Tipp's first acorn flowers in Limerick victory

Strange indeed it seems to be sitting down to look back on the year a few days after Tipperary’s 2019 campaign has already begun even if it was in the less than salubrious environment of the Munster hurling league.

We might as well start with our most recent opposition. In a year that one of hurling’s greatest and Limerick’s own stalwart Leonard Enright crossed the great divide one of the most glaring gaps in hurling was bridged. When Eamon Grimes raised the MacCarthy Cup to the heavens in 1973 the Shannonsiders were ending a 33-year wait, something which would have been inconceivable on that day in 1940 when they won the Senior and Minor crowns in Croke Park. Yet here they were again not just matching that wait but exceeding it considerably. There is little doubt that a few potential All-Irelands drifted away from them down the years – in 1981 injury cost them dear, and some 13 years later they snatched an unlikely defeat from the jaws of probable victory.

This year it was evident from early on that the cut of their jib was different. Even the small acorns began to show promise with promotion finally achieved in the League. Beating Tipp in the championship was, as things transpired, not exactly a Herculean task by the subsequent standards Limerick reached but in the context of where they were at the time was significant. The fight in the Limerick dog in Páirc Uí Chaoimh a fortnight later showed that they had the stomach for battle too as they found themselves a man down with Cork going well.

 

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