As soon as Limerick were beaten people wondered if they were finished. Is this the end? Full stop? A week earlier, when the Dublin footballers lost a brilliant game by a point, the same questions were trotted out. Who’s going to retire? How long will Dublin be down?
It amazes me the way people think. Limerick lost a cracking game by two points, having missed scores near the end that they would normally expect to get. Coming from seven points down they had all the momentum in the last quarter. We could easily be here talking about one of their greatest comebacks. The margins were tiny.
It was the end of their bid for five All-Irelands in a row but it wasn’t the end of anything else. John Kiely mentioned afterwards that the dressingroom might not be exactly the same next year, but that would be true whether they had won or lost. No intercounty panel stays the same from one year to the next.
A couple of lads who were subs last Sunday might drift away but looking at the Limerick bench, most of them were young fellas.
I’m certain that none of the starting team will retire. Nickie Quaid, Dan Morrissey, Declan Hannon, Diarmaid Byrnes and David Reidy are all in their 30s; Gearoid Hegarty and Will O’Donoghue will be 30 before the end of the year. Which one of them will step away? Not one.
Quaid could play for another 10 years. Hegarty has had a huge return to form this summer. Reidy spent a long time as an impact sub and it’s only last season and this season that he has been a regular starter. He’s not going to walk away from that.
One of Limerick’s strengths over the years has been their stability, in terms of team selection. Their starting 15 for all their big games was picked from a core group of about 18 or 19 players. There was just enough competition for places to ensure that it didn’t get stale, but there was so little flux that the team could tap into a well of experience and understanding. In big games, that is invaluable.
But last Sunday they didn’t have Barry Nash or Peter Casey, both of whom were injured, and Darragh O’Donovan only came on late in the game, having been injured for most of the year. He wasn’t able to just jump back in as if he had never been away. No matter how good Limerick are, they missed those players.
Going down the stretch, the chances that Limerick had to draw the match fell to young fellas exposed to a big championship game in Croke Park for the first time. That was a big pressure on them. For the last few years, they didn’t have to rely on young players.
Cian Lynch had a huge influence on the All-Ireland final last July, especially when Limerick were not going well, but, in keeping with his season, he didn’t bring that kind of performance last Sunday. It must be Lynch’s quietest ever year for Limerick.
Séamus Flanagan was brilliant against Cork in May, but he went off injured in the next game against Waterford and wasn’t fit for the Munster final. To my eyes he showed the effects of his lay-off last weekend. Should they have started Shane O’Brien instead? None of us know what was going on in training.
What it shows is that, even for great teams, a lot of things have to be right. They missed Nash and Casey and O’Donovan; Lynch and Flanagan were poor. Hannon was under pressure. Cork managed to exclude Kyle Hayes from the play for most of the game. Hegarty and Tom Morrissey only scored three points between them.
Caroline Currid has been their sports psychologist for their five All-Ireland wins. She wasn’t there this year. The only other year she was missing was 2019, the last time Limerick lost an All-Ireland semi-final. How much of a difference did that make?
Add all those things together, and they still only lost to Cork by two points. Clare are in the All-Ireland final, having lost to Limerick in the championship twice. I have no doubt that there are more All-Irelands to be won with this Limerick team, as long as Kiely and Paul Kinnerk don’t walk away. They’re the key to the whole thing.
When Kilkenny’s bid for five in a row was derailed in 2010, they came back and won the next two All-Irelands. When Kerry missed out on five in a row in 1982, they were beaten again the following year but then they won three in a row. In both cases Brian Cody and Mick O’Dwyer stayed on board.
Cork surprised me. Limerick couldn’t live with Cork’s pace two months ago and the same was true last weekend. They had the courage to go with the same puck-out strategy and basically it worked again. Any strategy that depends on how the ball breaks and where it breaks involves an element of luck, but they took that chance and it paid off.
Cork played with the kind of bite that has often been missing over the years and that made a huge difference too. It was no fluke. Beating this Limerick team twice in the same year is a serious achievement.
For now, though, all it does is get them into an All-Ireland final with a 50-50 chance. No more than that.
