Limerick’s Liam Cronin says the manner of the county’s exit from last year’s All-Ireland hurling championship fuelled their desire to makes amends in 2026.The Treaty County lost to Dublin in last season’s All-Ireland quarter-final, the two-point defeat ending Limerick’s Liam MacCarthy ambitions.It was one of the biggest upsets of the championship in years and hinted that Limerick’s golden age may have lost its sheen. There were fears of a player exodus over the winter, but it never materialised. Instead, John Kiely’s men have brought a renewed energy this season and they’re now back in an All-Ireland final for the first time since 2023.“One of the things that amazed me coming in last year was, when you consider the success that the boys have had, their humility, their hunger to go again and to want to be more successful, I was taken aback by it,” says Cronin, who is in his second year as part of Kiely’s backroom team.“There’s no doubt the way things finished last year, nobody involved in the group would have been happy with it. So it certainly whet our appetite in terms of the postseason and maybe reviewing what needed to be done and how we were going to be better.“But I suppose you don’t really know until you come back in November. And to be fair to the playing group, when they come back in November and you see the hunger and the desire they have to go again, it was really refreshing.“In the off-season, there was no talk of anybody moving away. We got the chance to talk with a couple of players at club matches and so on. You could just see that the hunger, the desire to get back to the level that they would have been happy with was still there,” Cronin adds.Limerick suffered a two-point defeat to Dublin in last year's All-Ireland quarter-final. Photograph: