Anthony Daly: What Limerick did would match any professional outfit around the world

FAMILIAR SIGHT: Declan Hannon lifts the cup as Limerick are crowned Munster champions after victory over Tipperary at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Picture: Tommy Dickson

There is no game like hurling, but I never saw a game of hurling like I witnessed yesterday. I can’t even remember too many games like it any other sport, where a team managed a 10-point turnaround in a handful of minutes, and then followed it up with an absolute spanking for the rest of the match.

The only game I could really recall like it was Leinster’s incredible turnaround against Northampton in the 2011 Heineken Cup final. Northampton led that match by 22-6 at half-time before Leinster scored 27 points in the second half, and held the Saints scoreless in the process.

Yet that was the Leinster machine in their prime, when they had some of the best players in world rugby operating at their peak. Hurling is still an amateur sport but what Limerick did yesterday would match any professional outfit around the world.

I spent a lot of yesterday evening trying to come up with similar examples in hurling, and I couldn’t find one.

One of the defining trends of the memorable 2018 championship was teams surrendering huge leads, but that was more down to opposition teams hitting a groove and surfing huge waves of confidence and momentum. You can’t put this defeat in that category.

I can still vividly remember Limerick reeling in a 10-point half-time deficit in the 1996 Munster final but Limerick spent the whole second half chipping away at that lead before Frankie Carroll landed the equaliser with the last puck. This was nothing like that; Tipp still had work to do but it still looked they were in full control of the game at half-time; just over 15 minutes later, the match was definitely over. Incredible stuff.

You could even make an argument that the game was over 10 minutes into the second half, when Seamie Flanagan’s goal reduced the margin to four points. Limerick had the scent of blood in their nostrils; they had already backed a heavily bleeding Tipp into a corner; the kill was inevitable; if Limerick hadn’t got sloppy late on, it would have been a total and utter massacre.

If this was a typical Limerick performance where they just ground down the opposition in the last quarter, Liam Sheedy would find it a lot easier to accept and to lift his players for two weeks’ time. But if you take out Mark Kehoe’s late goal, this was nearly a 20-point mauling in just one half. How do you convince your players that was just an aberration?

Tipp were brilliant in the first half but, as I said after the Clare game, brilliant patches wouldn’t cut it against Limerick. Limerick were exceptional in the second half, but, all of that aside, there is no getting away from this also being a monumental collapse from Tipp.

With the weather so warm all weekend, I had my fears beforehand of how much it would take out of the Tipp players, especially with their comparative age-profile to Limerick’s. When I looked back over my notes after the game, 11 of the players visibly wilted, their energy levels diluted from the heat and from the power of the Limerick machine.

With the exception of Cathal Barrett, Seamie Kennedy, Jake Morris and, Jason Forde to a lesser extent, because he had done so much in the first half, Tipp players everywhere were overrun by a relentless and ruthless Limerick onslaught.

John Kiely will be delighted but he’ll also be slightly concerned about the manner of the no-show in the first half. Tipp played scintillating stuff in the first half but Limerick were still way off in so many areas; they were tame, too stand-offish; they allowed Forde way too much space; they struggled with the Tipp long puckout. Limerick quickly turned it around but they were also surely mindful that if they built some momentum quickly Tipp wouldn’t be able to sustain that pace they’d managed for the first 35 minutes.

Tipp were on the backfoot from the first whistle after half-time but the biggest turning point was Paud O’Dwyer’s failure to send off Aaron Gillane for his swipe back at Cathal Barrett. There was no need for the referee to consult with his linesman Cathal McAlister because O’Dwyer was right in front of the incident.

Gillane should have walked and I’m sure Kiely will use that against him in the same way he was able to leave Gillane on the bench from the start. Making that call last week was Codyesque. Now this week, Kiely will be able to say to Gillane: “Hi, if you can’t keep your cool, I can’t risk playing you.”

It’s win-win for Kiely now, especially with three weeks to go before an All-Ireland semi-final. Limerick are two games now from three All-Irelands in four years. They have lost just one game of significance since the start of the 2018 championship.

This Limerick side have won a lot of big games since but the manner of this victory was probably their sweetest yet. How much belief is coursing through their veins this morning? They know that further dominance is in their grasp. You couldn’t predict the kind of dominance Kilkenny enjoyed in the recent past but Limerick are beginning to look more like the all-conquering Leinster Rugby team of the last decade.

Speaking of Leinster, about an hour before the Leinster final on Saturday evening, we got wind that Dublin had been affected by a Covid-19 case. It was disappointing to hear but it was nobody’s fault because I know that the four lads which had to withdraw — Cian O’Callaghan, Ronan Hayes, Fergal Whitely and Oisin O’Rorke — would have been travelling in the same car from the southside for training.

With Eoghan O’Donnell only lasting a handful of minutes with a hamstring injury, Dublin were suddenly down two-thirds of their full-back line which played outstanding stuff against Galway. Losing O’Donnell so early was a real hammer-blow, but Dublin were still really manful and industrious in how they stepped up and took the game to Kilkenny in the first half. Dublin did as well to be as competitive for as long as they were but, in typical Kilkenny assassin-type fashion, they always sense the right time to make the kill.

The margin was consistently around three points, never above four, but when Johnny Murphy gave what I considered a soft free to Walter Walsh, I scribbled on my notepad before TJ Reid had even slotted the score. “First time Kilkenny have gone five ahead.”

Then Alan Murphy — who was really sharp after being introduced was hauled down for a penalty/sin bin by Jake Malone. Before TJ had even nailed the penalty, I looked at Derek McGrath and grimaced. No words needed to be said. The match was already over.

In the end, Dublin ultimately couldn’t keep overcoming the multitude of setbacks that had begun a day earlier. Seán Currie, who came on in the second half, wasn’t even on the matchday 26 the previous evening. He wasn’t the only one to get that call Friday night but some of the squad didn’t even know the situation until they met up on Saturday afternoon.

Nobody knew what the process was. Could the three close contacts named get an antigen test and be possibly cleared to play if the result was negative? There was a lot of that kind of debate around Croke Park on Saturday beforehand, so you can imagine how unsettling it was for Dublin to try and get their heads around everything else, never mind Kilkenny.

You just have to give it to Brian Cody and Kilkenny. They are relentless, but you could see the extra joy and satisfaction and how much it meant to the players afterwards. There was a time when Kilkenny players celebrated getting three stars on a lottery ticket more than winning a Leinster title. Not anymore.

It was another good weekend of hurling. After losing successive Joe McDonagh Cup finals in 2018 and 2019, Westmeath showed huge character and resolve to bounce back and finally win the competition. They were the better team, but you’d also have to tip your hat to Kerry for the manner in which they fought and battled in the second half.

We have more great days to look forward to, but the Dublin Covid situation was still very unsettling. With cases so high now, and with this Delta variant so transmissible at the moment, this scenario could yet become a derailing reality for some teams left in this championship.