If you were looking for a sense of John Kiely, there was the aftermath of the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Kilkenny, who this Sunday they will meet in the final.
In the dying moments, Darragh O’Donovan’s cut was deflected off Cillian Buckley’s stick but the officials didn’t notice and a wide was signalled. It could have taken the match to extra-time – surely fertile ground for controversy. “We knew straight away,” said the Limerick manager. “We could see by the flight of the ball. It was taking a certain flight; it changed, flew off to a different angle. We knew it was after taking a touch. What can we do?”
This fatalism or realism was rooted in the knowledge that his team had underperformed and there was no point blaming match officials.
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Maintaining a strong grip on reality has been part of the job since he took over the Limerick seniors having enjoyed under-21 success with many of the players now on the hunt for a fourth All-Ireland in five years.
At the county’s press event for the final, he traces the influence of Kilkenny on his six years in charge and the impressive achievements of that period. This weekend will be the fourth championship meeting between the counties. They have gone in ascending order: a qualifier defeat in 2017, a quarter-final victory a year later, followed by the semi-final ambush three years ago and now, a final.
The 2018 match was widely seen as the transformative contest on the way to a first Liam MacCarthy Cup in 45 years but for Kiely it’s of limited influence now.
“Listen, you can go back and you can look at those games and obviously they were huge. The one in the quarter-final in ‘18 was a very important milestone at that stage for us. It was a fantastic performance by our boys. Those are irrelevant really coming into the next day. They’re so far back.
“Manpower has changed, management have changed; the game has moved on. Everything has evolved. I’m sure it’s the same on the Kilkenny side. We’ve 14 players from the 2018 panel who are no longer playing with us so there’s a huge change, nearly half the group gone already so it’s of no consequence really.”
In a way, the defeat in his first year in 2017 was destabilising at the very start of the project. Did he doubt himself?
“Absolutely, yeah. There were nights when I was pacing the yard out the back, wondering, ‘am I the right man for this job? Have I got the capacity to deliver what I would expect from myself in terms of the quality and the standards that were required, and the success that’s required?’ And losing two championship matches in two in ‘17 – that wasn’t tenable for me.
“Yeah, you know, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to me had I got a phone call at the end of ‘17 to say, ‘Listen, thanks very much, you’ve done a great job, you’ve done the best you can, but we’re moving on.’
“But thankfully they kept trust in us, and gave us a chance to keep going and see what we could do with the group. Like, I’m very glad to have had that opportunity.”
If 2019 provided the perfect tutorial on not taking things for granted, the lessons have been remorselessly applied in the two pandemic years of 2020 and ‘21. Of the All-Ireland opponents, only Galway have restricted the champions to single-digit victories, most recently two weeks ago.
[ Limerick and Kilkenny set to renew vintage All-Ireland rivalryOpens in new window ]
That was a match greatly influenced by the bench, something Kiely acknowledged afterwards but equally, he doesn’t claim to have a magic formula for running replacements.
“It’s an inexact science, when to do nothing, leave a fella for another couple minutes? Listen you’re dependent on those around you to give you some good information.
“So obviously I have a stats team. They’re analysing as the games goes on so we get information to us in terms of how the players are performing. That’s generally a big help to us in terms of determining that a player has gone out of the game maybe for a period of time. You might see that he’s tiring and then it’s time to bring somebody in.”
Finally, can he see himself emulating his counterpart Brian Cody’s 24 years on the job?
“Most definitely not. Most definitely not! I don’t know how he’s done it. An incredible achievement, what he’s done . . . and I don’t think anybody will ever surpass it.”
