IN ALL FAIRNESS - Limerick are still the team to beat

So, we have now seen all eleven teams at least once in the race for the Liam MacCarthy Cup and to be fair, no one has laid down a marker just yet. For the teams that have haven’t tasted defeat yet, they won’t mind that as having things to improve on is much better than being the finish article with so much more hurling to do between now and the All-Ireland Final on August 22nd.

Still, Tipperary, Limerick, Kilkenny and Dublin are the four teams in the box-seat at the moment having reached provincial finals and are at least guaranteed to be in the last six of the All-Ireland Series come the August Bank Holiday weekend.

It’s fair to say Limerick are still the team to beat and it says it all about their position at the top of the pile that beating Cork by eight points in the championship wasn’t overly heralded as their performance wasn’t near the free-flowing style that we have become used to in recent years. However, the reaction of manager John Kiely and his players at the final whistle showed what the victory meant to them, an element of relief in a way as there was pressure on them as Cork were in their heads and they respected that the rebels have proven to be a thorn in their side in recent times.

Their performance could have been down to rustiness as well considering their last real challenge of note in the league would have come against Waterford on May 21st, considering they got no challenge from Cork or Westmeath in their final two games. While you always felt they would win the game, there was an element of leggy-ness to their performance, particularly in the second half where they went over ten minutes without a score and were there for the taking but Cork weren’t good enough to take advantage of that with some wayward shooting. Like a champion fighter, Limerick withstood what Cork threw at them and finished strongly to win and leave manager John Kiely in the ideal position with plenty to work on going forward, but the ideal start in their quest to go back-to-back.

It was certainly Super-Saturday in hurling with three provincial semi-finals down for decision and it was in Croke Park where the headlines were made. Firstly, Dublin’s surprising win over a Galway team who were as flat a team that has played championship hurling in some time. This isn’t taking away from Dublin’s victory who brought the right attitude, intensity, and quality of play to the game, but Galway were truly awful, indeed there were elements of the bad days of Galway hurling when you didn’t know from one day to the next what they would bring.

Maybe they took their eye off the ball in advance but at no stage did they look like bringing the energy needed for championship, even after Conor Whelan’s second half goal which brought them back within two points, it should have been the catalyst for them to kick-on but instead it was more of the same, and despite wasting a lot of chances, you couldn’t say they deserved anything other than they got from the game, which was nothing.They certainly go into the shark-infested qualifiers under the darkest of clouds compared to Cork, Waterford, and indeed Wexford, although you’d wonder what the psychological toll will be on them after they failed to beat Kilkenny in an epic game.

Yet again, you can only marvel at what Brian Cody gets out of his Kilkenny teams. This group are nowhere near the level of class of previous teams but they still bring an honest endeavour and belief every time they take to the field and that was re-enforced, particularly in extra-time when they lost goalkeeper Eoin Murphy to the sinbin for a professional foul (a perfect example of what the cynical play penalty was brought in for) and yet in the period after the penalty was converted, just, up to the final whistle, they outscored Wexford 1-10 to 0-2.

Yet again, Wexford showed they were incapable of taking advantage of an extra man and despite much being made of their fitness levels, it was they who blew up physically in extra time with players pulling up with cramp all over the field. It is the one major flaw in the game they try to play in that it is so energy-sapping they start to run out of energy in the vital closing stages of games.

However, it was arguably the best Wexford performance of the Davy Fitzgerald era, even in defeat, and that is the aspect the Clare man should focus on as they aim for the qualifiers on the weekend after next.

While Antrim or Laois have to play next weekend with the winners going into the qualifiers and the loser being relegated to the MacDonagh Cup, we could be presented with some cracking ties among the big four. From a neutral point of view, Clare v Wexford and Waterford v Galway would be mouth-watering for many reasons if they come to pass.