History echoes for Limerick as they try to replace the irreplaceable Declan Hannon

When it comes to the matter of Declan Hannon, Limerick will be trying to solve a problem they haven’t had to think about since they were ordinary working stiffs. In 13 seasons of championship hurling, they’ve played just two games in which Hannon hasn’t featured. No other outfield player comes close.

Hannon had a decent excuse for the first one – he was sitting Maths Paper Two in the Leaving Cert the following day. By the time the qualifier against Wexford came around a month later, he had assumed the number 12 jersey from his teacher at Ard Scoil Rís, Niall Moran. So began a career of virtually spotless response to the roll call.

Since the summer of 2011, Hannon’s only absence came in the last round-robin game of the Munster Championship in 2019. Limerick had just munched on Clare and Waterford in successive weeks and were all but guaranteed to be in the Munster final. So John Kiely rested his captain for the afternoon against Tipperary and kept him fresh for the final against the same opposition a fortnight later.

If there is any comfort in having to forge on without him now, it’s maybe that Limerick are getting used to replacing the irreplaceable. During the 2022 championship, they had to make do without Cian Lynch for the first time in six seasons. When Seán Finn broke down against Clare 10 weeks ago, it brought to an end a run of 34 straight matches for the supreme corner back.

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Until their injuries, Lynch and Finn had been ever-presents under Kiely. Yet Limerick went on to win an All-Ireland without Lynch and have made it five-in-a-row in Munster without Finn. Unless and until they fail to find a way to prosper without Hannon, it would obviously be silly to imagine they can’t.

It’s a speed bump, all the same. This is not how Limerick like to operate. There might be no clearer projection of the brand throughout Kiely’s time than the consistency of his team selections. He’s been in charge for 37 championship matches – 14 players have played some part in at least 31 of them. Here’s the breakdown.

• 37 Nickie Quaid, Tom Morrissey (2 as a sub), Dan Morrissey (3 sub)
• 36 Declan Hannon, Kyle Hayes, Darragh O’Donovan (8 sub)
• 35 Gearóid Hegarty (1 sub), Graeme Mulcahy (9 sub)
• 34 Diarmaid Byrnes, Seán Finn, Aaron Gillane (3 sub)
• 32 Cian Lynch (2 sub), Will O’Donoghue (6 sub)
• 31 Séamus Flanagan (7 sub)

Add in Barry Nash (28 games, including the last 21 starts in a row), Mike Casey (also 28) and Peter Casey (27) and there’s no mystery to what Limerick’s success has been built on. It’s right there in front of you. Every successful side has a core group – Kiely leaves nobody in doubt as to what his looks like. It’s those 17 players, with satellite contributions from the likes of David Reidy, Richie English and latterly Cathal O’Neill.

For sure, they have had injuries, like anyone else. Both Caseys, as well as Richie English, have missed significant time with cruciate tears. Lynch’s hamstrings have slowed the gallop of his extraordinary career since last summer. But this is the first championship under Kiely in which two of his pillars have been removed – their best defender in Finn and their leader and organiser in Hannon.

All week, the question has been what to do. More than all week, in fact. In a slightly curious move, Limerick ruled Hannon out of the semi-final fully three weeks ago. Since then, every possible theory as to who will fill in at the heart of their defence has been aired. It’ll be Dan Morrissey. No, it’ll be Kyle Hayes. No, Will O’Donoghue will drop back. No, Diarmaid Byrnes will slide across.

If the team named on Friday morning contains the answers, they’re possibly written in pencil rather than pen. It has Hayes taking Hannon’s spot at six, Gearóid Hegarty dropping back to seven and Lynch in as captain at 11. Maybe that’s how it will go, maybe it isn’t. We’ll wait for the break from the anthem to find out.

On the face of it, removing the ability of Hayes to attack from wing back seems quite a steep price to pay. On top of which, all of Hegarty’s best days in a Limerick jersey have come when he’s been in see-ball-hit-ball mode in attack. There are a lot of moving parts at play to make up for one man’s absence.

The most beguiling notion of the lot began to rumble around the place earlier this week and seemed a simpler fix. What if it was Lynch? Wouldn’t that be something?

