Anthony Daly: Who can stand up to Limerick in 2021?
Limerick's David Reidy clashes with Daithi Burke of Galway during the All-Ireland semi-final. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
‘The Art of War’, the Chinese military treatise written by Sun Tzu in the sixth century BC, has become an increasingly popular reference point in the culture of modern sport.
It has for a long time been influential in the world of business and managerial strategies, with it's most famous aphorisms incorporated into elite preparation.
The last verse in Chapter 3 has been more tersely interpreted and condensed into the modern proverb: ‘If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.’
Going back to medieval times, that’s how wars were often won; knowing and studying your enemy; and then coming up with a strategy to take them down.
Limerick are the supreme governing tribe now. They don’t rule the hurling landscape with the same oligarchical iron fist that Kilkenny once did, but they’re threatening to. And every other clan out there has to devise a way to put a stop to that potential over-bearing governance.
Make no mistake about it, Limerick have their eyes set on total control of this terrain. That was already obvious through some of Nickie Quaid’s recent comments. As well as mentioning the same kind of addictive tendencies that powered the Kilkenny machine for over a decade, Nickie also gave an insight into how Limerick now measure themselves in the same way Kilkenny did at the apex of their power.
Limerick whacked Clare by 10 points in the Munster quarter-final but Nickie said that Limerick were still disappointed by how they performed. As a Clare-man, it was soul-destroying to hear that from your greatest enemy but, knowing that Nickie is such a sound bloke and it wouldn’t be his intention to offend anyone, you also had to admire his honesty and candour. And if that’s the rules and regulations by which Limerick now govern themselves, every other team out there has to devise a new set of rules (within the rules) to over-throw them.
For so long in this millennium, that chase centred around unseating Kilkenny from their dominant throne. But I see more similarities with Limerick now and Cork in the early part of the 2000s. There may have been a gap between that Cork’s team first All-Ireland in 1999, and their second in 2004, but the Kilkenny machine was raging back then and Cork always felt it was their destiny to come back and win more All-Irelands, which they did.
That Cork group changed the game in a similar way to how Limerick are changing the ground rules now. Cork were innovative and imaginative and nouveau rich. They played a style of hurling that was hard to stop. But Kilkenny went away and found a means of halting it in 2006.
Kilkenny had some of the greatest players in the history of the game. No team carries that omnipotence now, but over-throwing Cork in a similar way to how Kilkenny managed it is the great challenge facing every other inter-county hurling side now.
The biggest difference this time around though, is that while Kilkenny stopped Cork with a new power game, that stuff is already meat and drink to this Limerick machine. Taking them on in a physical war of attrition is like a mini going up against an articulated lorry in a game of chicken.
So the big question is which county is going to apply the deep innovation required to take Limerick on?
There are three years of Limerick performances for every other county to study and analyse now. In fact, you could distil that footage into two seasons because Limerick were so vulnerable in 2018 in their manic pursuit for that first All-Ireland. But once they got over that line, they were changed men with a new purpose, infused by a totally new level of ambition.
Looking back now on their 2020 championship, the levels they reached were incredible. Gearoid Hegarty gave an individual performance for the ages in the All-Ireland final but, in any other year, the display of Tom Morrissey and Kyle Hayes would have been enough to guarantee the Man-of-the-Match award. Hego is going to be Hurler-of-the-Year, but in any other season, Tom and Kyle would already have that award in the bag.
Yet, even acknowledging the standard reached by those three lads, my Player-of-the-Year was Dan Morrissey. Numerous pundits said Dan’s move from number 7 to number 3 was a potential weakness, especially when Limerick lost Richie English and Mikey Casey to injury.
But he blew that perception out of the water; not only was Dan rock solid, he was the best full-back in the country in 2020, a guaranteed All-Star. With Barry Nash also having a brilliant year at corner-back, and Kyle cementing his reputation as one of the leading defenders in the 2020 championship, imagine the competition for places in that defence when Mikey and Richie return?
Limerick are only going to get better, so which teams have the ambition to try and scale the outside walls and sack the Limerick castle?
Some teams won’t have the strength, speed or personnel to do it, but a handful do. In my opinion, Galway are at the top of that chasing pack. You could argue that they were much further away than the three-point margin of defeat in November, but Galway have the power, physicality, aggression and enough good players to at least rattle Limerick’s cage.
Galway though, can’t keep going with the 2017 team. They did blood some new players this year but they still need more new blood. Watching their U20s against Kilkenny, you’d think that they have enough of it for a fresh transfusion.
I felt that recent Galway-Kilkenny Leinster semi-final was instructive for the future. Galway were just better, faster, slicker. Adrian Mullen is to come back. Young Drennan with the minors looks an exceptional player but he’s still only 17. The Kilkenny minors and St Kieran’s may still be doing well but has the conveyor belt of blue-chip talent just dried up? Even more worryingly, who is going to inject pace in a team seriously lacking it?
Brian Cody isn’t the only manager who needs to decide whether to stick or twist. Liam Sheedy hasn’t blooded a whole pile of new players so does he remain loyal to the lads who have won him an All-Ireland, or does Liam clear the decks and start rebuilding with a new team?
