Limerick finished the league campaign having suffered three defeats in six games
Limerick manager John Kiely labelled Limerick’s Allianz Hurling League campaign as “not good enough” as his side fell to a third defeat in six games to finish the 2025 campaign in fifth place following a 1-19 to 1-12 defeat at home to already relegated Wexford.
With just under a month until their opening Munster Championship clash away to Tipperary, the Treaty had nothing to play for in this final league game. They couldn’t be relegated or reach a league final, so it was an opportunity to try some fresh faces in new positions. However, Limerick will be disappointed with their overall performance, as they finished with just 1-5 from play over the 70 minutes.
Speaking to Sporting Limerick after the game, Kiely was not happy with his side’s display on Saturday evening. “Saying it was a flat performance is being kind”, Kiely said.
“It was a very poor performance. We lacked energy, it was flat, lacked intensity, had a lot of unforced errors, lacked flow and patterns to what we were doing. To be fair to Wexford they brought energy, they brought intensity, they were full of energy and life. They should have won by more. Their performance was well deserving of the victory tonight”.
This was Limerick’s fourth match in as many weeks after their Kilkenny fixture was rescheduled due to storms last month. It meant that they have not had a break since then, but Kiely wasn’t using that as an excuse and fully accepted that his side just simply wasn’t at the races.
“Having the four weeks in a row, I’m not looking for excuses because there are no excuses for that performance, but definitely the four weeks in a row has been a challenge to us giving the number of players we’ve had available to us and the injuries picked up and changes to the team. You name one team, two days later you have a different team.
“It’s been frustrating and difficult and suppose when you have that many games in a month it’s hard to get clear water, you don’t get any break to get your head above water and see the work that needs to be done. We have that now, we have a month to get ready for April 20th, and we’re going to need every minute of it. We have probably one of our greatest challenges ahead of us because clearly a performance of that nature is not going to put you in a place where you are going to be competitive for a championship let alone be successful. We’ve a huge body of work to get done and I don’t think any of us are in any doubt about that”.
Declan Hannon and David Reidy were late changes to the side with niggles and sickness, whilst Mike Casey was forced off with a dead leg and Kyle Hayes is still out with injury, which is the last thing Kiely needs at the minute, but one positive was the return of Darragh O’Donovan who played 60 minutes.
When asked about the league campaign Kiely didn’t shy away from his honesty and elaborating that he didn’t get what he wanted from the league.
“The performances just haven’t been good enough. That’s the bottom line. When your performance levels are low what happens is that you lose three of your league matches. We only had six and we lost three and that is disappointing. We’re not at all happy about it, it’s been a poor league campaign and we’ve a lot of work to do and I don’t think there is anyone in that dressing room under any illusions of the magnitude of the challenges that’s ahead of us”.