JOHN KIELY’S Limerick are within touching distance of a record-equalling four-in-a-row of All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championships following an eventual comfortable win over Galway at Croke Park.
The feat has only ever been achieved down through the 100-odd year history of the championship by Cork way back in the 1940s and the more modern era by Kilkenny.
In front of an astonishing attendance of just shy of 60,000, the defending champions looked in more than a spot of bother when down by six points during the opening half but then, in the true mark of greatness, reeled off six of the next seven points to trail by just the minimum at the interval.
Afterwards, addressing a large media presence, Kiely reasoned: “We managed to close in on their puckout a little bit, we managed to get a few more possessions into our players in the middle third. Cian (Lynch), David Reidy, Darragh O’Donovan (subsequent man-of-the-match), Gearóid (Hegarty), Tom Morrissey, they came into it at that stage.
“Our half-back line became very solid and stopped the ball going in behind them and we closed out the first half very strong.”
He continued: “I think we didn’t realise it at the time, but I think the game was in a pattern at that, we were in ascendancy and we stayed there for the rest of the game.”
Kiely Concluded: “We had a lot of tight games this year coming home down the stretch. I think probably we gave ourselves opportunities to finish games like we did today during the year, but we didn’t do it and we allowed the opposition come back into the games in those last seven, eight, nine minutes.
“So that for me was one of the most pleasing things, that we just kept driving on today when we got to that position.”
