Gearoid Hegarty looks for positives as Limerick return to action after four-week break

There aren’t too many boxes left for the Limerick hurlers to tick at this stage but successfully navigating the traditional hiatus that follows a Munster final win is one of them.

When the Shannonsiders play Galway on Sunday, it’ll be precisely four weeks since they overcame Clare in the provincial final.

The last time they faced such a gap, in 2019, they lost their subsequent All-Ireland semi-final to a charged-up Kilkenny who appeared to benefit from the shorter 13-day turnaround after beating Cork that season.

Galway are hoping to hit Croke Park with similar momentum this Sunday, 15 days after their own quarter-final win over Cork.

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In each of the three seasons that Limerick won All-Ireland titles, they had shorter breaks, a fortnight in 2018 and 2020, and 20 days last year, before contesting semi-finals, compared to 28 days this time.

“I suppose time will tell, won’t it,” said Limerick’s Gearoid Hegarty on the issue. “Because we haven’t had this situation since 2019. We definitely didn’t have it in 2020 and I don’t think we had it in 2021 either. So time will tell as to whether we’ve learned our lesson from 2019 but we’ll be fine, there’ll be no fear on us.

“I’m sure the lads would have learned a lot from 2019 in terms of how to prepare us best. To be honest, I believe there is a little bit too much made of this four-week break. We went back training the Wednesday night after the Munster final so you had a three-and-a half week lead in to the next game. That’s not that long in my opinion.

“I was personally delighted that we had that little break. You could relax. You switch off from hurling altogether and go about your life as normal. It’s not just that you can train hard over the couple of weeks, it’s also that you can switch off from hurling completely, you don’t have another game to deal with and you don’t have another game to recover from and to get up for another game after that then as well. So there’s a lot of positives there, I think there’s so many positives that go with the four-week break.”

Another of those positives is that reigning Hurler of the Year Cian Lynch has used the time to complete his recovery from a hamstring injury while cruciate victims Peter Casey and Barry Murphy have resumed training also.

“He’s the best hurler in Ireland in my opinion, definitely in the top two or three anyway,” said Hegarty of Lynch. “To be able to hopefully add somebody like that in when you are going to Croke Park, and when we haven’t been beaten yet this year, is unbelievable. It’s incredible to be able to do that, so hopefully all goes well and we add him back in but I think we’ve dealt with it well. You take any other county’s best player out of their team and see how they get on.

“I’m not too sure they’d deal with it as well as we’ve done but we’ve always just had the ‘next man up’ mentality, that’s the way it has to be.”

It’ll take a lot for Sunday’s encounter to top the Munster final, not just for neutrals and Limerick supporters but for Hegarty himself.

“The best game we ever played in, outside of Croke Park,” he said. “It was a very sweet one and one that we enjoyed.”

Even Hegarty had to concede that Tony Kelly’s point from a sideline cut on a tight angle on the left of the field which sent the game to extra-time was something special.

“I thought he was going to go short,” smiled the 2020 Hurler of the Year. “We go short with a lot of our sidelines and try to create a score from that. It’s the percentage play, the percentage play isn’t to have a go from the sideline from that angle. You have to hold your hands up and say, ‘Wow’. I was nearly smiling when he put it over. It was incredible to even see it, to be so close to it.

“I know it wasn’t ideal because it robbed Declan (Hannon) of one of the greatest scores in terms of winning a Munster final. William’s (O’Donoghue) hook on John Conlon in the last seconds too, when he was taking a shot down the sideline. Those were little moments that will be kind of forgotten about because of Tony’s score but when something like that happens, you just have to hold your hand up and say, ‘What an unbelievable score’.”

Bord Gáis Energy ambassador Gearoid Hegarty was speaking at the launch of Bord Gáis Energy’s ‘State of Play’ campaign to promote allyship and inclusion in team sports. As part of the campaign, 32 limited edition GAA county pride T-shirts are available to buy. See hairybaby.com