LISTEN: Limerick minor manager Diarmuid Mullins reflects on Cork draw

While the result in the senior game grabbed all the headlines, Limerick’s minor team came away with a draw from their game with Cork in the curtain raiser at the LIT Gaelic Grounds. Having held the lead for the majority of the game, a late Darragh Flynn free levelled the match for Cork.

Speaking after the game, Limerick minor manager Diarmuid Mullins was very happy with his sides performance and said they will learn the appropriate lessons from the game ahead of the Waterford clash.

“We were four or five points up with 15 minutes to go against a very highly rated Cork team so look we’ll take lessons from today, the positives from the way the lads played in those periods and move on now to play Waterford and that will be a different kind of game.”

Cork started much the brighter of the sides and held a five-point lead within fifteen minutes with Flynn netting the games only goal. Limerick to their credit responded admirably notching the next scores and they would find themselves behind for the rest of the afternoon.

Despite this however, Limerick will have been disappointed to not have taken the two points from the game, but Mullins accepts the result, crediting his side with great maturity after finding themselves trailing early on in the game.

“I thought we were deserving leaders at half time and we played really well for 20 minutes after that. Look it would have been great if we could have saw it out but in fairness to the Cork free taker, it was a good score.”

“These are a really good group of lads. They’ve trained really well since October and I suppose it’s the value of being together for all that time. And I’ve huge time for them, and if we can get our game plan right and implement it like we did at times, then we can take confidence from that.”

There were hallmarks of John Kiely’s senior team throughout Mullin’s squad with an emphasis on quick and clever interplay through the lines. The manager said there has been a conscious effort to try and imitate the senior side who have set the benchmark in terms of how the game should be played, regardless of their result on Sunday.

“Now we have a senior team that we can look at as a template and if you look at the senior team, it’s all built on workrate, distribution of the ball and that’s what we want to do.”

Listen to the full interview with Mullins below.