John Kiely. Pic: James Crombie/Inpho
For a short time there in early 2025, John Kiely’s match-day props used to include a pair of glasses.
This year, he’s added a set of Apple AirPods to connect with his team in the stand, but the one constant has been the notebook.
It is laid down before the ball is thrown in but as the stadium comes to life there tucked under his arm are his musings.
Kiely has always been a notetaker but perhaps none more so than last year when he conducted the greatest debrief and filled two books.
Not since his first season in 2017 had Limerick gone a season without silverware.
It was also the second successive year where they failed to make an All-Ireland final. When Kiely teams reach that crescendo, they are usually the ones making the most noise but those were campaigns that he admits “ended in a way that was very difficult to accept”.
That defeat to Dublin in particular pinched hard.
So, off on a tour of the county he went, conversing with every member of his on-field and off-field team.
"I met all the players and the backroom team individually over the course of maybe six or eight weeks in late August, September, just to get a sense of where everybody was at.
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“It's amazing what you glean from those conversations. Everybody has their own perspective. There's an awful lot of very valuable feedback to be taken from those conversations. Great honesty and challenging conversations.
“But you either embrace it or you ignore it at your peril. We chose to embrace it. I think it was a starting point for more deeper conversations that followed later. Ultimately, it asks you the question of are you up for this or not?"
How many conversations? “63,” he replies. How long were those meetings? "They're two to three hours. They're valuable. Everybody's opinion is important and everybody's story is important.”
It was a fact-finding mission for Kiely about himself as much as anybody else. This is season 10 for himself, Paul Kinnerk and the likes of performance analyst Seánie O’Donnell. He had to be sure.
“As much as you're trying to assess where others' determination is, you're trying to assess where your own is. It was a great process. It was a very valuable process. I think they picked up on that then as well and knew that if we're going to give that much time to this aspect of reflection, only good things could come from it going forward."
Persuading performance coach Caroline Currid, the common denominator in all of their All-Ireland winning seasons, to return was a major fillip. When she chose to leave after the 2023 season, he understood.
“If I was to be that involved with the players every day over a number of years, you'd burn it out. You can't. You just can't. These people have all got their own lives as well, so how does this job fit into their own lives?
“Is there any correlation between us not being successful and Caroline not being there? Well, she wasn't there. But I think if we're really honest about it, we can't win every day. And it's over a long period of time. There are going to be days where you're just that little bit off.”
The green machine may be leaner in their scoring this year – 14 wides v Cork in April and 15 v Clare in July are significant totals for Limerick. But they are certainly meaner – a concession of 1-1 from play across the Munster final and All-Ireland semi-final second halves is ridiculously miserly.
“There's a great defiance in the group at the moment,” enthuses Kiely. “The last two seasons ended in a way that was very difficult to accept. We were all terribly, terribly disappointed.
“There were rational reasons for all of it, obviously. We came up against good oppositions. We just ran out of gas last year when it came to playing Dublin. We just didn't have it in the tank. That's an understandable thing to happen, given you're on the road for so many years and you've had a really tough Munster campaign and a Munster final that went to extra-time and penalties.
“That's a natural part to happen. Look, it happens. So, what you do? You either walk away or you double down and I think everybody in our group doubled down.
“I think there's great determination there within the group to at least be the best we can be. If we get beaten, well and good. It'll be by somebody who just played better. It's exemplified when the games get into that phase where it's on the line and the boys are embracing those moments when it's on the line.
"Their execution, their decision-making, their cohesiveness as a unit on pitch in those moments has just been top-class. They can take great confidence from being through those battles and coming out the right side of them."
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