Competition for places in Limerick team 'off the charts'

Adam English admits to getting nervous before training such is the intense competition for places in the Limerick hurling team.

And he also revealed how the hurt of last summer’s Munster SHC and All-Ireland SHC semi-final defeats to Cork was used to turn the tables in spectacular fashion at the TUS Gaelic Grounds last Sunday.

“It’s just so competitive, it’s off the charts. When you’re going to training, you’re nervous and that’s a great sign of a good team,” the Doon man told reporters.

“We were hurting from last year, the two losses that we got. That was in the back of our minds, but we just wanted to go out and play well, perform for our own crowd, and I think we did that.

“All we’ve been focused on was quarter one and after quarter one it was quarter two. We don’t look at 70 minutes, it was just quarter by quarter. We broke it down like that.

“The crowd are a massive boost too. People don’t realise it, when the crowd get behind you, the last five minutes, there’s an extra per cent there just to keep going. They were brilliant out there.”

English doesn’t foresee any let-up from Limerick against an already-eliminated Clare this weekend.

“Listen, at training on Tuesday night we’ll see what we did well, we’ll see what wrongs we had and, listen, we’ll be all guns blazing next week for Clare. That won’t be an easy match either so we’re looking forward to it.”