It’s a tough decision for Liam because a rebuild is going to take three years and handing out a raft of P45s to a bunch of guys loyal to him since their days as minors.
The temptation for Liam is to retain the core group in the hope that Galway could take out Limerick for him. He’ll also know that he will need a lot of big men to take on Limerick. On the other hand, can some of the older Tipp lads take the hits from the likes of Kyle Hayes and Gearoid Hegarty anymore?
But some of the younger lads don’t have that conditioning capacity yet either. And that’s the stick-or-twist conundrum for so many sides now, especially when that conditioning deficit can’t be bridged before next May-June.
Wexford have enough big men but are they more likely to go backwards than forward in year 5 with Davy Fitz? Clare’s chances are going to heavily depend on John Conlon and Peter Duggan returning to the levels they reached in 2018. John has reportedly put in a savage shift after tearing his cruciate in March, while Duggy is supposed to be back from Australia by March.
Cork are clearly in transition now but can they marry a style of play to suit their speed with a more stable defensive game? Waterford had a brilliant year but can they develop their game even more now, especially when everyone has seen what they’re capable off?
Every county will have to lift their standards now because, while everyone was almost granted a free pass in 2020, that dispensation has quickly dissolved by the realisation that Limerick suddenly have bagged two of the last three All-Irelands and are odds on to win a third in four years in 2021. So that pass has emphatically been revoked. For everyone.
The other side of that coin is that 2020 presented every side with an opportunity. Dublin were always going to win the football All-Ireland but Tipperary and Cavan grabbed that chance with open arms in the provinces. The hurling pack may be much smaller and far more condensed than the chasing herd in football but Waterford were the only county that could really say they cashed in on 2020.
Limerick attacked 2020 with the same attitude as Dublin routinely now do every year in football – that the only team that could beat them was themselves.
I can understand that mentality because that was the collective attitude we adopted when we were at our peak with Clare around 1997-’98. But, the more powerful and successful we became, we also saw how the outside perspective changed towards us, which I’m sure Limerick will fully appreciate in 2021.
When we won the first All-Ireland in 1995, everyone wanted to be drinking pints and singing songs with us. When we won again in 1997, a lot of counties were still willing to keep the sing-song going, especially after we beat Tipp twice. But by God, they didn’t want us to be winning the third one in 1998.
It might not be there amongst all counties but, let’s be honest, the Golden triangle of Kilkenny, Tipperary and Cork are certainly put out about this perceived new threat from some crowd who they’d have traditionally always viewed as only an upstart in their triangular empire.
Kilkenny and Tipp might hate each other but you’d still get the impression that the Golden Triangle can put up with one another winning the odd All-Ireland. They’d also give you the impression that seeing one of the traditional big three win three All-Irelands in five years is nearly more tolerable than the treason or insubordination of some other crowd winning that many All-Irelands in the same time-span.
I always felt that the Golden Triangle would be far more comfortable with smaller crowds at All-Ireland semi-finals than some new county arriving into Croke Park with a huge army of supporters acting like they own the place.
They’d nearly prefer to be pontificating that ‘Cork are bet and the hay is saved’ or spouting this auld guff that ‘another Kilkenny-Tipp final is the real traditional final’.
Limerick are threatening to become the tradition now and they know full well how to go about establishing it. Nickie Quaid mentioned something Jackie Tyrrell wrote in his book about Kilkenny’s insatiable appetite – that when Kilkenny won an All-Ireland, it was such a narcotic pumping through their veins that they instantly craved more of it. Well, that’s the constant high Limerick are manically in pursuit of now.
Reading Jackie’s book, one of the dominant themes of Kilkenny’s collective mindset was how they always seemed to find a cause somewhere. Even if they beat some crowd by 15 points one year, they’d want to whip them by 20 the following year. That might have stemmed from some harmless loose comment made years earlier, but Kilkenny were constantly dredging the swamp looking for toxic material they could throw some petrol on as a means of incinerating the opposition.
You could see strains of that attitude from Limerick in the All-Ireland final. They almost interpreted the narrative after the Munster final as a slight and an affront to their authority. We all thought Waterford were getting closer to Limerick as the year went on but they were clearly bubbling with frustration and anger and Limerick cut it loose in the All-Ireland final.
John Kiely is a very pragmatic guy. He’s more than happy with his lot but I’d say if Kiely had one thing he’d like to change about 2020, he wouldn’t have minded a crack at Kilkenny to put the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final defeat to bed. On the otherhand, that’s additional poison stored for a potential crack at Kilkenny in 2021.
I’m sure they’re storing up fuel from all angles. Since the All-Ireland final, there has been all this talk about Limerick’s greater financial backing when compared to most other counties. I’m sure Kiely is eating that stuff up because it feeds even more into Limerick’s aura.
You can’t compare Limerick to Dublin because they are a whole different monster. Limerick still have their eyes trained on a certain level of dominance but there are vast differences; Dublin are almost unbeatable; Limerick are not. Galway put it up to them this year. Kilkenny beat them last year.
Limerick can be beaten but the big question is how? It won’t be easy with the 2021 season already almost upon us. But applying the same logic as in Sun Tzu’s military treatise, some county is going to have to get to know both themselves, and their main enemy, so well that they can find a way to be victorious against Limerick on hurling’s great battle-field.
