“It’s a good headache to have” | John Kiely on return of injured stars and aiming for best performance of the year

Kiely is preparing for his fourth All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final in charge of Limerick.

Despite heading into the season as back to back defending All-Ireland champions, the talk to emerge from the League was the apparent demise of Limerick.

John Kiely’s men lost their three opening games to Wexford, Galway and Cork before mustering a draw with Clare in Ennis in round four.

The defeat of Offaly did little to disrupt the talk as potential contenders were floated in the expectation that Kiely’s men would be caught.

A couple of months removed from the spring campaign and Limerick find themselves one game from a three-in-a-row.

It has been an eventful run to the final, including an epic Munster final that needed extra-time and a semi-final where Galway pushed all the way.

But Kiely is hoping for a repeat of 2020 and 2021 where Limerick left their best for last as he said,

“It’s been tough season, we’ve had a tough league, we found it hard to find a rhythm, in the championship we’ve had ferocious battles where teams have brought a huge challenge so very happy the way the Championship has gone for us in that regard we’ve shown great resilience and composure at vital times and we found a way to see out games at the end as well.

“I still think there’s a performance better than any performance we’ve got this year, it’s just trying to find that over the next two weeks and bring it the next day.”

The strength of the squad has always been a huge benefit and Kiely’s thinking could originate from the fact that he will have a pair of All-Stars fully back in contention for the weekend.

Peter Casey, who missed 11 months with a cruciate injury and Cian Lynch, absent since April, both featured in the All-Ireland semi-final win over Galway.

Each will be doing all they can to make the starting side for the final which will work both ways for Kiely as he will have strength in depth regardless.

“It’s a good headache to have from a selection perspective, the onus is on us now to get it right and that’s where our focus is going to be for the rest of this week and next week to get that blend right.”

“The medical team have done a tremendous job in working with the lads right throughout that time. It’s a group piece really there’s a team of people looking after everybody trying to bring them through and at the moment we’re in a good place we’ve a good clean bill of health and the lads get to get the benefit of coming onto the game last week was huge for them to get a taste of it. They’ll benefit greatly from it.”

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Accept YouTube Content

And Kiely was quick to praise the impact of the bench players, with David Reidy the man of the moment following the win over Galway as his three scores from the bench were the difference in the 0-27 to 1-21 win.

“It’s very rarely that you’ll see us not use the five available subs, in most cases if we had seven we’d use the seven because they’re great players that we want to get on the pitch and get a contribution from.”

Limerick face Kilkenny in the 2022 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final on Sunday 17 July at 3.30pm in Croke Park.

This article is brought to you in association with Noel’s Menswear, proud supporters of Limerick GAA.