Limerick minor footballers 'eager to get up and running again'

THE Limerick minor footballers are ready to dust themselves off and attack the All-Ireland 'B' Championship after the agonising Munster campaign.

After an encouraging start to the provincial championship beating Tipperary in Lattin, back-to-back one-point defeats saw Garrett Noonan's young charges fail to reach Phase 2 of the competition.

The third place finish in Phase one means that Limerick drop down to the 'B' competition which provides an opportunity for the county to earn rare football silverware.

"I've no doubt they'll be eager to get up and running again later in the week," said Noonan after the defeat in Lemybrien. "We'll try and get over the disappointment of this phase of the competition and try to dust ourselves down and get going again."

Despite the second defeat in eight days, when the final whistle blew at the Deise venue, Limerick looked set to progress to the next phase where big guns Cork and Kerry join the fold. However, a last-gasp goal from Thomas Dillon 150km away in Clarecastle saw the 'Banner' score a dramatic win over Tipperary, which knocked Noonan's side out.

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"Disappointed, to put it mildly. We felt we got ourselves into a great position there in the first half," Noonan said as his side took a comfortable 1-9 to 0-4 interval lead before falling to a 1-13 to 1-12 defeat.

"I thought we had a lot of work done if we could continue with it in the second half. We knew Waterford would going to come back at us and they did. They kept the scoreboard ticking right throughout the second half.

"We showed great character in the latter stages of that second half to come back into it, we were just unlucky at the end of the day.

"They got a purple patch there midway through that second half.

"They got the scores at crucial stages and we came up just short."