‘It’s poor judgment and he probably made the wrong decision’ – Limerick legend Ciarán Carey on the contract slinger’s alleged headbutt

It’s been a turbulent week for Limerick as a member of John Kiely’s squad was implicated in a breach of team protocols following Munster’s defeat by Tipperary, but contract legend Ciarán Carey has sympathy for the player concerned.

Limerick’s statement on Tuesday night revealed that “the matter has been dealt with internally by management” after it was revealed that one of Kiely’s squad members allegedly headbutted an opposing player in a Limerick pub on Sunday night.

Carey believes the player involved – particularly given the proximity of Limerick’s final round-robin game against Clare at Cusack Park on Sunday – exhibited “poor judgement” after being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

“I felt sorry for the player involved and for the person himself. There’s a lot of people on the field talking about making the right call, making the right decision, making the right pass, and sometimes off the field you have to do that thing,” Carey told the OurGame podcast on Patreon.

“There’s only a week between the two games and I suppose he wants to make a little mistake. It’s an amateur sport and that particular player is someone’s son; he could be someone’s partner and he must now, in his own way, deal with his own sanity and whatever disciplinary action will result.

“I hope things are going well for him, I feel sorry for him, basically wrong place at wrong time, especially when there’s only a week between games. If it were that Sunday night, you probably would have been three weeks behind a final in Munster.

“And they could have gone somewhere quiet if they wanted to talk. But in the middle of the championship he obviously knows that himself, it’s poor judgment and he probably made the wrong call so my heart goes out to him to be honest.”

Carey doesn’t expect this off-field incident to negatively impact Limerick’s pursuit of a historic back-to-back All-Ireland three-pointer, in fact the three-time All-Star predicts it will “probably make them a little bit tighter” as a squad .

“No, I wouldn’t believe that, I think they’re a lot more mature than that,” Carey added when asked if the incident and the aftermath of it could affect their performances between the white lines.

“If anything, it will actually polish the spirit between the squad. It might look very negative from the outside, but I would imagine in that army of Limerick squad it’ll probably narrow them down a bit and it’ll probably turn up a few more notches.”

Carey has been around for some controversy during his own time at Limerick and the Patrickswell clubman admitted it’s often a challenge for inter-county players to move away from ‘noise’ because of their status.

“If social media existed in my day, I would have been a star on it every week, so thank god I wasn’t there,” Carey quipped.

“You’re always going to run into someone and they’re going to test you, and I think that’s why it’s so important that you’re in good company and with solid people wherever you go and they can spot it quicker before anything can happen.

“Unfortunately, we have absolutely no control over who we meet and what they say, but we do have control over our responses and move away from what I would call unwanted noise.

“I had a certain crowd that would try to have Ciarán Carey cut an aul and we’ll see what he did and that’s a macho image. I suppose that depends on where you are going.

“If you go to the solid places you won’t experience it, but it depends on where you go. That comes down to making the right decision, the right choice, the right decision and with the right people around you.”

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