O’NEILL: WE CAN MAKE IMPACT
SHANE O’NEILL is confident that Na Piarsaigh can make an impact on the AIB All-Ireland club championship after winning the Munster title again yesterday.
Limerick champions Na Piarsaigh were crowned High Kings of Munster for the third time in five seasons — but they’ve yet to crack the All-Ireland code.
Boss O’Neill was still a player in 2012 when Na Piarsaigh were stunned by Loughgiel Shamrocks — and two years later Portumna ended their hopes of Tommy Moore Cup glory.
But Na Piarsaigh, who have never lost a game in the Munster club championship, will have another crack at the biggest prize in the new year, when they come face to face with Leinster champions Cuala or Oulart-the-Ballagh in the All-Ireland semi-final.
Growing momentum will be stalled until February, however, and O’Neill believes this will be a hurdle his title-winners must overcome
‘It is difficult because you’ve got December and January and half of February to train for,’ the Na Piarsaigh manager reflected.
‘If you kept going — and I know they’re looking at doing it next year — you’d have a certain momentum. ‘It’s like a whole new season again.’
Reflecting on their previous experiences outside of the province, O’Neill added: ‘We obviously made some mistakes because we lost both All-Ireland semi-finals. ‘We’ll have a look at that. I was involved in one of them myself as a player (2012).
‘We’ll have to see amongst the players what they thought could be improved on coming up to the All-Ireland series.
‘Overall, we asked them last year to be the best they can be, which is a bit of a cliché, but they demanded so much more from themselves and each other because they had won the two Munster clubs and we felt again that we probably didn’t get the credit we deserved.
‘But I don’t think there can be any questioning the club now with three counties and three Munsters in five years.’
At a bitterly cold Semple Stadium, they ran out seven-point winners yesterday against Waterford’s Ballygunner.
Just 2,320 spectators were present to watch them do it and Na Piarsaigh suffered a pre-match blow when Kevin Downes was ruled out with concussion sustained in the semi-final victory over Thurles Sarsfields.
His erstwhile school-mate and fellow Harty Cup medallist Shane Dowling stepped up to the plate with a haul of 1-4 but the Limerick hitman wasn’t alone in leading the charge.
David Breen played his part when he came on as a second-half sub, just days after having pins removed from a wrist injury.
David Dempsey hit 1-2 and under21 All-Ireland winner Peter Casey added 0-3 for Na Piarsaigh.
Ballygunner, appearing in their first Munster final since 2009, badly missed suspended defender Philip Mahony, whose brother Pauric is still out injured.
And yet they were three points clear at half-time, 1-7 to 1-4, before Na Piarsaigh opened with the first five points of the second half to gain control.
Dempsey and Tim O’Sullivan traded first half goals and while Ballygunner’s Brian O’Sullivan hauled his side back into contention with a late goal, Dowling applied the coup de grace in stoppage-time with a stunning effort into the top corner of Stephen O’Keeffe’s net.
Ballygunner boss Denis Walsh, the ex-Cork manager, admitted that the period after the restart proved decisive.
‘We said to the lads at half-time that the seven or eight minutes after the break would be the winning or losing of the game, and from our point of view it was the losing of it, they must have hit seven or eight points in 10 minutes,’ the Ballygun-
ner boss said afterwards.
‘They were able to move up a gear, and we weren’t able to move up a gear with them. They’re the hard facts of it.
‘I’m disappointed for the lads. Physically we were a bit lighter than Na Piarsaigh at that time with the breeze coming against us. But I couldn’t fault our fellas, they fought away.’
Ballygunner were pre-match underdogs but in the first half, they displayed a far greater hunger for the fight.
They were 0-5 to 0-2 clear midway through the first half but conceded an avoidable goal when Mike Foley’s cross-field ball wasn’t dealt with and Dempsey took advantage of hesitant defending to whip home the loose ball.
But the Gunners, chasing a first Munster title in 14 years, finished the first half strongly as Tim O’Sullivan netted after a previous goal chance was butchered.
Brian O’Sullivan’s fourth point of the half, a 65, handed Ballygunner that three-point half-time lead but Na Piarsaigh have made a habit of coming on strong in the second half on their recent outings.