Séamus Hickey: ‘The great teams are always the ones who separate themselves ... Limerick have done that’

Séamus Hickey stepped away from Limerick just as a green giant was awakening.

Limerick’s hulking dominance of hurling over the last five years has been extraordinary – since 2018 they have won four All-Ireland senior titles.

Hickey retired in December 2018, four months after Liam MacCarthy had returned to the county for the first time since the early seventies. Having made his senior debut in 2006, Hickey soldiered in the green and white through plenty of difficult days and barren years.

He got out with an All-Ireland medal but resisted the temptation to hang on for more silverware even though he was certain much more was on the way.

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“The only surprise to me in the last four years was that they lost the semi-final to Kilkenny in 2019,” says Hickey.

“In 2018, I genuinely felt we achieved ahead of schedule. They were an ascending group of players. The under-21s, the All-Irelands that they won, they didn’t just win them, they dominated them. To me, that was telling, the physical stature of the players coming up.

“So you had physique, pace, skill – the trifecta that you can’t design, that either comes through in a generation or it doesn’t.

“Kilkenny came through in a generation. When you’re talking about the likes of Peter Barry, Martin Comerford, Henry Shefflin. If you had a prototype hurler, Limerick had seven or eight of them come along together. And they were ambitious, hungry to succeed. To me, the writing was on the wall.”

Brian Cody’s four-in-a-row team are considered by many as the greatest of all time, their ownership of the game between 2006-09 was total. They fell short of the five-in-a-row in 2010 but parcelled off four more in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015.

Inevitably, comparisons will be made between Limerick now and Kilkenny then. And Hickey believes it is a legitimate conversation.

“Kilkenny’s four-in-a-row was only interrupted by Tipperary, they were one game away from seven-in-a-row,” says Hickey. “So it’s the nearest comparison.

“Winning close games repeatedly is grit, blowing out teams is excellence. The great teams are always the ones who separate themselves from the competition around them.

“And I think they have done that and that’s why then, they are compared to the great teams because they have shown that they are. So to me, it’s the only comparison available.”

In 2023, John Kiely’s side will be chasing down a fourth successive All-Ireland title, something no Limerick team has ever achieved. Indeed, Kilkenny and Cork are the only counties to have claimed four All-Ireland senior hurling titles on the bounce.

These truly are the good old days for Limerick hurling.

“I do think there is an excellent structure in Limerick for academies, but the generation that has come in and is currently there in their mid to late 20s now, I don’t think you replicate that,” adds Hickey.

“Kilkenny did not replicate that. Dublin football, you see with them now. You win as much as you can and then you try and sustain it beyond that with fresh blood that comes in.

“Limerick aren’t at the re-blooding stage yet but I do think the core of that team is incredibly special.”

Hickey was only 31 when he retired, as life away from hurling determined it was the right time for him to go. He had three young kids at home, including twin boys.

“The effort and the focus and commitment that is required to be part of such a high functioning set-up as an amateur, and have a day job, a wife and family – if hurling was my living, and providing that living, as a family man, you could justify that commitment. But for me, it wasn’t justifiable,” he continued.

“My family was always number one. I got married at 25. There were no conversations about delaying anything. It was, ‘let’s live life.’ And I’ll try and fit it [hurling] around my life.

“The level the boys were at, could I sustain in my 30s that level of physicality and athleticism that is the trademark of that Limerick team? The fact that I can’t, and I couldn’t, in the last number of years gave me a good deal of peace about it.”

Hickey was speaking at the launch of GAAGO’s championship coverage. GAAGO will stream 38 exclusive live championship matches in 2023