Gearoid Hegarty was so “embarrassed” by his red card against Galway that he says he struggled to face his family.
The Limerick star was given his marching orders after lashing out at Joseph Cooney in the Allianz Hurling League game on February 12. The All-Ireland champions were leading at the time but slipped to a six-point defeat.
When asked if he had learned from the incident, Hegarty replied: “Definitely. Talking in my own sense, it was stupid. I was embarrassed. It’s a horrible feeling. I’ve never gotten a straight red before, definitely not with Limerick anyway.
“We were in the game at the time and I felt like I was hurling really well at the time and then to be sent off around 45 minutes and have to watch the lads for the last 25 minutes knowing you’re after leaving your team-mates down, knowing you’re after leaving down everyone that’s after coming in to watch the game, my family were there watching it and it’s just awkward.
“You nearly don’t even want to go home and look them in the eye after doing something so stupid.
“You do take great learnings from these things. Sometimes it’s nice that they happen in the League because it would be much worse if it happened in the coming months.”
Limerick open the defence of their All-Ireland title away to Cork next Sunday after a poor showing in the League, though Hegarty believes they took a lot from the competition that will stand to them in the coming weeks.
“It obviously wasn’t great, we didn’t have the best League ever obviously. But now looking back on it now that we’re gone from the League and looking forward to the Championship I obviously think it was a brilliant League for us because we learned so much.
“You often hear the quote that you learn more from defeat than you do in victory, and the amount of learnings we’ve taken from the last two months or so with obviously a couple of losses thrown in there has been a lot.
“I think we’re in a great place to be honest with you because we have learned so much. Sometimes you do need a couple of losses to get back on the straight and narrow and we’ve learned a lot from the League so hopefully we’re in a good position going forward.
“It’s always strange at this time of the year because you don’t really know where you are until the real stuff kicks off.”
