Limerick duo Stephen Walsh and Paudie O’Brien both pinpointed their side’s big Allianz Hurling League quarter-final defeat to Dublin as the inspiration for their Munster Championship win over Clare at Semple Stadium.
Limerick claimed a dramatic 2-15 to 1-19 victory over the 2013 All-Ireland champions thanks to a late John Fitzgibbon point.
TJ Ryan’s side will now far Tipperary in the Munster semi-final, a far cry from their 1-25 to 0-16 defeat against Dublin in the league, but Walsh insisted that the memory of that game spurred his side on.
“After the game against Dublin we were bitterly disappointed,” Walsh told RTÉ Sport.
"We had a lot of soul-searching, we had some honest chats among ourselves and we realised that what we were doing in the league probably wasn’t good enough."
“We had six or seven weeks to get it right and we really knuckled down and credit to everyone. We lost Nicky Quaid and Dave Breen for the game today but it’s a squad game and the guys that game in today really made a difference.”
“We’ve gotten used to winning Munster Championship games in the last few years and any day you win a championship game is special.
“There was a frenetic end to it there, it was ebb and flow all game and in the last 20 minutes the pace really picked up but we’re just happy to get out of there with the win.”
“We had six or seven weeks to get it right and we really knuckled down"
Walsh’s team-mate O’Brien also pointed to the Dublin game and hopes that it will prove to be the Treaty County’s turning point for the season.
He said: “We said that wasn’t good enough and it wasn’t good enough. But we’re a championship team and this has been on our radar for a long long time and we just had to [come] right for this one, that’s all that mattered.
“We didn’t look ahead, this was the match for us and we’ll drive on now for the next day.
“To tell you how focused we were for this game I didn’t even know we were going to be at home to Tipp, I just heard that there. We didn’t look past Clare and at the end of the day you’d be very foolish to think that’s the end of Clare - they’ll be there or thereabouts in September.”
