Enda McEvoy: Like a Tarantino flick, July may have a grisly end
Video nasty: Limerick and Declan Hannon get to grips with Cork's CiarĂĄn Joyce. Photo: INPHO/Bryan Keane
Nothing we didnât already know. After two seasons of Limerick first, the rest nowhere, we have a summer of Limerick and Waterford first, the rest nowhere, to divert us. Thatâs already an improvement.
From a long way out in 2021, John Kielyâs team looked not merely home and hosed but downright untouchable, the upshot being that the championship was a protracted exercise in going through the motions. While the next three months may show them to still be untouchable they are as yet far from home and hosed. Waterfordâs emergence as a hard-running, goalscoring machine ensures this will be no triumphal procession.
Of course, the National League for Limerick was all about lying low and counting down the days. Of course, the management got them right for PĂĄirc UĂ Chaoimh. Anyone who believed â or tried to believe - otherwise was self-deluding. The manner in which Kiely and Paul Kinnerk have, with one exception, had them continually pitch-perfect to do a specific job on a specific day over the past four years ought to have been the giveaway.
Yet for all the power, all the poise, all of Kielyâs Limerickness that they demonstrated six days ago, they werenât just playing a match. They were playing a role. This is how the best champions behave first day out and have done since time immemorial.
Marking out their territory. Putting on a show. Shocking and aweing. Kneel, peasants! This is what youâll get when you mess with us. With 0-7 from defenders and with Diarmaid Byrnes popping up at left-half back to let fly, just to showcase one or two new stylistic flourishes from Kinnerkâs playbook and underline that the evolution continues.
Limerick wonât hurl like this every day. They wonât need to and they wonât try to. The problem for all comers is that the gap between the championsâ ceiling and their floor is too small. They do not have off-days.
For entirely different reasons Waterfordâs performance was almost as persuasive. They were facing a novel and unenviable situation, a no-win championship fixture with Tipperary for the first time in history. It brought its own pressures and it may have contributed to that raft of silly errors but they didnât blow it. Four down at the break, an instant gear shift and a nine-point swing in jig time.
The occasion didnât call for Waterford to hurl brilliantly and they didnât. It did call for them to hurl with maturity and they did. Perfect.
Stuff happens in sport all the time. It even happens in hurling every now and then. Back in 1998 Clare were favourites at the outset of the championship and almost unbackable after the Munster final replay. Along came a blue-moon sequence of events and hey presto.
Another blue moon may rise and Limerick may fall between here and the All Ireland final. Or Waterford may fall. But both of them will not.
Will the two market leaders tear into each other tonight or will they choose to keep their powder dry? On the evidence of the form book itâs a leap to expect the challengers to win. Consider the following stats. Margins between the counties in the 2020 Munster final, 2020 All Ireland final and 2021 All Ireland semi-final: four points, 11 points and 11 points, all in Limerickâs favour.Â
Number of Waterford goals in the course of 210 minutes plus injury time: a duck egg.
What is no leap is to expect the challengers to get within, say, five points of their opponents and to introduce Nickey Quaid to the concept of having a man in white and blue fire the sliotar past him. Do that and Waterford will have moved their camp halfway up the side of the mountain instead of seeing it still stuck in the foothills. From such a base they can strike higher next time.
One small long-term qualm from a Deise perspective. They gave it the holly during the league because there was every reason for them to do so, whereas Limerick gave it no holly at all because there was every reason for them not to. What implications this has for Waterfordâs reserves of petrol remains to be seen. Some kind of mini-break between the Munster championship and the business end of the All Ireland series may be necessary if it can be contrived.
And one medium-sized qualm re Limerick. The injuries are beginning to stack up. On second thoughts, expecting them to win tonight minus Kyle Hayes, Seamus Flanagan and Peter Casey may be a leap in itself.
Colm Bonnar and Henry Shefflin in that order, separated by quite a few lengths. Shefflin will have been merely seething. Bonnar will have been downright gutted and had every right to be.
It is one thing to perform poorly and lose. It is far more painful to perform well and lose, as the visitors to Walsh Park did.
All the good reasons touted beforehand for a big Tipperary showing came to pass. Their underdogâs wounded pride; their race memory; their clear run at the fixture; the presence of Noel McGrath, ever able to espy a pass and pick out a colleague amid the whirl; the tight surroundings that precluded Waterford running the legs off them as might have been the case in Thurles.
They could even have mugged their hosts in the closing strides, although to aver that Seamus Callanan and John OâDwyer would have nailed those late chances is to stray into prime If Me Auntie Had Balls territory. Tipp have been the most accurate and economical shooters in the land for half a decade; that comfort blanket no longer exists. At the risk of sounding unnecessarily oxymoronic, tomorrow against Clare is simultaneously an easier task and a trickier challenge for them than last Sunday was.
Through their own fault and Conor Whelanâs misfortune Galway have a chunk of the stagger to make up but have a series of opportunities to do so. Through no fault of their own, other than being what they are right now, Tipp have more of the stagger to make up. Tomorrow is an opportunity they cannot let slip.
And so the meringue collapsed at the first snick of the knife. Again.
Ghastly though it looked, Aaron Gillaneâs goal was not actually the lowest point of the home teamâs afternoon. If the Cork defenders couldnât see through Limerickâs chainmail curtain in midfield or detect any runs being made they were perfectly correct to hold on to the sliotar instead of flaking it upfield to nobody.
The real nadir was their defending for Kyle Hayesâs goal. When Hayes gained possession and turned there was one â â Cork player inside the 14-metre line. Ludicrous, avoidable and unforgivable in pretty equal measures, none of them shot glasses.
This isnât the hurling of 1932 or 1952 or 1972 with the 14 outfielders concreted into their positions, give or take the occasional full-forward âwith a roving commissionâ (as the papers loved to term it) or third midfielder. This is the hurling of the 21st century, where gaps are filled at the speed of light and where everyone at minimum defends back a line: full-forwards wiring into the enemy half-backs, half-forwards concertinaing into midfield to create a barrier and so forth.
Where, to choose randomly from a long list of illustrative examples, John McGrath, with the number 15 on his back, can materialise on his own D to stymie the in-running Walter Walsh in the opening minutes of an All Ireland final. Hell, two decades ago Cork themselves had Jerry OâConnor, the ultimate box-to-box midfielder, popping up in his own full-back line to help out. They could have done with OâConnor on Sunday.
Talking of the Cork team of 2004-05. They were stocked with defenders who loved to belt the ears off the sliotar: OâSullivan, Gardiner, SeĂĄn Ăg. But they all knew their primary duty and they all had an edge to them and they were all ready to take a yellow card and in four successive September appearances, they conceded a total of three goals.
Perhaps itâs nothing more complicated than that the current lot arenât particularly good at household chores and donât like getting their hands dirty. But â again â whereâs the coaching? One thingâs for sure. When Conor Boylan gets possession tonight heâll have white shirts hanging out of him. Waterford will not be standing around gawking or failing to track back from midfield.
Your columnist spent some time the other day attempting to parse the paths that would bring Limerick and Waterford together in (a) an All Ireland final and (b) an All Ireland semi-final. After ten minutes he developed a migraine and gave up.
A putative semi-final with Galway would be fraught with danger for the MacCarthy Cup holders; ditto a semi-final with Kilkenny for the league champions. Thus the possibility remains that someone will be left to reprise the role of unfortunate poor eejits that Cork fulfilled last August. A grisly end straight out of Tarantino. Or for readers who prefer the Bardâs oeuvre, unseamed from the nave to the chops or rendered into an interesting new flavour of pie filling.
Careful what you wish for and all of that.
