Gearóid Hegarty: Limerick won't repeat 2019 mistakes in All-Ireland semi-final

Gearóid Hegarty has warned Limerick's rivals they will be more than prepared for their forthcoming All-Ireland semi-final despite the long wait from their Munster Championship success.

The Treaty County earned a thrilling extra-time win over Clare on 5 June and are not back in action until 3 July when they face the winners of Cork versus Galway.

The side had a similar wait in 2019 when they were crowned provincial champions before being nabbed in the All-Ireland semi-final by Kilkenny, but the 2020 Hurler of the Year said they were more than confident that they could avoid such a pitfall this time around.

"We didn’t have it [a long break] in 2020, we didn’t have it in 2021," said Hegarty. "We haven’t had it since 2019. "We would have learned a lot from the 2019 four-week break.

"To be honest with you, I think there’s a lot made of this four-week break; it used to be a six-week break. There used to be a lot of media coverage about such a long break.

"I thought one of the majors benefits of winning the Munster final was getting a couple of weeks’ break. You could relax for three or four days after the Munster final and then come back into training and have two and a half weeks of hard training before the All-Ireland semi-final.

"You have a bit of downtime away from the GAA when you can relax. This weekend we’ll be training obviously but you can relax at the times when you’re not training.

"We will see, we don’t know yet but I’m sure we’ve learned a lot from 2019 and we’re much more experienced now than we would have been back then as well."

That experience was crucial as John Kiely's side fended off a stiff Clare challenge to win the Munster title on a 1-29 to 0-29 scoreline.

Hegarty grabbed the only goal of the game, a