Enda McEvoy: Was Limerick's the ultimate All-Ireland performance? Short answer, yes
HIGH POINT: Limerick’s Declan Hannon lifts the Liam MacCarthy Cup at Croke Park.
We all know what we saw yesterday but occasionally it takes an outsider to put a different gloss on these things. Step forward Danny Kelly.
Danny, for readers unfamiliar with the great man and his oeuvre, was born in London. He’s the former editor of the NME and Q, has hosted many a sports chat show on radio and these days is domiciled amid the bucolic Barrow beauty of the Carlow/Kilkenny border, from where he watched the proceedings.
At 4.26pm he tweeted as follows. “I’m no hurling expert but I can see when a sports team is in that rare place where skill, determination and athleticism merge into seamless, almost dreamlike perfection. Can hurling folk please confirm that I’m watching something extraordinary here with Limerick?”
Hurling folk could and they did.
Let’s get the obvious What If out of the way asap. Would this have been a fourth successive coronation but for Limerick’s tardiness in the 2019 All Ireland semi-final in realising they’d ambled into a catfight against opponents that still possessed claws?
Very possibly. But we can never know and in any case we shouldn’t while away more than a few seconds wondering. It makes for an interesting barstool or coffeehouse discussion, nothing more. Paths diverge in a wood all the time and one can never be certain what would have happened on the road not taken.
Perhaps Limerick would have become fat and complacent on the back of a 2018-19 double, diligently as they’d have tried to guard against it. Perhaps — and probably — not. Yet this much we can say definitively. The losing of the 2019 semi-final was the winning of 2020 and ’21. Cause and effect. A straight line.
To the other inevitable point of debate. Was yesterday’s the ultimate All-Ireland performance? Short and easy answer, yes.
Coming out of the 2008 renewal it was easy and natural for spectators to assume they’d been privy to a yardstick that would remain one of a kind in perpetuity. This Limerick team, being this Limerick team, weren’t quite as clinical — compare their 18 wides with Kilkenny’s four against Waterford — but in terms of shock and awe their offering was, well, even more shocking and even more awesome. Besides, for all their flaws and weaknesses at least Cork, unlike Waterford, turned up and settled from the off.
It is given to one team in a generation, sometimes to one team in two generations, to push the boundaries, reset the parameters and in the process reinvent their sport. Limerick have intellectualised, coached, and prosecuted a new kind of hurling.
Their physical advantages would get them only so far were they not eternally striving to affix a message to the sliotar. Their striking off the stick — always crisp and unhurried, always caressed 20 or 30 or 40 metres to a colleague who’s taken up a position to receive, always accepted cleanly and processed with purpose — twangs the sweet spot between Wexford’s short-ball fussiness and Kilkenny’s long-ball lumpenness.
Limerick don’t hit long balls, they hit long passes; a world of difference lies therein. They’re fast but they never hurry. They’re focused but never frantic. They do everything at pace but simultaneously in their own time.
Although they’ve consciously sought to prune their jagged edges this summer they did not do so at the expense of their lust to engage the enemy. In the 55th minute there was a bit of afters on the Hogan Stand touchline that ended with William O’Donoghue being booked.
The game was long won by then but Limerick didn’t draw back. Serial winners do not pick and choose their battles. They exist on a permanent war footing.
Told beforehand that Cork would post a tally of 1-22 you’d have instantly divined the outcome and been curious only as to the extent of the winning margin. No mistake about it, the reigning champions went to war here, the alacrity of Gearoid Hegarty’s opening goal indicating their mindset.
There would be no question of popping over the handy point when the rigging presented itself. The underdogs would be put to the sword and put to the sword as promptly and dispassionately as possibly.
By the end of the opening quarter it was possible to feel queasy on their behalf. Not because they’d hurled badly; rather because they’d hurled well.
If they’d understandably had trouble on their puckout when going short and attempting to work the sliotar out of defence they’d survived. Jack O’Connor had got on the ball inside the first minute, a vast improvement on the Kilkenny match. Shane Kingston had done what he was brought in to do, roofing a brilliant goal beyond the reach even of Nickie Quaid.
The pace had been relentless, the hurling glorious (17 scores, three wides) — and the challengers were still five points down to opponents whose 2-8 had come entirely from play. The similarity with Waterford at the same stage a fortnight ago was unavoidable. Legs going at 100 miles an hour beneath the surface in order merely to keep up.
Sure enough, come the start of the second quarter the cox of the green boat called for the push and the call was answered. And that was that.
That the winners drove a bunch of sloppy wides in the second half was due to an understandable droop in concentration levels. In any case this Limerick team will always drive their quota of wides. The latter failing is rendered irrelevant by the staggering rate at which they create shooting opportunities.
Some other observations.
After the county’s scintillating under-age triumphs of the past week, yesterday’s events will serve as a bracing reminder to Cork that at the top level the adult game remains a physical contest. Light years ahead in terms of strength and conditioning, Limerick did nothing to the challengers that they wouldn’t have done to any other team. Cork’s only real fault was to get into the way of a giant threshing machine. Would Mick Mackey have got his place under John Kiely? The question is only mildly facetious.
Talking of Mackey, another of the stars of the golden age of the 1930s was Lory Meagher, the Prince of Hurlers. Long before Joanne Rowling came into the world, Meagher was lauded by the scribes of the day as wielding his hurley “like a wand”. Would that they had lived to behold Cian Lynch.
Lynch is a beautifully upholstered Rolls Royce with the durability of a Volvo. Luxurious touches, yes; luxury item, no. Blocked down early in the second half he scurried to retrieve the sliotar, won it and set up Tom Morrissey for a shot Patrick Collins did very well to save. Trying to mark Lynch must be like trying to mark water.
Peter Casey possesses a quality that is in the purview of the leading players in every sport. He has time on his hands and he never abuses it.
“A long suffering Wexford supporter,” the eminent historian Kevin Whelan once mused. “Is there any other kind?” At the time the remark could have been applied equally to Limerick supporters. No longer. Henry Martin’s next opus will not feature the word “heartbreak” in the title.
After being confined at home in the darkness last December, moreover, how heartening it was to see those same Limerick supporters get their day in the light with their heroes. Both groups deserved nothing less.
As we began, so we’ll finish. Let’s leave it to Danny Kelly to serenade the champions out.
Skill. Determination. Athleticism. “Seamless, almost dreamlike perfection.” Something extraordinary. Limerick.
