GER ‘SPARROW’ O’LOUGHLIN had a dream when he took over as manager of Kilmallock in mid-January – to finish the year as AIB Munster senior club hurling champions.
And O’Loughlin’s dream became a reality at the Gaelic Grounds as the Limerick kingpins came through an extra-time epic against Clare champions Cratloe.
As manager of the Adare teams that won three-in-a-row in Limerick from 2007-09, the Clarecastle man had failed to crack the Munster code.
He tasted provincial club glory as a player but winning it as a manager infused Clare’s two-time All-Ireland SHC medallist with huge satisfaction.
And he revealed: “I said to them when I went in there first that I wanted to win a Munster club with this team.
“I have been ramming that down their throat for most of this season. That was our aim. I just felt I had seen this crowd; they had lost a bit of spirit. “Tony Considine had done tremendous work with them for a couple of years and had won two (Limerick) championships with them but I just felt last year, I came in to watch the (county) semi-final as a neutral, that the spirit was gone out of them.
“In January I told them I don’t just want to win a county championship I want to win a Munster club.”
But Kilmallock had to do it the hard way against Cratloe, coming through another extra-time slog and having lost county star Gavin O’Mahony to a red card with 12 minutes of normal time remaining.
O’Loughlin admitted: “It looked pretty poor at that stage alright for us but the game nearly went outside of anyone’s control really, it was that type of game.
“I don’t what the final score was but there were some unbelievable scores got.
“It actually was taking away from decision making really, we had to fill the gap after Gavin and they had to work probably twice as hard but the overall context of the game was up and down and they were moving all over the place.
“It was very hard to pin down and say you should do this or do that. I think the lads took a lot of it on board themselves and the one thing I asked them to do was to stick in there.
“I said it to them before – we could be up five points, we could be down five points but don’t panic. I think, to be fair, they didn’t.”
