‘We expected to win and the reality of not actually winning is massive… It’s just devastating…’

Lieutenant Andrew O’Shaughnessy may be a good army officer but he’ll never win a Hollywood Oscar for Best Actor. He got the most recent Opel / GPA Player of the month for his outstanding performance against Waterford in the All Ireland senior hurling semi final, when he scored 2 -7 of Limerick’s winning total. But, forty eight hours after losing catastrophically to Kilkenny in the final – even with the Opel Award glistening in his hand – he finds it hard to look or sound enthusiastic.

The scars are still too fresh and too deep.

Limerick had a great summer of hurling but, at the end of it all, O’Shaughnessy knows they have nothing to show for it. On Sunday’s Nightmare on Jones’s Road, his assessment is clear: ‘It’s never nice losing. It’s hard to even think about it. You have to look for positives and negatives from the year.’

What did it for Kilkenny? O’Shaughnessy says: ‘The difference on the day has to be the two early goals. Apart from that, there wasn’t much between us. We never seemed to get the gap that bit closer. They got the start we wanted really and we couldn’t recover from that. It just wasn’t to be. It’s not much consolation to have outscored Kilkenny in the final sixty minutes of the game. There is no consolation, to be honest. On the day we didn’t come up good enough.’

On the allegations of excessive Kilkenny physicality, O’Shaughnessy is remarkably fair in his comments. Both teams tried it but Kilkenny did it better: ‘Every team is going to be physical. The inter-county game has changed but everyone’s doing their work. You’re obviously going to try to out muscle your own man. It would be unfair of me to say we weren’t physical towards Kilkenny as well. There were some big hits went in on both sides. It’s the luck of the draw. They came out on top. There’s no one to blame only ourselves.’

‘You play to your advantages. We go out with a high intensity game. Kilkenny are the same. They put in big hits. We put in big hits. You try to put your opponent off balance. They did it to us.’

So, what of the future. Are Kilkenny now so far ahead of every other county that they simply can’t be caught? O’Shaughnessy disagrees with that prognosis. He counters: ‘I think the gap can be bridged. You have to think positively. It can be bridged. On the day, they were the better team. But any game may be won on any given day. They are the best team. They’ve proved it last year and this year. The gap isn’t as big as many people think.’

Despite his optimism that Kilkenny can be hauled back, he’s cautious about Limerick’s prospects for next year: ‘A lot of people have been saying after Sunday that it’ll be a good season next year. I’m sure they said that in ’96 as well. Yet, it took us eleven years to get back.’ He’s clear on the challenge for 2008: ‘We have to win something next year. Maybe Munster or an All Ireland. We have to set our stall out. In my opinion, there’s no point in having moral victories… winning games and then losing when there’s silverware on offer. In the last year, we got to every final an inter-county hurler can get to but we still have nothing to show for it. While it’s always nice getting there, you have to win them as well.’’

O’Shaughnessy seems like a player who is only now entering into the full maturity of his game after showing precocious promise as a minor and under 21. But was Sunday the end of the road some of his older teammates? ‘It’s hard to say so close after the final if all the older players will stay on. We’ll have to sit down and assess it. Whatever people decide they decide. If people want to go, let them go. They have given great commitment to the team this year and in previous years. So, we’ll wait and see. It’s a bit early, but touch wood; we hope everyone will be back next year.’

Andrew O'Shaughnessy ... still smarting, despite his Opel / GPA Award