Tommy Martin: Are Limerick just too sound to be the GAA's next evil empire?

If Limerick were to win this Sunday, making it three hurling titles in four years, playing this brand of hurling, will they be crowned the GAA’s new imperial overlords?

FORCE OF NATURE: Dan Morrissey is a key part of a Limerick team that has an age profile to enjoy sustained success in the years ahead. But unlike previously dominant forces, the Shannonsiders are hard to dislike, argues our columnist. Picture: Diarmuid Greene/Sportsfile

Now that the Dublin footballers have fallen, are Limerick hurlers to be the GAA’s next evil empire?

We’ve gotten used to there being one: A cruel, terrifying regime that crushes all resistance, smiting opponents on All-Ireland final day, sending them away to bathe their wounds in the tears of their children.

There doesn’t have to be one. Between Kerry’s golden years and the rise of Brian Cody’s Kilkenny, eight different counties won hurling All-Irelands and eight different counties won the football equivalent. The 1990s were the free love era — we all partied.

But if many staked their claim in the 21st century, there have been only two superpowers. The Kilkenny hurlers and the Dublin footballers played different codes but shared many qualities.

Both are regarded as the best there ever was; both were led by flint-eyed generals in whose image their teams were built — and both inspired a sense of despair among those unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

These were not quite 1000-year Reichs, but at times it felt like it. If Limerick were to win this Sunday, making it three hurling titles in four years, playing a game that marries power, skill, and systemisation to a degree never before seen, will they be crowned the GAA’s new imperial overlords? Are we to be like Russia, sweeping from Tsars to Soviets to oligarchy, always needing at least one iron fist on our most prized trophies?

It is striking that the teams regarded as the pinnacle of their respective sports dovetailed so neatly.

Kilkenny’s decade of dominance ended in 2015 — the first year of Dublin’s six in a row.

At the height of their powers, Kilkenny and Dublin both had a pitiless disregard for the dreams of their rivals. When Limerick and Waterford met Kilkenny in the 2007 and 2008 All-Ireland finals, they did so with legions of giddy followers in tow, high on the heady brew of innocence and optimism. They had their backsides handed to them before they had a chance to plant them on the Croke Park seats.

Dublin laid waste to the Leinster Championship in scorched earth style. The province lay in smoky ruins for years. When it came to All-Ireland time they faced spirited opposition, from Mayo mostly, and Kerry too. Never, until last Saturday, did it occur to Dublin that this might be someone else’s day. The beaten team would lay down everything they had and look up from the ground to see unending blue.

Such was their spirit-crushing omnipotence that people began to look past flesh and blood, to forces beyond.

Kilkenny were profiting from their county’s one-eyed obsession, they said, from the absence of distractions.

No Gaelic football, no soccer, no rugby, no singing, no dancing, no smiling — just hurling, hurling, hurling.

St Kieran’s College was an elite finishing school for the warrior game, grammar and trigonometry pushed aside for hooking and blocking.

With the Dubs it was money, population, mass industrialised talent production — power on an unimaginable scale. Spreadsheets were produced to show how the GAA had financially doped the Dubs, who stormed away from the field like a juiced-up Olympic sprinter. They would churn out Jacks, Cons, and Fentons for the rest of time, was the suggestion.

But empires always fall.

Herodotus blamed hubris and complacency for the decline of great kingdoms. “For most of those who were great once, are small today,” he wrote.

Mind you, he never met Brian Cody.

So, are Limerick next? They are certainly ruthless. Waterford hurled themselves at the castle walls early in the semi-final and found themselves trudging to the water break a point down. Retribution was swift and cruel. Paul Kinnerk’s tactics board may as well have spelled out the phrase “At my signal, unleash hell!” in washable whiteboard marker.

Poor Waterford, not only historical victims of one of Kilkenny’s greatest atrocities but helpless casualties for two of Limerick’s definitive performances. The Covid All-Ireland and this year’s semi-final are case studies for how this Limerick team coolly deconstructs their opposition so that they appear, by the end, to lie in pieces strewn around the field.

In this way, they are more like the latter-day Dubs, with their icy composure, than the remorseless destructiveness of Kilkenny. Jackie Tyrrell described Limerick’s second-half comeback against Tipperary in the Munster final as the best half of hurling ever played. This from a man who played in Kilkenny’s first-half disembowelling of Waterford in 2008, regarded until now as the nearest to perfection the game has gone.

Proof, perhaps, that this Limerick team is striking out new territory.

Gearoid Hegarty of Limerick celebrates after the Munster final win over Tipperary. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

As well as all the other trappings of power, Kilkenny and Dublin were helped by the presence of all-time great individuals in their ranks. Perhaps Limerick have more that have had greatness thrust upon them. But who’s to say Kyle Hayes, Cian Lynch or Gearóid Hegarty won’t be among the pantheon by the time this is all over?

Limerick too are led with steely cunning, though John Kiely is of a less austere bent than Cody and Jim Gavin. Their age profile looks right: Of the team that started the semi-final only goalkeeper Nickie Quaid is over 30; most of the rest are in that mid-twenties sweet spot.

Though they have fallen behind Cork for underage titles, they only need a sprinkling of youth to sustain them for the era to come. The largesse of JP McManus lurks as an invisible hand, sparking envy from outside.

They go into Sunday as almost unbackable favourites, short odds not seen for a hurling final since Cats roamed the land. Cork are Cork (again) and they have speed — everyone fears speed — so we should get a game.

If there is one thing that holds Limerick back from inheriting the throne of their nefarious predecessors, it’s that they are very hard to dislike. How can you loathe a county who suffered so much so recently, who are not given to arrogance, who still think, in the words of Manchester City fans, that “we’re not really here.”

The way they are going, that could all be about to change.