Anthony Daly: With form of Cork and Waterford, Limerick don’t even look like top side in Munster right now
Allianz Hurling League Division 1 Group A, Cusack Park, Ennis, Clare 6/3/2022
I got the 10am train down from Heuston yesterday morning. I’d had a quiet evening after watching the Cork-Galway match, so quiet that I didn’t even venture out to share a few jars and exchange some stories with the great Hugh Hourican in the Boar's Head.
My daughter Aoife picked me up at Limerick Junction at 11.30am and, after dropping our eldest daughter Orlaith back to college in Limerick, Aoife and I had a bite to eat before making for Cusack Park.
The first hold-up came at the toll-bridge on the tunnel, when this car was stopped in one of the booths for an age. The driver was trying to swipe his credit card but he was in the ‘exact change only’ lane so I eventually had to do something. ‘What’s going on here,’ I said before slipping the two euros into the basket, ‘we’re all going to the Park.”
By the time David Dolan had thanked me on Twitter, I had my own story to tell when I replied to him. ‘We broke down about 2 miles later, never got to the game’.
What a nightmare. Aoife got a flat tyre near Cratloe. When we went to change it, the wheel wrench looked more designed for a kids toy car than a normal car. I managed to get three of the nuts off but the last one was as stubborn as the Kilkenny defence on Saturday evening – it wouldn’t budge.
We paid €100 on a call-out for some mechanic to come to our assistance but we had waited 45 minutes and there was still no sign of him arriving. Eventually, this fella in a jeep and a cow-box pulled up.
Declan McGoldrick from Kildysart was his name, a gentleman who is a mechanic working for Aer Lingus. He whipped out his tool-box and had the wheel changed in five minutes. We were immediately back on the road but there was only 20 minutes left in Cusack Park by that stage so we continued to rely on Syl O’Connor and Fergal Hegarty’s excellent commentary on Clare FM to keep us up to date on proceedings.
The story of the game seemed to be the amount of missed chances from both sides, especially in the last ten minutes. The mood seemed to be very upbeat from a Clare perspective at the final whistle, while Limerick will at least be happy to have stopped the rot and not lost four games in-a-row.
On the otherhand, and I’m only going on the radio commentary before I sit down to watch the match this morning, a lot of the big Limerick players are struggling for form. Picking up a third successive red card is another concern for John Kiely in terms of their indiscipline.
Limerick will still be heavily fancied to emerge from Munster but we’re all beginning to wonder if they are the step ahead of everyone else that we thought they were. With the way Cork and Waterford are going, Limerick don’t even look like the top side in the province at the moment.
Waterford’s big win against Tipperary, combined with the huge score they put up was even more impressive considering the amount of big names they were missing yesterday.
Tipp will be another one of the many teams questioning themselves after this weekend but the side with the biggest regrets will be Antrim. They looked like having done just enough before Laois snatched the win at the very end.
It was a desperate blow for Antrim, a long trip home. They still have one game left but it’s hard to see them beating Tipp in Thurles to avoid a relegation playoff. Antrim just seem to have a hang-up with Laois in the matches that really matter against them.
On the otherhand, you have to hand it to Laois. They clearly targeted this game because they knew it was the one that provided their get-out-of-jail ticket. Eking out the result with just 14 men for the majority of the match was even more satisfying because it showed how strong the spirit still is within the squad after taking two unmerciful hammerings from Waterford and Kilkenny.
Overall, it was a strange weekend. In Parnell Park on Saturday evening, the minute’s silence for Paul Shefflin beforehand was impeccably observed. There was a clear poignancy around Donncarney, a sadness lingering in the air.
That was obvious too in Cork later on in the evening when the circumstances overshadowed the game even more because of Henry’s direct connection to it.
With a free hurling weekend coming up, I was of the opinion that the match should have been called off as a matter of respect and rescheduled for this Friday night. I know that wouldn’t have been ideal for Galway players having to travel so far south on a working day but I don’t think they’d have complained.
It must have been very difficult for the Galway players to hear that news on Friday evening and then have to go out and perform 24 hours later. There was no real intensity in the match, but in fairness to Cork, they couldn’t have done any more than they did in chalking up another sassy win.
The big takings from the match was Patrick Horgan’s 1-2 from play, Seamie Harnedy’s 0-4, along with another solid showing from Daire O’Leary at full-back. Conor Cahalane was outstanding again off the bench.
Cork will look closely at how a rookie Ronan Glennon sniped five points from midfield but it was that type of loose game, which had an attitude of ‘Ye score what ye can, and we’ll score what we can’.
Galway created loads of scoring chances. They hit 18 wides. There were stages when Galway looked like they might snatch the win, but they just couldn’t find that goal they needed. It’s impossible anyway to keep playing at any real intensity and hope to outscore Cork in an open shootout.
The good vibes are certainly back in Cork. That was obvious in the way so many kids flooded the pitch after the game, buzzing around Hoggie like bees stuck to a honey pot.
There was none of that in Parnell as Kilkenny just scolded Dublin again, which followed the usual trends anytime Dublin go into a match against Kilkenny as favourites.
Watching Kilkenny in the warm-up, you knew they were really ready for it. There was that steeliness there that almost demanded a victory to give their own people, especially those around Ballyhale, some small lift.
Dublin looked like a team that had spent the previous few hours running up the hill in Killiney. They were lacklustre and devoid of energy and ideas.
I even felt that was there before the game. After getting dropped off in a taxi around 4pm, I spotted Chris and Paul Crummey driving into Parnell in heavy traffic. The Kilkenny lads were already on the pitch pucking around. Defeat always inflates stuff like this. I don’t want to be critical of Dublin’s pre-match logistical preparation, but I just felt it was a metaphor for Dublin’s staleness for such an important game.
Parnell Park has obviously been a fortress for the Dubs. The tight play in a tight pitch suits them but it didn’t on Saturday because Kilkenny pressed the Dubs so high up the field and they feasted on the turnovers they created.
The Dubs were pulled a few times for illegal handpassing, which was rigidly enforced again over the weekend. I agree with its application in principle but if there are going to be an average of 5 frees a game, I can see it having a real negative impact on the championship.
This needs to be sorted ASAP. Referees are doing their job, so players need to do theirs too. That’s not easy in such a fast-paced and intense game but the law has clearly been set down.
And players need to adapt and adhere to it.
