Limerick boss John Kiely believes that quicker puckouts may be a factor in the high-scoring start to the Championship.
Kiely’s side recorded a resounding victory over Clare in the Munster quarter-final, which doubled up as the Allianz League final, on a 0-36 to 1-23 scoreline at Semple Stadium today.
Their points tally (white flags only) was the second highest in Championship history and comes right on the back of Dublin scoring 2-31 against Laois, who hit 0-23, in the Leinster quarter-final at Croke Park last night.
Kiely said: “I don’t know, trends will emerge, maybe after a few weeks we’ll see what’s happening but Saturday night’s game was a bit open as well and high-scoring, today was open and high-scoring.
“I think the puckouts are an issue because they are coming very fast, maybe in a stadium where the thing is full maybe the referees need to buy themselves a little bit more time themselves in that circumstance before they blow the whistle, whereas here they can scan and see and take everything in much easier as a referee - so as a result I think the puckout comes faster.
“Now I know he blew Clare up for quick puckouts at some stage but they were very, very quick, he hadn’t any whistle blown, so I just think we’re going to end up with the ball in play a lot longer in the course of the game and an awful lot quicker resets, that’s one thing I think we’re going to see.
“Maybe another couple of games will give us a bit of a trend as to what might be there but if you look at all the other sports, soccer in particular, I think the scoring has gone up in those sports as well in terms of the amount of scores being converted so maybe that’s going to be a trend in hurling that you’ll see more scores converted as well.
“Maybe there’s less pressure on the player in an environment like it is here with nobody here.”
Kiely said that an increased workrate after half-time was key to Limerick’s win as they dominated the second half after the sides were level at 0-15 at the break.
“At half-time I would have been not best pleased really with the level of intensity we brought to the game, or even picking up breaking ball, use of the ball, we just weren’t on the money at that stage.
“And to be fair I would have been a bit concerned because, give it 15-20 minutes, you’d expect yourself to hit a rhythm, but at that stage Clare were after bouncing back with three points just before the break to bring it to 15 all.
“We had gone 15-12 up, we should have pushed on a bit more at that stage ourselves but it was the other way around we went.
“So at half-time I would have been a bit concerned about that, but we said, ‘Listen, first game back, maybe we just need to give a little bit more time to see if we can get up to the rhythm of it.
“And we went out and we addressed those concerns we had, we got the first five scores after the break and that gave us a good platform.”
Clare manager Brian Lohan didn’t shine much light on the defeat after the game, as he now turns his attention to the qualifiers.
An obvious area to address ahead of their next outing is their over-reliance on Tony Kelly, who hit a mammoth 0-17 of their tally.
Lohan said: “We depend on Tony Kelly a lot and he produces it. He’s a once-in-a-generation kind of player. He’s really good.
“That is a bit disappointing (their dependence on him). I wouldn’t fault any of the players for their effort and their spirit. We just came up against a real good team.”
