Keeping the head down

IN ALL FAIRNESS

There were a lot of seemingly unsocial people loitering around the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick on Saturday.

Arriving to the environs of the ground and then in the Mackey Stand, nearly every second person was glued to their mobile phone, I myself was one of them, as everyone became aware of Limerick’s difficulty in the other senior hurling quarter final against Dublin. The window at the press box was another point of call to get a view of the television as the closing stages of the game at Croke Park played out as Dublin hung on to cause one of the great hurling upsets.

The cheer that greeted the PA announcer revealing the final score was as loud as any that greeted a score in the subsequent game between Tipperary and Galway, as fans realised the big dog was gone.

Okay, Limerick might not be the team they were at their prime between 2020 and 2023 when they reeled off a four-in-a-row, but they showed in the round-robin game against Cork that their best was still better than anyone else in the country.

However, when not at their best, they are now mortal and do not carry the same fear. There’s no doubting they peaked for that Cork game, understandable too considering it was the rebels who derailed their five-in-a-row ambitions last year. If there was one game they weren’t going to lose this year, it was their first go at Cork.

John Kiely hasn’t gotten much wrong in his time as Limerick manager, particularly his ability to get his team to peak for each and every game. However, it was a little strange when after their good performance against Waterford, he immediately teed up the Cork game by rallying the Limerick supporters to be at the Gaelic Grounds in big numbers of that game. It was a strange call to make as the Limerick supporters were always going to come to that game. Maybe, it was as much a rallying call to his players to be ready, and ready they were, but did he sense that for the first time they needed a gee-up.

One of the risks of producing that kind of performance against Cork so early in the championship is that it is very hard to replicate it in the same campaign. Admittedly, Cork were off their best that day, but Limerick were everything they were at their best, sharp, quick, athletic, ruthless, clinical. However, you cannot be that way in every game.

It’s easy to be wise in hindsight, but there were signs throughout the year that Limerick were not the force of a few years ago. Their league campaign was average; their best win was arguably against Tipperary in what was a really good game. They got a lot of kudos for beating Galway, but that win wasn’t now as a good as it seemed. They also lost to Clare, Kilkenny and Wexford, the latter scoring 1-12, albeit in a dead-rubber game.

While Limerick had already qualified for a Munster final in advance of their final group game against Clare, that their fringe players failed to take their opportunity, resulting in a defeat was also a sign that mentally, they weren’t in a ruthless mode.

The Munster Final rematch with Cork was always going to be a different affair from the group game, and to be fair, while Limerick didn’t hit the heights of the drawn game, they didn’t play badly either, although the nature of their wides in extra time certainly wasn’t something you’d associate with them at their best.

They didn’t technically lose the game, but the penalty shootout defeat meant they went down the quarter final route for the first time since 2018, their breakthrough year. The taxing nature of the Munster final was always going to take time to overcome and certainly thirteen days didn’t look like enough going on their performance on Saturday.

From the moment Aaron Gillane missed a relatively easy early free, they didn’t look on their game, even the usually on-point Cian Lynch’s first touch was off. Then came the red card for Dublin’s Chris Crummey, which would you have thought Limerick with a numerical advantage would easily work the ball around to the extra man.

However, from here on it was all about Dublin. Much like the Tipperary minors last year in the All-Ireland final, when a man down in the modern game, you have to hurl with a precision combined with a high intensity if you want to survive. It’s hard to do but when it works it is a powerful combination.

From the moment Dublin went down to fourteen men, they hurled more freer than they had in the first fifteen minutes. The pressure was off to a large extent as they had nothing to lose, and with each point they scored, easing out to a five point lead close to half time, they grew in confidence and belief.

What Dublin did doesn’t happen without a strong bond within a panel and manager Niall O Ceallacháin must take full credit for this. They would not have achieved this without an outside manager. He is Dublin to the core and knows what makes a Dublin hurler tick to get them to dig really deep. He did it with Na Fianna in getting them to become All-Ireland Club champions earlier this year. Can he do the unthinkable and win a senior inter-county All-Ireland in the same year, you cannot rule it out. Cork beware!