Enda McEvoy: Victory would enshrine Limerick as one of the finest teams in hurling history

Kyle Hayes of Limerick bursting past t Eoin Cadogan of Cork in the 2018 semi-final, when this great era of Treaty hurling really took off in a enthralling contest.

Two jumping-off points for the day that’s in it, the first of them an anecdote that’s been cited here before but in view of the identity of Cork’s opponents merits repeating.

The 1965 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe attracted a golden cast comprising the winners of classics all over the world. It turned out to be a non-contest. Sea-Bird first, the rest nowhere.

Riding Also Ran, the great American jockey Willie Shoemaker recounted afterwards how he “kept looking over at the big dude and the jock on him had a double handful. I said to myself, I’m getting out of his way because if that horse is ever let loose he’ll run all over me.”

Sea-Bird’s colours, by the by, were green.

We now say au revoir to pleasant Longchamp and move to Sunnydale, California, the setting for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the second-greatest show in TV history.

After spending the first four series seeing off assorted ghouls, goblins, the dead, the undead, Millwall fans and so forth, Buffy and her gang encounter a new and even more dangerous foe from the infernal regions. Glory - for ‘tis her name - possesses superhuman strength, can drain the mental strength of her enemies, speaks every language known to human or demon and is able to cast spells. She is, in fact, nothing less than a goddess.

How do you take down an evil goddess? How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you beat John Kiely’s Limerick, those drainers of their enemies’ strength?

They are the Olympic motto in the form of a hurling team. Faster Higher Stronger indeed.

Patrick Horgan may have an otherworldly dimension to him but he ain’t Buffy.

To the first item of business for the holders, which is to do the job and do it quickly. Kilkenny might have been out of sight by the 45th minute of the All Ireland semi-final, or at any rate so comfortably ahead they could have flooded the middle third and played on the counter. The lesson for Limerick is clear.

Don’t be coy and knock over the points as per. Be King Herod. Slaughter these innocents before it gets to the closing quarter. Don’t leave them in the game and put ideas into their heads.

Had they got this far Galway, by a mile the biggest disappointment of Championship 2021, would ask questions of Limerick nobody else could have asked. Cork will ask entirely different questions, ones Limerick may be less comfortable answering.

What would have been a traditional set-piece battle with Galway will be asymmetric warfare instead. Cork won’t, because they can’t, fight them on the beaches. They’ll fight them with flying columns instead. All very Tom Barry.

Being prepared for what’s coming does not equate to being able to prevent it. It took 44 minutes for Jack O’Connor to get a sniff against Kilkenny. Did it bother him? O’Connor hasn’t been around the place a wet week yet you knew exactly what he was going to do given the slightest chance – and come extra time that was exactly what he did.

The same at the other end. Limerick have something of a crack rowing outfit about them. The metronomic precision of the strokes, the increase in pace when the cox calls for the push.

Cork will be braced for the tempo to be ratcheted up at the start of the second quarter, five minutes before half-time and again on the restart. They’ll be primed for Kyle Hayes’s stormtrooper surges. They’ll be conscious of another weapon in the champions’ armoury, the scourged diagonal delivery from the flank to the far side of the field, always pitched to the outside of a colleague, to his advantage and to the discomfiture of the defender.

But, to repeat, preparation is not prevention.

That the underdogs will have the patience and confidence to do their own thing and wait for the gaps to appear when proceedings become stretched is a given. Cork’s puckout strategy went astray in the first half of the 2004 final. No matter; their faith in their standard operating procedure was bulletproof.

A game containing more moving parts as prosecuted by the current iteration, however, is a game more vulnerable to breaking down. Nor can Cork run at Limerick if they don’t have the sliotar or if they’re getting turned over carrying it out of defence. Not for 70 minutes.

Kieran Kingston’s team won’t win the match in the first ten minutes but – shades of Limerick themselves in 2007 – they might lose it there. The obvious pressure point is their puckout.

When Patrick Collins looks up he’ll see the Alps silhouetted against the Dublin sky, whether in the middle distance or looming on his 20-metre line. Will Kiely decide to press high and seek to hustle Cork into going long and/or committing a goal-yielding fumble, this while also targeting Mark Coleman, the man with the keys of the car?