There is, at least, a nice echo from Limerick lore in the idea. Maybe the greatest gift Kiely’s team have doled out through this run has been to winch decades of history up from off the shoulders of the 1973 team. They have been allowed to melt back into ordinary type as the current crop write their own names in bold. But history matters, always.

Going into the 1973 final, Éamonn Cregan was Limerick’s best player, their leading goalscorer, their most dangerous forward. They hadn’t won an All-Ireland in 33 years, they were playing the defending champions Kilkenny in the final, they needed every scoring threat they could muster. Yet they confounded everyone by handing Cregan the number six jersey and playing him at centre back.

“It was a very big surprise,” Eddie Keher told PM O’Sullivan in the Examiner a few years back. “It was a brave move from the selectors because they were removing the most lethal forward in the game at the time from their attack. It raised a lot of eyebrows and we weren’t sure if it was a decoy or not. It was very much a reality on the day and very effective.”

Cregan went on Kilkenny’s most dangerous forward Pat Delaney and had a stormer at the heart of the Limerick defence. Watching it back this week on YouTube, it’s a different sport. Almost nobody is minding the ball, pretty much everyone is whipping on it the first chance they get, there are ground strokes to beat the band. But even at a half-century’s remove, Cregan is impossible to miss. Stylish, secure in the air, impeccably positioned. Some things never go out of style.

“I remember coming out of the dressing-room,” says Cregan in the brilliant radio documentary Four Sundays To Liam. “I was met by Dick Stokes and Jackie Power and they asked how I would feel about being picked at centre back. And my first thought was for Jim O’Donnell because Jim had been there right up to the semi-final. It was a terrible feeling.

“But at the same time, if the selectors wanted me to do it ... I had played there before for Claughaun. It wasn’t a new position for me. I had played a county final there in 1968. They didn’t give me a reason for it. They must have had their own reason for it. I just don’t know. I wasn’t party to their thinking.”

Can you imagine? Kiely and Paul Kinnerk sending in a new man in Hannon’s place without telling him their reasons? Whoever they choose this weekend, we can take it he’ll be party to their thinking.

Could Limerick be spoofing us? Could the named team be a bottle of smoke? Might we find out at teatime Saturday that Lynch is, in fact, about to try to do a Cregan?

The idea certainly has its upsides. For one, it causes the least possible disruption to the rest of the team. Since Finn went off at half-time against Clare in the round-robin match, Mike Casey has replaced him in the corner and everyone else has held their positions. If Lynch slots in at six, it allows Dan Morrissey to continue at three and keeps Byrnes and Hayes in situ on either wing. As we have seen, Kiely prizes stability above most things.

Like Cregan, Lynch has played there before. He was the centre back on Limerick’s under-21 team in 2016, albeit their championship only lasted two games that year. Like Hannon, he started life as a forward before moving back. The two-time Hurler of the Year would surely have the hurling brain for it and undoubtedly possesses Hannon’s range when it comes to stick-passing through the lines and connecting up the little triangles that Limerick so enjoy around the middle third.

There is also the possibility that it could be the spark Lynch needs to get back to being the player he was before his injury. The past year has been a nightmare for him. The midseason hamstring problem last summer appeared to be righting itself when he went down again in the week of the All-Ireland final. That Hannon brought him up to lift Liam MacCarthy alongside him last July said everything about how they felt for him.

Limerick could badly do with the old Cian Lynch back. Though he has started three games this summer, he has never looked the threat he was. A change of scenery, a different mental challenge, a new assignment on the biggest stage. It could all add up to exactly what he – and Limerick – need.

Not everyone is convinced, all the same. While Michael Duignan was lobbying for it in his newspaper column last Sunday, Tommy Walsh pooh-poohed the idea on radio during the week. For all that a good hurling brain and brilliant distribution will you get you places, there is still the small matter of whether or not Lynch would be up to the defending that will need to be done.

Maybe Kiely tried it in training one of the nights and wrote it off as a quixotic idea too far. Or maybe a cigar is just a cigar and the Limerick team will line out as advertised. One way or the other, Limerick are stepping into the unknown here.

No better group to make light of it.