Limerick manager Maurice Horan showed his utter dejection after Saturday night’s loss to Kildare in the All-Ireland Qualifiers.
Limerick were leading Kildare deep into added on time before a fantastic score from Emmet Bolton brought the game to extra-time where the Lilywhites ran out comfortable winners.
"It's gut-wrenching, really. We knew once they got back we'd be under pressure in injury-time. Especially after last weekend (against Longford), that took its toll. You keep going back to the same guys to produce and in fairness they do, but you can't maintain that and it was 200 minutes of football in eight days and that's tough on the body.
"We were 30 seconds from knocking them out and they got an unbelievable score from their own corner. We thought we had our homework done, we held them to 11 points over 70 minutes which is a fair achievement considering some of the scores they can put up."
"We were missing Johnny McCarthy, Paudie Browne, Seanie Buckley, Jim O'Donovan - eight lads missed four games or more. We can't miss them - they are the backbone of the team and that's the problem we have. We are very dependent on six or seven guys and if two or three are missing, we are in trouble."
Kildare now progress to meet Sligo in Round 4 of the Qualifiers with
William Hill cutting their odds to 9/1 to win the Sam Maguire Cup. Their clash with the beaten Connacht Finalists will take place in Dr. Hyde Park, Roscommon this Saturday evening at 6.30pm