Will Limerick choose instead to defend deep, brick up their half-back line and pile into the runners when Cork make it that far? Will they mix and match?

The underdogs have had seven weeks to find eight points on their opponents. Was there any one thing in particular they were irked they didn’t get right enough in the provincial semi-final? When Kingston and his selectors carried out the autopsy they were irked there was nothing they got right enough.

One can take it on trust they’ll have finessed their strategy, sharpened their timing and improved their angles of running and offloading. And it goes without saying that this is no day for misplaced puckouts, butterfingered receptions or muffed handpasses.

Seven weeks ago Horgan had five wides and a missed penalty. Two weeks ago Waterford failed from four frees in the first half. Against other teams a wide is a wide; against Limerick every miss drains the energy, the vitality, the blood. Dracula and Glory.

On stylistic grounds the connoisseurs will always prefer the current Tipperary forward line to their Limerick counterparts. Kiely isn’t interested in artistic impression, needless to remark, and in any case, his guys have gradually broadened their attacking palette.

Aaron Gillane isn’t required to carry the load he carried in 2018. Gearoid Hegarty and Tom Morrissey haven’t been required to heft the load they hefted last season. Seamus Flanagan has developed into a brawny, sinewy – and accurate - outlet of the old school. Peter Casey is smart and unshowy and good for three points a match. Cian Lynch continues to gather threads and conjure expensive tricks.

All six forwards had found the target by half-time against Waterford The parts and pieces mesh and cohere, which in turn renders life straightforward for the midfield duo. They’re not obliged to make love to the sliotar. They merely have to move it on.

Finished product meets unfinished product. The Cork players have identities too, we’re just not as familiar with them. Yet.

Some other observations.

Was last Sunday week the afternoon it all changed for Leeside? We’ll be able to give a definitive answer not by teatime tomorrow but by teatime tomorrow 2025.

Getting out of the way of the big green dudes. Ah yes... Tipp will not be unhappy to be absent, Kilkenny even less so. The only thing in the world worse than losing an All-Ireland semi-final when Limerick are waiting in the final is – oh go on, finish the gag yourself.

Having viewed much of the past two championships from his deckchair, Nickie Quaid was called on to show what he’s capable of late on against Waterford – and showed it. Eternal vigilance and all of that.

Create the same number of scoring opportunities as their opponents tomorrow and odds are Cork will win.

But like some big old machine that takes time to warm up, Limerick’s shooting tends to find a groove as the summer goes on. In any case among their primary USPs is their refusal to allow the other crowd the same number of scoring opportunities.

On July 3 Cork lost the goals count 2-1. Winning the goals count 2-1 here will furnish them with a building block. Nothing more.

Peter Casey’s dismissal a fortnight ago was not the worst fate that could have befallen the champions. The boil needed to be lanced sooner than later.

Corkness won’t win the match for the challengers. It may keep them in it during the inevitable rocky periods nonetheless. In Cunningham, O’Grady and O’Sullivan, moreover, they possess a hedge fund of corporate knowledge on the sideline.

What curveballs have they dreamed up to hit Limerick with? Trying to get at Declan Hannon and open up the centre of the defence, perhaps?

If Cork win they may well do so like they did in 1999, coming with a late charge on the blindside to get up on the finishing line. Still, common sense insists that Paul Kinnerk has left more than enough in the tank to ensure Limerick get every yard of the trip.

Man of the match? Actually for once it may not be the usual Agatha Christie/unlikeliest suspect scenario.

If it’s Limerick, Hayes or Flanagan.

If it’s Cork, maybe Seamus Harnedy or Robbie O’Flynn given the importance of winning possession on the half-forward line.

Although the Munster semi-final gave Cork a sighter, which can only be a help, the holders are not patently vulnerable or visibly losing altitude in the manner Galway were in 2018.

Victory would enshrine Limerick as one of the finest teams of the past 50 years. Scrap that; as the game has never been higher, faster, stronger or more precise, it would enshrine them as nothing less than one of the finest teams in hurling history.

Their day.

Their destiny.