Anthony Daly: No messing as Na Piarsaigh ruthlessly attended to business

Na Piarsaigh’s William O'Donoughue lifts the cup

As I was making my way into the Gaelic Grounds yesterday before the match, I spotted Ger ‘Sparrow’ O’Loughlin, my great friend and former Clarecastle and Clare team-mate, so I sat in beside him and a handful of his buddies.

We had a great old chat. As soon as they introduced the 1997 Limerick league winning team at half-time, the conversation went to a whole different level as we began rekindling stories of the massive battles we had with those players with Clare.

Initially, Sparrow was a little perplexed. He couldn’t even remember that league success. The final against Galway was actually played in Ennis in October because the GAA revamped the league that year where the quarter-finals and semi-finals actually ran during the championship.

By the time the final rolled around, we were All-Ireland champions, going up the town after the match mingling with the Limerick supporters with big smug pusses on us. Now, it’s the Limerick people who permanently have a smile on their faces.

Na Piarsaigh will be wearing the widest smile in the county this week after this performance. I got to know some of the group when they came back to our pub Murty Browne’s in May for a bonding session. It was some craic that afternoon. At one stage, they started rolling the dice and whoever got the short straw had to ring the Intermediate manager, tell him they wanted to be regraded, on the condition that they were made captain. Kevin Downes got nailed with the prank, which he somehow pulled off on a speaker phone.

There was no messing yesterday though as Na Piarsaigh ruthlessly attended to business. They were the better team by far but the key moment in the match arrived just before half-time when Kilmallock were on the attack in a really threatening position but David Wolfe overcooked his pass and Na Piarsaigh countered straight down the field, which ended in Adrian Breen’s second goal. A seven-point lead was massive but the timing of the goal made it feel even more important again in the context of how the first half had gone.

Kilmallock had played some quality stuff in that half and, while they got some brilliant long-range scores too in the second half, they were just always chasing the game.

The second half petered out but Kilmallock were always struggling on restarts. When Barry Hennessy went long, Na Piarsaigh constantly seemed to have players onto that breaking ball first. Emmett McEvoy was very good at centre-back while Will O’Donoghue was his usual battering-ram self in breaking up the play and distributing possession smartly.

Kilmallock were outclassed but they didn’t help themselves either. Young Shane O’Brien was isolated inside with Mike Casey but Ronan Lynch was sitting back deep in front of them and I just felt Kilmallock didn’t commit enough to attack early on.

Maybe the mindset would have been different in the second half if they were only four points down, but Kilmallock just seemed to want to have Gavin O’Mahony sitting, and he wasn’t really in the game. Graham Mulcahy was around midfield and you just felt that O’Brien was left with too much to do up front, especially for a player still so young, and particularly when he was being marshalled by Mikey Casey.

Na Piarsaigh were just impressive in everything they did. They haven’t exactly been cleaning up at underage level like they were in the past but they had a handful of lads on the Ardscoil Rís All-Ireland winning colleges team this year and Seán Long came in wing-back instead of the injured Jerome Boylan.

Adrian Breen was deservedly man-of-the-match with 2-3 from play but David Dempsey was also highly effective with 1-1. It just underlines the depth of quality Limerick have in their panel when Breen and Dempsey have been surplus to requirements in recent seasons.

Kevin Downes’ inter-county days are well behind him at this stage but he again showed his experience. Conor Boylan was the most selfless player on the field, working like a dog and having a hand in a bag of Na Piarsaigh’s scores.

I’ve already listed off a raft of quality players there and I haven’t even come to Peter Casey, who was incredible when scoring 0-7 from play. Some of his play was similar to the wreck he caused against Cork in the first half of the 2021 All-Ireland final.

On the other hand, Kilmallock didn’t seem to have a plan for Caso. I felt Kilmallock just needed to chain someone like Aaron Costello or Dan Joy to Caso and try and minimise the damage. A guy like Caso is always going to get scores but you’re in serious trouble when he comes away with seven from play. He just got the freedom of the park and I felt he set the tone early in both halves with a couple of quality scores during those periods.

To score 3-23 in a county final in 60 minutes against a team with Kilmallock’s experience showed the firepower Na Piarsaigh have always had but they were also able to hurt Kilmallock on the scoreboard all over the field with quality freetakers in Downes and Ronan Lynch.

If Ballygunner negotiate their way past Kilruane MacDonaghs next week, which won’t be easy, a potential Ballygunner-Na Piarsaigh match-up would be a mouth-watering prospect. Given their tradition in Munster, Na Piarsaigh will be gunning for the Gunners. Yet they won’t have been thinking about that last night, or today or tomorrow.

They’ll savour this one. Because it’s always sweet when you deliver a top class performance in a county final to win by 11 points. Especially against your arch-rivals.