Everything changes. When Richie Hogan tapped the ball down to himself at the Hogan Stand sideline and turned to whip the equaliser, Kilkenny were level for the first time since the opening minute of the game. It had taken them 63 minutes of the best kind of pig ignorant Kilkennyness to get back on terms, an hour and a bit of refusing to be told what was obvious to just about everyone but them. Limerick were the better team but sure when has that ever mattered to a Brian Cody side?
Now. Think back. Back to all those years when Limerick were Limerick and nightmares came easy. Imagine a Limerick team in an All-Ireland final anytime between 1974 and 2018. Imagine them dominating the match but getting reeled in by Kilkenny with seven minutes to go. Where’s your money going? For the guts of half a century, only one answer would have made sense.
Yet here they were, having been outscored by 2-7 to 0-7 in the previous 25 minutes and all anyone from Limerick wanted now was the ball. The roar that bounced around Croke Park told you all you needed to know about what this team has done for its people in the past five seasons. They wanted the battle. Unlimited Heartbreak? Not today, pal.
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Limerick these days are Walter White in Breaking Bad. They are Mr Chips turned into Scarface. The most famous scene in Breaking Bad — or most meme-able, which amounts to more or less the same thing — has Walter talking to his wife Skyler as she worries that he might be in danger, what with him running a multimillion dollar drug empire and everything.
“You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to,” Walter growls. “So let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks.”
In 2022 Limerick are the ones who knock. All that bad juju, all that worry and fret and maudlin introspection, that’s gone. It has changed now for Limerick people and it is a change that will last generations. Let’s say it all goes downhill from here and Limerick fall in a hole again — they won’t but let’s say it anyway. How long would it take in that circumstance for Limerick people to go back to being jumpy, anxious hurling folk again, backs forever waiting on the lash? You’re dealing in decades.
John Kiely told us a story afterwards of how he had to explain to his daughters Aoife and Ruth that they need to savour this because the Limerick he grew up in had nothing like it. “I told them that I was in Croke Park when I was their age to watch Limerick lose to Galway in 1980. And that after that, I was in my 20s the next time I came here and that was in ‘94 when we lost to Offaly. They don’t know that this isn’t the norm. They thought I was joking them.”
It has turned around because Kiely has put together a group of hurlers who have all the good stuff — talent, cohesion, brute force and all the rest of it. But, as he put his finger on afterwards, they also have a resilience about them. Pick one thing about Limerick hurling now that wasn’t there before and that resilience hits you square between the eyes. They had a lot of mishaps along the way in 2022, right up to and including the training session last Sunday in which Cian Lynch got injured.
“After a 10-week hamstring injury he gets back and plays in the semi-final for 20 minutes,” said Kiely. “And on that Sunday morning he was absolutely electric. He was winning ball left, right and centre. He just went to make a tackle and got caught awkwardly. That’s a devastating blow for any team to take.
“But for the group to respond the way they did to his injury — to play like they did for the following 20 minutes afterwards while he is taken away in the back of a jeep. That’s hard. Somebody you are that close to has had a devastating injury, you are there to witness it but you still have to drive on and literally put yourself in his shoes, that you could be the next one to go down, you know?
“Kyle [Hayes] was injured with hamstrings a number of times during the course of the year. And we couldn’t get form at the start of the year, we couldn’t find any degree of fluency or flow during the early part of the year. And you’re wondering when are we going to turn this corner? Are we ever going to turn this corner? Is it within us to turn this corner?”
They did and they came out and played the first 40 minutes of this final like nothing else was imaginable. They were modern Limerick with bells on — huge hits, massive catches, the purest striking when chances presented.
And when Kilkenny reeled them in and Nickie Quaid was standing there readying himself to take the puck-out after Hogan’s equaliser, any bit of a crack in them was there to be exposed. But that’s not who they are any more. Kyle Hayes. Cathal O’Neill. Conor Boylan. Aaron Gillane (free). Gearóid Hegarty. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Listen, resilience is obviously when people can cope with adversity,” Kiely said. “And we’ve experienced a tremendous amount of adversity over the years. There’s an incredible bond between these players. There’s a tremendous trust and they mean the world to each other.
“And when you’re in the melting pot out there, and those balls are raining down on top of you, and you’ve got to get that breaking ball or to catch that ball or break that ball, be available for a pass, take on that shot ... people around you, you have to trust them and trust them with literally everything you have in you. And that unity and togetherness and trust that they have, that’s what makes them what they are.”
They are Limerick. It means something different now.
