Enda McEvoy: This 2021 Championship is not so much sucking diesel as guzzling it

NOT FOR STOPPING: Waterford’s Patrick Curran powers past Tipperary’s Pádraic Maher in last weekend All-Ireland SHC quarter-final at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Picture: Inpho/Brian Reilly-Troy

The All-Ireland championship is rarely a triumphal procession, with the favourites bombing out of the traps and making all to win by six lengths. As with the other great Mount Rushmore of the sporting summer, the Tour de France, the landscape changes and assumes new shapes while the contestants are in motion.

There are swoops and climbs and tumbling descents and occasional spectacular crashes. The peloton can gain or lose ground. The leader is always there to be shot at.

All of which is a fancy way of observing that had Saturday's protagonists run into each other a month ago you’d have said Limerick, no problem. You’ll still say Limerick. But it’s not quite so clear cut and they’ve gone from being white-hot favourites to merely red-hot fancies. The contours of the race have altered a little.

It’s been fun so far, hasn’t it? It only takes a few good matches to make a hurling championship sing and with three fixtures left in 2021 we’re not so much sucking diesel as guzzling it.

Kilkenny and Wexford offered more high drama than a season ticket at the Abbey Theatre. Cork and Clare was messy and imprecise and absolutely gripping, real old-fashioned championship material. Then a Munster final they’ll still be talking about in 50 years’ time. Then Waterford versus Tipp. Whoa, dude.

Limerick players Pat Ryan, left, and Kyle Hayes celebrate after their side's victory in the Munster final. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Last Saturday may have been preposterously highscoring but it was the good kind of highscoring as opposed to the bad kind of highscoring so deplored, and at such tedious length, in this column. The Bennetts and the Mahers and the rest of them didn’t give us yet another instalment of a computer game enacted with giant peashooters by the respective half-back lines. They gave us close-quarter, hand to hand, blood spurting everywhere stuff.

There were goals, saves, near misses, controversial penalties, the works. The full-back lines were compelled to engage with the enemy instead of being compelled to look up and gawk at the ball flying over their heads between the uprights from 90 metres. Come the final whistle the only possible course of action was a long and well merited lie down. That was just the spectators.

The wheel is in the process of taking another turn, this one triggered by the gap in the market for teams capable of raising green flags. Is it too early to deem it a goalscoring sport again? Probably not. Good news for Cork. Good news for all of us.

Maybe the simple fact of it not being another winter championship has helped too. Sun on our backs, short sleeves on our shirts, smiles on our faces. Maybe.

The change in conditions hasn’t bothered Waterford, of whom it can be stated definitively that they didn’t get lucky last year. They reached the All Ireland final because they were good enough. They’ve reached the All Ireland semi-final because this time around they’re better.

By way of illustration Dessie Hutchinson has trained on, which similarly was no inevitability. Against Galway he did the work of two men but failed to score. Last week he did the work of two men and finished with 1-3.

Teams built along the lines of Liam Cahill’s Waterford, full of hard work and harder running, by their very nature require an assassin in the last 30 yards of the field. Honest toil only gets a side so far. Jack Prendergast and Peter Hogan hew the wood and carry the water; Hutchinson deploys the cold razor.

Waterford manager Liam Cahill at the final whistle after the win over Tipp. Picture: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

The worry for the challengers here is obvious. Although mentally they’re not for wavering, and physically they’re the beneficiaries of an S and C regime so sophisticated as to allow them finish matches with the same energy they start them, three outings on successive weekends are not the same thing as four outings on successive weekends.

The champions will seek to get off to a flier and force their opponents into a game of follow my leader. What happens if Waterford’s tank runs dry with 15 minutes left? Easy. Limerick tack on point after point. As Limerick do.

Whether Waterford compiled 3-25 from play because Tipp weren’t cynical enough or because they couldn’t get close enough to them to be cynical is irrelevant. It scarcely needs noting that they won’t land 3-25 from play here. Limerick will be happy to concede frees out the field. As Limerick do.

But the MacCarthy Cup holders won’t be outpointed from distance. They remain the kings of the jab, upright and erect, loosing their beloved long-rangers, Tommy Hearns in hurling gear. Waterford score plenty from midfield but their new stock in grade is to get in close and rock yer man with body shots, a la Duran or even Frazier.

Three goals looks a minimum requirement for them here. Will they fashion three chances for Nickie Quaid to save?

