Limerick players and coaches left fuming with their own board for ‘disrespectful’ Munster vote

Kerry and Cork are the clear winners in the Munster seeding vote

Manager Jimmy Lee says his Limerick players and management team feel “disrespected” by their own board after it voted in favour of a seeding change for the Munster football championship.

The Munster council voted through a change to the system on Thursday evening, announcing that the highest ranking two teams from the Allianz Football League were to be on opposite sides of the semi-final draw. This would be applicable for the next three years.

So in 2026, as the top two sides, Kerry and Cork will be placed on opposite sides of the draw.

Clare, Tipperary and Waterford all voted against the proposed changed, but Limerick voted in favour, despite indications from players and management that they were going to vote no.

Speaking to Live95FM Sport, Lee said: "It feels like a vote of no confidence in us, that's just the way we feel, the way I feel.

"To be fair about it we feel disrespected, I don't want to words in the rest of the management team's or the player's mouths but that's the feeling I get from it.

“We got to a Tailteann Cup final, we won a league final, you can argue we weren't far off Cork (Munster Championship) when we had fifteen on fifteen. This is what the county board turn around and do. I know that there are some within the county board that have been advocates for us. But you'd think that those on the football side of it would have supported us a bit better, in my opinion.

"I don't fully understand it myself, yes there were reasons behind their thought processes. But what I said at the last drop of it was bar there being something in writing and the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed I wouldn't be voting for anything, I'd be voting no."

Clare also fuming at vote and Limerick's part

Clare football chairman Kieran Keating had this week hit out at the  “indefensible” call, and expressed his anger at Limerick for the deciding vote.

He told Clare FM on Friday: “It’s disappointing that it’s been introduced now in this sort of short order based on positions in a league that’s already finished before the decision has arrived at,” he said.

“That’s rather unjust and indefensible, really. You know that there’s certainly an injustice in that as we would see it anyway and I think as any right-minded person would see it.”

On Limerick’s support, Keating added: “Our understanding was that the management of the Limerick senior football team and the players were against the motion yet their delegate last night voted in favour of it.

“That’s probably their business at this stage to figure that one out but at the end of the day we were defeated because we didn’t have the Limerick support.”