8-year wheel comes full circle?

IN ALL FAIRNESS

Depending on who you listen to, the hurling season is coming to an end, well at inter-county it is as we have our All-Ireland Final match-up, Limerick who come as no surprise, up against Galway, who are very much the surprise.

In many ways it is a role reversal of their 2018 final meeting when Galway were the experienced team going for back-to-back titles against an up-and-coming Limerick side, and who showed the poise at such a young age that has seen them become the greatest hurling team of all time.

They might not have achieved the five-in-a-row and along with Cork (1941-44) and Kilkenny (2006-09) remain the only teams to have won the Liam MacCarthy Cup on four consecutive occasions but their sheer body of work in the last nine campaign usurps anything those Cork and Kilkenny teams achieved.

Their legendary status was only added to last Sunday by how they dug out the semi-final win over Clare when they had no business doing it. It can be pointed to that Clare only scored 1-3 in the second half and Limerick hit fifteen wides so they had the chances, but it was such an untypical type of performance, and yet they still won the game.

While there was a feeling of a last dance for many on the Clare team on Sunday, it does feel like the end is nearing for the core of this Limerick side. Taking into account the ferocity of the Clare challenge, the same spark and energy wasn’t there from the peak Limerick years. It can’t be but it was still strange to see them unable to open up the field as they like to do, as well as create separation to get shots off in the attack.

That’s where experience comes into its own and in the last fifteen minutes after conceding the goal from the penalty, they completely suffocated Clare with their defence coming to the rescue again, holding them to 1-3 in the second half, off the back of holding Cork to 1-6 in the second half of the Munster Final. It’s their defence that are bailing out an underperforming attack, Gearoid Hegarty and Aidan O’Connor the exceptions.

Maybe they were a little stale after the four-week layoff from the Munster Final but certainly they made mistakes we rarely see from them, and that could be down to their own internal pressure to win another this All-Ireland with the feeling being that John Kiely won’t be staying on next year and thus ending an era.

We got a glimpse of what has made John Kiely one of the great managers, not just in terms of the changes made in-game, but how he rallied the supporters late on, knowing they had a part to play in chasing down the deficit. It’s that inch, that grain of rice, and come the final whistle they all add up and the scale had tipped in their favour.

As much of the story around Saturday’s first semi-final was of Galway’s brilliance as much as Cork’s mental fragility being exposed at Croke Park again. Almost every element of what unfolded in the second half was similar to what they endured at the hands of Tipperary in last year’s All-Ireland Final.

What it also said was that changing the management team wasn’t the issue. Too many in Cork have been burying their head in the sand that the All-Ireland Final was a freak occurrence but for it to happen in the same manner again is now a trend. It also shows that new manager Ben O’Connor failed to address it. The problem now is that it will be harder for him to address now than it would have been for Pat Ryan to resolve when he was forced out by some within Cork County Board. O’Connor is going into year 2 but he is already under massive pressure.

It may well be that he has to clean house in terms of the panel and weed out the players that have shown the mental fragility, not just in the last twelve months, but going back to 2018 and the All-Ireland Under 21 Hurling final when a massively talented Cork side were dragged into a battle by Tipp and came out second best. The core of that team is what is there at senior level now. It may well be time for O’Connor to lean more on the under 20 team he managed to All-Ireland glory in 2023 to drive the team forward as they have the winning mentality.

To give Galway their due, the turnaround from them in twelve months has been remarkable. Tipp’s poorest performance in the run to the All-Ireland last year was in the quarter final win over Galway where they won by nine-points, Galway were that poor.

To that end, Micheal Donoghue followed the Liam Cahill blueprint, infusing youth in key positions plus getting them incredibly fit to play the type of hurling they are, and based on last weekend, they’ll certainly have the legs and ability to beat Limerick in the final but can they match Limerick’s mentality. If they do, they’ll win!