John Kiely on Limerick's identity: 'Whatever it takes, whatever they have to give, that’s what makes them special'

The Treaty boss saw his side dominate the championship decider on Sunday.

Limerick's Aaron Gillane and manager John Kiely. Pic: INPHO/Bryan Keane

Less than a minute of normal time to be played in Sunday’s All-Ireland hurling final, Limerick a dozen points to the good on Galway, and there was John Kiely standing stock still on the Hogan Stand sideline like a wary sentry in wartime.

His thin legs stood ramrod straight, unbothered by his billowing shorts. His arms were folded, one hand cupping his chin to frame a ‘deep-in-thought’ pose. Then he moved, signalling his troops to push up again after another Galway wide.

It wasn’t until the third minute of the five added on, with the maroon hue draining from the stadium like paint from a sun-faded wall, that he finally relaxed his guard, turned to the bench behind him and pumped two fists in release.

This is Limerick, Kiely’s Limerick: relentless from first minute to last.

He passed praise around like candy later on when he sat down to share his thoughts. For Paul Kinnerk, Caroline Currid, Adrien O’Brien and the rest of the S&C department. But most of all for the players. Indomitable, he said. Relentless.

“It’s our identity. Their identity is based on how hard they work, in training and in matches, and how committed they are to be doing the right thing for the group at all times. Whatever it takes, whatever they have to give, that’s what makes them special.” 

There are any number of snippets that could be scissored out to sum up this day for the winners and losers, but we’ll zero in on just the one given it happened when this coronation was still clinging on to the figment that it was a contest.

Jason Rabbitte had raged against the dying of the light from minute one. The Athenry forward had survived the incessant attentions of Mike Casey from the off. Allowed his people to cling to a hope that was already gossamer thin.

There was half an hour gone when he plucked another meteor from the skies, this one tight to the sideline. Sean Finn was clinging to him like a barnacle to a hull, but Rabbitte produced a worldie of a score with the referee signalling the advantage.

It showed just how much Galway had to do to eke out a single point: harried to the ends of the earth by a team of Terminators. It made for a rare occasion when the human got the better of the machine. And this Limerick team is a machine.

Kiely was never going to turn the spotlight his own way, but he is key to it.

He spoke about his time with the county U21s back in 2015 when he worked off a basic projector and a laptop with flimsy software and presented to a group of young men who were even then hardwired to process complex information and bring it alive on grass.

This is a team that reflects its manager. Most do. It’s 30 years since Kiely was on the periphery of a crew that lost a second All-Ireland final in the space of three seasons and yet he was still prompted to mention that hurt after this sixth title in nine seasons.

That hurt, and a collective hunger unabated by all their modern successes, has driven him on to what may be his greatest achievement yet in being able to bridge that three-gap to the last time they finished top of the heap. Act II.

The theory was that this season was a reprise of the great Dublin footballers who had bridged their own three-year absence from the steps of the Hogan to etch another notch onto their roll of honour, but this doesn’t feel like some sort of last dance.

Not for this team.

Aidan O’Connor and Adam English were playing their first senior All-Ireland finals here and both stitched layers into this game and into a season at large that saw the county lay claim to National League and Munster honours with it.

Okay, so there’s a growing number of them who have known a 30th birthday but 20 of the players who togged out in that extended winning panel had never been in a Limerick dressing-room on the biggest of days before.

There is more road in them.

The question is whether Kiely will spearhead the next trip. He played down his role in next year’s Ryder Cup at Adare Manor when asked post-game about his future by the BBC. For now he’s entitled to sit in the glow of something very special.

“I have no thought given high up or low down to anything other than what is going to happen for the next few days. I have a small plan for that [few days], but beyond that, I had no plan.

“Every year, we stop, break and revisit when we think it is appropriate to say ‘what next’ and I am sure in the coming weeks we will sit and reflect and make a decision on what is going to happen after that.

But for now, I’m intent on enjoying these moments and trying to bank as many memories as I possibly can. We now know far better than we did in the past how hard it is to get back here and how hard it is to be successful here and we need to really enjoy this.”