‘I could have said worse’ – Declan Hannon laughs off Munster final blunder as Limerick focus on drive for five

Declan Hannon makes that many speeches these days, it’s probably unfair to expect that he gets every single detail right, every single time.

No sooner had Hannon thanked the “backroom team of 53 people” in Thurles after the Munster final than people began to swoon at the sheer largesse of it all.

‘I’m not gonna thank them all,” said Hannon, thankfully. “But I want to thank in particular John Kiely and Paul Kinnerk for everything they do for us.”

Turns out, Hannon had included the playing panel, all 36 of them in his tally. We know this because a presidential clarification was issued on Morning Ireland the following day, when Jarlath Burns – having made his own enquiries – revealed the true extent of Limerick’s backroom.

“It gave people something to talk about, so it did,” Hannon says now, speaking at eir’s headquarters. “Obviously, that included the 36 panel of players. We definitely do not have 53 in the backroom team, that’s for sure.

The funny thing is that Hannon’s own father believed it. A photo was hastily mocked up of a triple-decker bus which was apparently used to haul Limerick’s heaving support staff between venues.

“My father sent me a picture of the bus as well,” Hannon says. “He believed it, like. Everybody was believing it but it’s funny, I suppose. These things happen. I could have said worse but you have to laugh at it looking back.”

When you’ve won six Munster titles in a row, people tend to focus on small details. An extraordinary and unprecedented feat, the only thing that might put it in the shade is if they become the first team also to win five All-Irelands on the spin next month.

Hannon reports that Limerick are unconcerned about the perception of the genesis of all this silver.

“I don’t really look at it like that, to be honest. We’re not involved in playing GAA or representing Limerick looking for credit every time we go out or anything,” he insists.

“We’re trying to perform to a certain standard and perform to our abilities every time we go out on the training pitch or when matches come around. It’s probably an internal thing that we can look back and say, ‘Yes, we did well here, we did poor there, we hit our targets, we didn’t hit out targets’.

“In terms of credit from outside, I don’t think it really affects us. We don’t listen to it a whole pile. It’s more of an internal thing. If we’re happy with our performance, I think that’s enough for us.

Still, after all these trophies, they exude the sense of a team lost in their journey. Somehow Limerick don’t seem to carry any extra weight in the forms of pressure and expectation, despite the significance of this stretch of road.

For his part, Hannon sounds very much like a player who thinks about this All-Ireland run-in, which features Cork in Croke Park on Sunday week, as though it was his first.

“It’s obviously a fantastic achievement for the group of players and we have had different panels of players since number one to number six,” he stresses.

“It’s been a great journey, a great achievement but it’s not something we dwell on or it wasn’t something in our heads going into the Munster final either, to be honest with you.

“It was another game and that’s the way it’s been over the last number of years for us. I’m sure in the years to come when we stop playing we can look back on all of these days, the videos and photos with smiles on our faces.”

eir, Ireland’s leading telecommunications provider, is calling on GAA clubs across the country to take part in the ‘eir for all’ Poc Tapa Challenge to be in with a chance to win up to €5,000 for their club and the chance to play on the hallowed turf of Croke Park on All-Ireland semi-final weekend.

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