Anthony Daly: Hurt is clearly driving this Ballygunner squad

MY BALL: Ballygunner’s Conor Sheehan attempts to shield the ball from Kilmallock’s Ciaran O’Connor during the AIB Munster Club SHC final, at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Picture: Ryan Byrne

Before Christmas, I met Ger Loughnane and Tony Considine in Ennis for a catch-up. Tony doesn’t take a drink, but he joined us and we had a great chat about hurling — sure what else would we be talking about?

The fortunes of Kilmallock was obviously discussed. I got the impression from Tony that he’d have preferred if the Munster final was played a week after they took Midleton apart, especially with two of their players getting married the week before the Ballygunner game.

Still, Tony was happy with where Kilmallock were at. They trained on St Stephen’s Day. They went hiking the following day. Outside of the wedding parties, no other player on the squad attended the two weddings in order to stave off any Covid concerns.

We’re a lot closer here to Limerick than we are to Waterford city but, while I got wind of a lot of what was happening in Kilmallock, the silence around Ballygunner was almost deafening. And I took that — excuse the paradox — as a serious statement of intent.

For years now, Ballygunner’s history has almost been defined by their failure to win an All-Ireland. They have had some super teams, but Waterford have also had some great teams over the last 50 years and haven’t won an All-Ireland either.

That hurt is clearly driving this Ballygunner squad, but I felt that their main source of motivation going into yesterday was the fallout from the Loughmore-Castleiney game, when Ballygunner were fingered for unsportsmanlike conduct.

I’ll hold my hand up and say that our own Irish Examiner podcast didn’t spare the rod on their backs after that win, especially in how Noel and John McGrath were red-carded. I certainly didn’t feel that way, but a lot of the commentary on social media afterwards seemed to determine that Ballygunner were almost undeserving of a Munster final win in the aftermath.

That stuff is powerful when a team is looking for an edge but Ballygunner had more angles than a compass to motivate themselves in the build-up to yesterday. The defeat to Borris-Ileigh in 2019 was another obvious starting point but as Pauric O’Mahony noted in his TG4 man-of-match interview afterwards, half of this team didn’t even feature in that 2019 provincial final loss.

Ballygunner delivered the performance they were always capable of but you would have to say that Kilmallock malfunctioned.

I can associate that stuff with Clare teams, from just pure hard experience. One of the best Clarecastle teams I ever played on was the 1994 side, which lost to Toomevara in Munster by one point. We probably didn’t have that real inner belief we needed on the provincial stage at the time but, once Clare made the breakthrough in 1995, Clare clubs had that confidence which saw them go on to win every Munster title between 1995-2000.

Limerick have that belief and swagger now, which made yesterday’s collapse even harder to understand from a Limerick team. What encapsulated it for me was how the Ballygunner midfield of Conor Sheahan and Paddy Leavey blew away the Kilmallock pairing of Aaron Costello and Robbie Hanley.

Nobody would have predicted that scenario beforehand, but Ballygunner just had all the big performers. Dessie Hutchinson surely pushed Pauric hard for man-of-the-match. You can’t give Dessie space but he was able to find oceans of it all afternoon. He wasn’t the only one — the Ballygunner forwards were huddled close together before bursting into space to create that constant out-ball option.

They’re a lovely possession-based side which neatly build their scores from that short-passing game around the middle. And once Ballygunner get into that winning position, they’ve long had the luxury of being able to drop Philip Mahony into the pocket in front of the full-back to help close the game out. Philip may not be the quickest but he’s a brilliant reader of the game.

This is a serious team, but that has long been the case. It’s not as if Ballygunner have been losing in Munster to poor teams; Na Piarsaigh beat them in two provincial finals; they narrowly lost the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final to Ballyhale; Borris-Ileigh gave Ballyhale bags of it in the 2020 All-Ireland final.

I’m sure Ballygunner was hopping last night. With a 3.30pm start, they’ll have done well to have a few pints with their club-mates before 8pm — unless they say there was a wedding in the clubhouse, which would extend the celebrations until midnight! However, long the party lasted, this group fully deserve to bask in the warm afterglow of such a brilliant performance.

I wasn't able to go to Cork yesterday because of staff shortages in the pub but one of the spin-offs was being able to enjoy the glorious Radio Kerry commentary of Mike O’Halloran and Mark Foley on the Munster Intermediate final. I had paid my tenner to show the live streaming of Kilmoyley and Courcey Rovers in the pub, but we switched to the radio in the second half to juice up the excitement. The Connacht club football final was on the TV, but the sound was drowned out by Mike’s commentary and the riveting tension and drama bursting out of the radio.

Everyone who was listening thought the game was gone from Kilmoyley when they went five points down, but they found a way to get the game to extra-time, before driving on to land that coveted Munster title.

When I managed Kilmoyley in the past, it was always a dream of mine to bring the people of that great club to Croke Park for an All-Ireland final. They still have to negotiate their way past a semi-final but they’re just 60 minutes away from that dream now.

It’s absolutely brilliant for such great hurling people, especially the lads who would have hurled for me over a decade ago; John Brendan O’Halloran, Tom Murnane, James Godley, Adrian Royle, and Robert Collins.

The victory also crowned an epic weekend for Kerry hurling after the county side’s win against Tipperary on Saturday for the first time. Kilmoyley smashed another glass ceiling yesterday, but another one is waiting to be demolished in two weeks.

And on the same weekend, Ballygunner will also be seeking to blow that All-Ireland semi-final glass ceiling to smithereens.