Captain Neil McManus is encouraged by the progress Antrim's hurlers are making under Kevin Ryan.

The Cushendall clubman points out that the Glensmen's performance against Limerick on Sunday was vastly superior to their display against the same opposition twelve months ago:

"In the Wexford game it looked like we were pushing on. In the last 12 minutes I think we got 1-6 without reply. Our fitness and physicality brought us back into it," he notes in The Belfast Telegraph.

"Then on Sunday, it was kind of tough. Limerick are a team that are further down the road of development, no doubt about it. They are a very good hurling team as well and we tended to struggle a little in the last five or six minutes.

"But that was it, there was only three or four points in it until the last five or six minutes. They pushed on in the last few minutes. In the same game last year when we got to the last five minutes we wouldn't have been within touching distance of them, now we are.

"We haven't done a huge amount of hurling training just yet. Our hurling needs to come up another level and I think that's where the difference lies.

"I think our physicality and our improved standards of strength and conditioning kept us in the game for so long on Sunday. A lot of hurling errors were more to blame.

"I think hurling is one facet that needs to be targeted the most, but that can be improved during the year and we need to improve it over the next fortnight before the Laois game."

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