People try to tell you an All-Ireland final is just another game. Or to treat it like any other game. But it isn’t and you can’t. There are so many sideshows, so many things going on away from the game itself. You have to try and keep them at arm’s length, obviously. But you can’t pretend they’re not happening.
There was one year I ended up with 70 tickets to organise. I always left all that stuff to my brother Frank and he was the one who wedged himself in between me and the outside world in the run-up to a final. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t delegate everything. An All-Ireland final is an All-Ireland final. You can’t escape all the hype around it.
It can be draining. You have small things in your head. How are my family getting from the game to the hotel afterwards? Have they the right ticket? What about the wives and partners, are they sorted? If you start minding too many other people’s business, you can drift away from making sure of your own.
Ultimately, everything outside the game is irrelevant. That’s the thing you have to keep in mind. The parade, meeting the President, all that stuff really means very little compared to what you’re there for. You can find the game passing you by very quickly once it starts. You’d be surprised how many fellas down the years have looked up at the clock and gone, ‘Shit, it’s nearly half-time already and I haven’t pucked a ball’. You don’t want to be that player.
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You could argue that this year’s final is set up perfectly for both teams. Kilkenny are going in as underdogs – and we have seen time and again how much they enjoy that. To my mind, they should have been hot favourites against Clare. They didn’t get the credit they deserved for winning three Leinster titles in a row, or for winning it when they weren’t at 100 per cent. They knew well that most people fancied Clare and it gave them exactly the sort of chip on the shoulder they love to have.
Their mindset going in here against Limerick won’t be a whole lot different. They know just about everybody expects Limerick to make it three All-Irelands in a row. The way most people look at this final, it’s Limerick’s to lose. Kilkenny don’t need motivation for an All-Ireland final but right throughout this past week, they’ll be building that attitude of, ‘Nobody thinks we have a chance here. Wait till they see …’
The problem for Kilkenny is that Limerick are in just as good a place in terms of their mindset. If Kilkenny think they have a chip on their shoulder, Limerick will be convinced it’s nothing compared to theirs. They have a score to settle from the last time these two teams met. The 2019 game looms massively over this game.
I don’t care what Limerick are saying in public, I can guarantee the 2019 defeat has been mentioned. It’s there. There’s no getting away from it. If I was a Limerick player, that’s where my edge would be found. These guys took our All-Ireland chance from us. We should be going for five-in-a-row here. We owe them. We owe them big time.
People can laugh at that kind of thing if they like but trust me, Limerick need to use that. Otherwise, where’s their edge coming from? You can be motivated to win, absolutely. You can be inspired by the idea of winning a three-in-a-row, yes of course you can. But in both of those cases, you are going for something that has nothing to do with the opposition. It might work but there’s no guarantees.
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Motivation is a funny thing. You strive for excellence and that’s great. You want to reach higher and higher and be the best you can be and all the rest of it. But if that’s all you have, there’s a danger that your targets become soft. There’s no danger of that when you have an extra reason to go out and bury a team that has taken something from you.
That’s a huge thing for Limerick here. They have to set that 2019 game straight. They have a lot of hurt from that game that they’ll be carrying somewhere within them. All they’ve known since that day is success so it’s very easy for them to access the way they felt after losing. They’ll be going in here adamant that they’re not going to feel it again.
That 2019 semi-final is relevant in another sense because what worked for Kilkenny that day is almost certainly what they’ll be bringing again on Sunday. If they’re going to beat Limerick, I would imagine the template isn’t going to be a whole lot different to what it was that day. It’s going to be work-rate, pressure, massive disruption of the Limerick game plan.
In many ways, Kilkenny are the perfect kind of team to try and stop Limerick here. The exact thing you need if you’re going to bring them down is what they would be bringing to the game anyway. They will match up 15-on-15. They will try to savage the Limerick defenders as they come out with the ball. They won’t give up space to the Limerick half-back line.
All throughout the season, I have been waiting on a team to decide that today is the day that Barry Nash doesn’t get time and space to pick out his long passes into the Limerick forward line. That is surely something Kilkenny are going to go full-blooded for. They will push right up on the ball coming out from the Limerick defence, just like they did in 2019.
If you remember that day, one of the early scores came from Tom Morrissey coming back to collect a ball on his own 45 and immediately being met by TJ Reid, John Donnelly, Richie Leahy and Adrian Mullen. All four of them got a hit in on him before the ball bounced out to Mullen, who scored from the right sideline. That’s the kind of thing Kilkenny will be going after on Sunday.
That has to be their first job – making sure that Nash, Diarmaid Byrnes and Declan Hannon aren’t coming out of the Limerick defence with time to get their head up and send arrow-straight ball into Aaron Gillane and Séamie Flanagan. Because once Limerick are able to do that, there’s really nothing the Kilkenny inside defenders are going to be able to do about it.
Go back and watch the Limerick v Galway semi-final. Gillane was getting on ball in that game that was bouncing perfectly in front of him and up into his hand. Same with Flanagan in the Munster final. For forwards of their quality, there’s no defending against that. It doesn’t matter who you are, it wouldn’t matter if you double-teamed them. If they’re able to collect in stride, then all they have to do is shoot on the turn and they’re not missing.
That’s why it’s very obvious what Kilkenny’s first job is and how they’ll go about it. It’s so crucial that Kilkenny target the source of that possession. Ideally, they hook, block and tackle and get turnovers in a dangerous part of the pitch. But even if that’s not possible, they at least have to disrupt it and force the Limerick defenders to hurry as they’re hitting the ball. If Limerick can build the platform the way they like to build it, Kilkenny have no chance.
With Cian Lynch in a moon boot this week, Kyle Hayes will presumably be at centre forward for Limerick. I was thinking that Limerick would go with Lynch there if he had been fully fit, purely because Richie Reid has started to get comfortable as a sitting centre back. With Lynch there, he would have had to second guess himself a lot more because Lynch loves to move left and right and drift around.
Hayes is a much more traditional centre forward. He was excellent in the semi-final – it was his best display all year. As good as he was as a wing back bombing forward, I think centre forward is probably still his best position. He likes to sit on the centre back and bring the fight to him that way. It’s more about power and directness. Neither he nor Reid will take a backward step, so it’s a duel to look forward to.
Overall, I think this will be close. I don’t think Limerick will run away with it like they have the last two years. I can see Kilkenny still being in touch around the 60-65 minute mark. That’s all well and good – the problem is, how are they going to win from there? Limerick haven’t lost a close game in three years, whereas Kilkenny lost two in the Leinster Championship alone.
Limerick’s big advantage coming down the stretch has to be their bench. People can say that Lynch and Peter Casey didn’t do an awful lot when they came on in the semi-final against Galway but the point is, they needed watching. And while Galway were covering all their bases keeping an eye on them both, David Reidy was able to find pockets of space to go and win the game.
Whereas you look through the Kilkenny bench and there’s a lot of like-for-like replacements for what’s already on the pitch. They haven’t tended to get more than a point or two from their subs as the championship has gone on.
All in all, I think Kilkenny will push them most of the way but Limerick will win by four or five points.
