Joe Canning: Galway need to bring savage aggression to beat Limerick

Think back over the last 20 years and it’s amazing how often the All-Ireland semi-finals have produced one of the games of the year. In my career some of the best games I was involved in were semi-finals: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 – draw and replay. All brilliant games that went down to the wire.

The semi-final always felt different. In my experience, there was more pressure not to lose a quarter-final. We would have been coming into those games as beaten Leinster finalists and that brought its own baggage. In those circumstances, you were never sure what kind of performance you were going to come up with.

If you were eliminated at the quarter-final stage, there were always more questions. We had some terrible results in quarter-finals during my career and there was hell to pay. When you got to the semi-final, though, the mood was different. You had some momentum again. You could throw off the shackles and just go for it.

It seemed to me that the referees were always prepared to let more stuff go than they would have earlier in the championship. The semi-final refs knew they weren’t going to get the final, and maybe they weren’t as worried about the assessor in the stand. The games tended to be more physical and hard-hitting, but the refs were prepared to let it flow, and that made it more of a spectacle.

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Every game involving Limerick is physical and Galway will need to bring savage aggression tomorrow. The way Galway set up will be crucial. If they approach the semi-final the same way they did the quarter-final I think they have very little chance.

Against Tipp, they got a lot of bodies into their own half of the field, and snuffed out Tipp’s goal threat. That worked on that day, against that opposition, but Limerick are a completely different proposition. I’m convinced that the only way to beat the All-Ireland champions is to push up and put massive pressure on the ball in their half of the field. Don’t let them walk it out. Really squeeze them.

In this situation, positions don’t really matter. Against Limerick, I think you must go with their half forwards. That’s the key line on the field for them: under puck-outs, building the play from deep, hitting the ball inside, taking shots. The players on that line make Limerick tick. My attitude would be, follow them everywhere. If that meant following Gearoid Hegarty into his own full-back line, so be it.

Pushing up on Limerick has been Clare’s approach over the last couple of years, and it worked for a long time in the Munster final. The problem for them in the second half was when David Reidy went deeper for possession and John Conlon was caught in no man’s land. He didn’t feel that he could push up completely on Reidy, but by the same token he didn’t drop off enough to protect the full back line.

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The kind of ball that went into Aaron Gillane in the second half of the Munster final would be impossible for any full back to defend. If it’s a 70/30 ball, in Gillane’s favour, he’s going to turn that into a shot or a score more often than not. There needs to be massive pressure on the ball, out the field, to give the full-back line a fighting chance.

Galway stood off Limerick last year and tried to win the game with shots from distance. If they had converted half of the shots they missed they would have won the match, but shooting from distance all the time is not a percentage play. Galway will need to come up with something better than that.

Declan Hannon is a big loss to Limerick at centre back, but is that going to make a difference to the outcome, one way or another? Limerick lost Sean Finn earlier in the championship, another huge player for them, but they have lost big players over the years and managed to carry on winning without them: Cian Lynch, Peter Casey, Mike Casey and Richie English all come to mind.

Limerick’s system is so strong that players can step in and out. It’s not about individuals so much as the collective. Looking at Galway or Clare, for example, I think they would find it harder to replace Daithi Burke or Conlon. Limerick might not have somebody who can play centre back as well as Hannon, but the overall structure of how Limerick play will absorb the impact.

Who’s going to play at number six? There’s talk that Will O’Donoghue could slot in there, or Barry Nash. There’s also big talk around Limerick that Cian Lynch has been tried at centre back in training and has been going well.

That would be a big move for everyone concerned, and it’s not Limerick’s style to do something risky, out of the blue – especially when they have more obvious options. Dan Morrissey could come out from the full-back line, or Kyle Hayes could slide across from wing back.

In either of those scenarios, English could start in the full-back line or Colin Coughlan could come in at wing back – like he did in the League final, when Hannon was also missing. I expect Limerick will keep it simple.

As we discovered with the Gearoid Hegarty rumour earlier in the summer, you can’t believe everything you hear.

The scary thing about Limerick is that people don’t think they’ve reached their peak this season yet. In spite of that, they still won a savagely competitive Munster championship, as well as the league – for what it was worth. They’ve won 12 finals under John Kiely now, and they couldn’t have reached those finals unless they knew how to win high pressure games.

They’ve had four weeks without a match and they’ve had time to freshen up. Would it surprise anyone if they produced their best performance of the year in Croke Park tomorrow? Galway will have to expect that.