The underbill takes place on Sunday. With 66 All-Ireland titles between them to Limerick and Waterford’s 11, Cork versus Kilkenny is the minor match, the clash of the middleweights. That we have lived to see such days..! Lory Meagher and Eudie Coughlan and Christy Ring and Paddy Grace are surely turning in their graves.

Normally it’s easy to choose the winners when the counties collide. Who are favourites? Right, back the other crowd. There are no underdogs in Cork/Kilkenny matches.

On Sunday, there are no favourites, even money the pair of them and the formline through Dublin affirming that they’re racing off level weights.

Kilkenny manager Brian Cody and TJ Reid celebrate following the Leinster final win over Dublin. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Apropos of the Dubs, Saturday night’s events in Semple Stadium trundled along the most wearyingly predictable rails imaginable. Dublin malafoostering a broadsword, Cork flourishing an epee. Dublin creating a bunch of half-chances and failing to take them, Cork creating a bunch of half-chances or better and putting two of them in the net. Deireadh.

My former All-Stars hot date Gary Murphy of DCU, whose forthcoming biography of Charles J Haughey will be compulsory Christmas purchasing for many, claims to fear a recurrence of the 2019 All-Ireland quarter-final and Cork’s inability to match Kilkenny’s physicality. You may recall that as the afternoon Cork spent 25 minutes of the second half attempting to get the sliotar past the opposition half-back line and failing.

It was also, mind you, the afternoon Patrick Horgan hit 3-10, 2-2 of it from play off Huw Lawlor. Not that Lawlor was dismal, more that Horgan was operating on a different level, a point he scored from under the Cusack Stand after running a drag with the Kilkenny defence being one for his personal video compilation.

After winning an ocean of clean ball in the Leinster final Lawlor faces a different task. He’s been around long enough to know that he doesn’t have to win an ocean of clean ball here; he simply has to prevent Horgan doing so, thereby denying him the space to shoot those poisoned arrows of his.

Yet to reduce the issue to that of Kilkenny’s physicality versus Cork’s speed is to oversimplify matters. Granted, the Rebels may as well be sponsored by Lamborghini. Brian Cody’s team are not as staid as they were a year or two ago, however, they weren’t burned for pace by Wexford and the second-half fadeouts of last season have been eradicated.

The issue is one of application, not heft. Who’ll bring the thunder, who’ll be better at pressing the ball in the other half of the field, who’ll possess the intensity of the Limerick of the second half of the Munster final as opposed to the Limerick of the first half of the Munster final.

We know Kilkenny will defend from the front and do so with gusto; it has long been one of their strengths. What remains to be seen is how well they’ll defend at the back. If they fall short this year it will not be because they won’t score enough but because they’ll concede too much.

We know that in order to match them Cork cannot but get stuck in from number 15 back; it has long been one of their weaknesses. What Kieran Kingston’s forwards can do with the sliotar is not the issue. What they’ll do without it very definitely is.

Patrick Horgan of Cork in action against Huw Lawlor of Kilkenny during the 2019 clash. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

Cork have built up a nice head of steam and with his feathery feet and ability to elevate bums from seats Jack O’Connor has a touch of the Seánie McGraths about him. On the other hand one of Cody’s less celebrated special skills is his ability, established two decades ago, to negotiate the hiatus between Leinster and the All Ireland semi-final. Mind the gap indeed.

By Sunday teatime the outcome will appear perfectly understandable, even preordained. Call it yourself now. Your correspondent doesn’t dare to.

Some other observations.

Waterford did nearly as big a number on Tipperary in the third quarter as Limerick did. But Tipperary and Galway had mileage in their legs that rendered them vulnerable to a running team. Limerick do not.

Tipp made sure to occupy Calum Lyons by deploying Noel McGrath as an attacking left-midfielder. For all that McGrath’s striking was oddly telegraphed he nonetheless insinuated himself into dangerous positions, preventing Lyons charging forward. In Kyle Hayes and Tom Morrissey the holders possess two boring machines who’ll go straight for Lyons.

This being no country for old men, Kevin Moran will likely continue to be confined to blood sub duty. No matter. Like Brick Walsh he has been one of those strong, silent Deise long servers who deserve a statue.

The 2021 Tour owes much to Waterford and the jolt provided by their recent gaiscí. Sadly their race ends on Saturday.