CAPTAIN Declan Hannon is set to miss next Saturday night’s crunch National Hurling League outing with next-door neighbours Clare at the Gaelic Grounds.
The four-times All-Ireland winning skipper picked-up a hand injury which necessitated his withdrawal in the third-quarter of the narrow loss (2-17 to 0-22) to Cork at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Saturday night which attracted an attendance of 19,516.
Limerick appeared in cruise control at the interval, ahead by double-scores, 0-16 to 0-8, thanks to some impressive scores from the likes of freetaker David Reidy and points from play through Gearóid Hegarty and Colin Coughlan, but then coughed-up a couple of goals which brought Cork back into the reckoning.
In the run-in, which included ten minutes of stoppage time to account for a serious injury to Cork’s Robbie O’Flynn, the teams were deadlocked on a few occasions before substitute Shane Kingston fired over the winner at the death.
Afterwards selector Donal O’Grady revealed: “Declan got a little knock on a finger and it needed a few stiches so it was a blood sub at that stage. But we just continued on without him, it wasn’t worth taking the risk (by him playing on) at this time of the year.”
It’s anticipated that the 30-year-old will return to action for the away fixture with Galway on Sunday, February 26 as there is no competitive action scheduled for the weekend after next.
“Losing Declan and his experience maybe had an effect, but overall disappointed because with the game in our control we should have held onto it.”
Added O’Grady: “It was just a bad start to the second-half, because you’d be hoping to kill teams off in the first ten minutes and we didn’t and Cork can score from many different places and angles, and they did.”
