An emotional rivalry

KILLINAN END

With Limerick’s formidable squad heading for town, we might ponder on the ability of this pairing to raise sparks. As predictable as rain in February you might say.

Indeed, it was reassuring to hear that the rainfall in the first eleven days of February had already exceeded that of the entire month last year. Sometimes weather reviews do not chime with the lived experience but recent weather reports and reality certainly rhymed. But how about a time when Tipp and Limerick were getting it together in the month of June and rainfall became the central feature of the occasion?

The suggestion the Tipp do not or cannot win All-Ireland titles out of the blue has been challenged previously in this column. One of the classic exhibits for this argument is the 1945 title when after several barren years the Blue & Gold overturned Cork, Limerick, and Kilkenny, to win a championship that was scarcely foreseeable at the start of the season. What makes that title even more remarkable is that more or less immediately afterward Tipp went back into their shell and struggled in the following years. If Limerick have historical regrets and perhaps few counties have more, they might consider the 1944 Munster Final replay loss to Cork, and the unexpected final reverse against Tipp a year later as two potential All-Ireland titles let slip.

When the teams made the trek to Cork’s Athletics Grounds in early June 1948 survival was the name of the game with neither side looking beyond the fixture directly in front of them. Limerick, League champions a year earlier, had a spine of Paddy Collopy (St Patrick’s); Mick Herbert (Ahane); Jim Sadlier (Young Ireland’s); Mick Ryan (Young Ireland’s Dublin) & Paddy Fitzgerald (St Patrick’s); and veterans Dick Stokes (Pallasgreen/UCD); John Mackey (Ahane). Inevitably Ahane also provided Toddy O’Brien, Jackie Power, and Seán Herbert.

Tipp’s equivalent was Jimmy Maher (Boherlahan); Willie Wall (Carrick Swan); Paddy Furlong (Kickhams); Tom Wall (Carrick Swan) & Mick Ryan (Dicksboro/Roscrea); Harry Goldsborough (St Finbarr’s); Paddy Madden (Carrick Swan). It is worth noting that Carrick Swan won the club’s only County title the previous year. Little did they all realise as the steeples of Shandon came into view that this first round game was going to turn into a mini-saga.

Whatever we might say about February you at least have the sense that you get weather you might expect. Despite 1947 having been a fairly notorious year weather-wise there must have been a wide sense of shock when a deluge of rain rendered the Cork Athletic Grounds’ surface unplayable on the first Sunday in June.

The following Tuesday’s Munster Council meeting in Thurles made the decision to play the match in Limerick on the following Sunday, honouring the fact that Tipp and Limerick had tossed for the re-fixture venue when events in Cork were aborted. This brings us to another one of life's predictable reassurances – Cork’s cantankerousness in relation to venues for matches, and their seeming magnetic ability to attract matches to their own venue which scarcely suits any team apart from the hosts.

At a cranky meeting of the Cork County Board, the Gaelic Grounds was described as a “commonage” – little did Cork realise how big this venue was about to become in their near future. Thurles was not praised much on Leeside as a potential venue either. Limerick took umbrage at Cork’s suggestion that the Rebel County’s defeat in the Munster Final of 1932 to Clare was influenced by the state of the pitch in Limerick. With Cork prepared to reference a defeat nearly two decades earlier in the days of the great Tull Considine and ‘Goggles’ Doyle, this was not going to be simple.

In true Cork style they mounted a strong objection to the game being taken from Leeside (long before Frank Murphy was heard tell of incidentally). The game was deferred as the Munster Council convened for a meeting at Limerick the following week to consider the arguments. Perhaps inevitably it was refixed for the Cork Athletic Grounds but between the hopping and trotting this did not happen until three weeks after the original fixture.

The delay had a substantial knock-on effect. When Waterford beat Cork in the Munster Final – on the way to a maiden All-Ireland title - it was a remarkable ten weeks after the Déise’s Munster semi-final, and the same day as the All-Ireland semi-final between Leinster champions Dublin and Antrim. Two forces of nature: biblical rain and the Cork County Board.

The Irish Press described the Tipp-Limerick meeting as a “game which featured all the keenness usually associated with Limerick-Tipperary hurling clashes” which presumably means they cut rashers off each other. Limerick, with three Jackie Power goals, held a seventeen-point lead at half-time but still had enough to do to hold on for a six-point win. This owed much to the granite defensive qualities of Mick Herbert and Paddy Collopy. Despite the promise of Tipp’s second half only three of the team survived to start the following year’s All-Ireland Final win – a campaign which also featured that recurring theme of an elemental joust with Limerick.