DONAL Ryan’s side were defeated by Wicklow in the semi-final of the TG4 All-Ireland Junior Ladies football championship on Saturday in Westmeath. The Limerick Ladies fell to a 0-4 to 1-12 defeat and bow out of this year’s championship.
The Garden County will now look to a final spot following Limericks lack of clinical finishing and missed opportunities throughout the game.
The Treaty side will rue the missed chances and wasteful play at times but will look to learn from the experience against the championship favourites.
Speaking after the loss in Tang, Ryan mentioned that his side have a young group of players but that the core of talent within the squad will shine in years to come following the heartbreaking exit.
The Limerick manager thinks the neglectful nature of their finishing cost them the game ultimately, but also credited Wicklow’s strength and talent as he stated:
“Same thing happened us all championship, mistakes cost us and Wicklow are a clinical team and they punished us every time… when we had our chances we didn’t take them, we missed two easy goals and we gave up a soft goal and against a team like Wicklow you can’t do that because they’re a top class team”
“The goal at the start of the second I suppose that just killed us, the girls lost the shape for a while… Wicklow played with great intensity and played until the last minute as well”.
Ryan mentioned the potential his group of players have and how they will take this defeat and learn from it, come back stronger and build experience going forward into next years season, he’s excited about the possibilities his talented team have moving on into the future stating:
“They’re a very young team, a lot of them are only 19 years of age , 20 years of age. The futures bright for them. If the bulk of that team stay together, like in two or three years’ time they’re all going to be 22, 23 and still young woman and still have the strength and conditioning behind them, the fitness behind them. There’s huge things to come from these girls”
“That’s the great thing about limerick there’s some nice underage coming through… The futures bright for them, it’s not there today, today wasn’t the day, that’s unfortunately it, but dust yourselves off and just regroup again”
“Look at the big picture, what’s there at the end of it, it might be a year or two years off but it’s there it’s definitely there…it mightn’t happen today it mightn’t tomorrow but it will happen for them, things will click and they’ll realise what they can do”.
Watch Donal Ryan’s reaction following the defeat in full here:
The post Watch: Donal Ryan reacts to Limerick’s All-Ireland Junior Championship semi-final defeat to Wicklow appeared first on Sporting Limerick.
