Lee happy with performance but rues mistakes

Limerick were beaten in the Munster Football Championship Quarter Final by Clare last Sunday by a solitary point. Limerick battled hard in the end to find an equalizer but it was a poor start that would prove to be detrimental to Lee’s side who never found the lead after falling 1-3 to 0-1 behind early on.

”A lot of Clare scores in the first half came from our turnovers when we attacked and we knew coming down that we would have to run marathons if we turned it over and we did that. But (turnovers) was a key part of the first half that allowed Clare to go in five points up at half time,” he said.

”Everybody has a plan but only one team can be on top at any point in a game and it’s how you respond when the plan isn’t going to plan that defines teams and that’s what we are looking at it and any time that the opposition asked questions they answered.”

But Lee can take positives from the performance of his young team which contained a number of debutatants. When you consider that Clare played in Division 2 of the League and Limerick failed to be promoted from Division 4, Limerick can take pride from pushing a strong Clare side all the way.

”You could see Clare’s Division Two experience for a lot of the game.”

“We were banging on their door and are extremely proud of our lads for what they gave and that’s what we are trying to instill into them and they came with that in abundance today and we will keep developing that character, attitude and way we want to play football and the way we want the boys to perform on the field and how they conduct themselves and go about it.”

He continued, “We are proud of the lads and more importantly they should be proud of themselves – we will take it onto the next game and see where we can go. We have to get ready for the Qualifiers. We will dust ourselves down during the week. I’m sure there will be club games but we will deal with that – sometimes you can wrap fellas up in cotton wool. It’s about playing football.”

Limerick will now shift focus to the qualifiers but have plenty of reason to be proud of their performance at the weekend.