John Kiely brushed off Aaron Gillane’s “ridiculous” sending off against Clare as Limerick’s disciplinary record came under the spotlight once again.
Following Gearoid Hegarty and Seamus Flanagan’s respective dismissals against Galway and Cork, both on straight red cards, they finished with 14 men for the third successive game, albeit Gillane suffered two yellow cards on this occasion.
The second yellow was brandished by referee Patrick Murphy in the 67th minute after Gillane clashed with Clare full-back Conor Cleary, who went to ground, with Limerick boss Kiely playing down the incident afterwards.
He said: "There was a thing of nothing in that. That was ridiculous. Had the referee run in and told the player to get up off the ground, it would have been more appropriate.
“I don't think that was a serious misdemeanour at all, at all.”
While this outing brought an improved performance from Limerick after the heavy Cork defeat as Kiely phased back in a number of front line players, he accepted that things still aren’t quite happening for his charges, who are now winless in four games.
“We’ve had a season where you had to contend with Covid, we had to contend with a very condensed season last season and this year for us is a very different challenge where maybe things we’ve ordinarily found extremely easy are that little bit more difficult.
“Every single team in every sport goes through those phases where there’s a dip in form and the easy things don’t come so easy to them.
“One thing we all know is you will be rewarded for working hard and and working your way through that and I know that these players and we as a management team are totally committed to working through that. We’ll keep going in that direction.”
Clare looked the more likely winners when they hit the front midway through the second half but they didn’t push on though Banner boss Brian Lohan described it as “a decent performance against very good opposition”.
He added: “There’s a good spirit in the group. We’re a bit frustrated with the injuries we have at the moment but that’s the way it is, but hopefully we’ll improve from that display.
“When you have so many injuries you’d kind of be saying is there something wrong, or if there is something we are doing that we shouldn’t be doing, but some of them are breaks and contact-type injuries rather and muscular. It’s just a bit frustrating at the moment, but it is what it is.”
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