Christy O'Connor Talking Points: Limerick's third quarter charge strikes again
Kilkenny couldn’t have got a better score to try and hold back what they must have known was coming – Limerick’s third quarter marauding charge. Paddy Deegan’s goal shot looked to have gone wide until the umpire waved the green flag after the ball ripped through the net.
That goal in the 42nd minute, which followed a Tom Phelan point, put Kilkenny five ahead. It was a huge lead in the circumstances but then Limerick did what they do best – pulverise teams in that third quarter.
They outscored Kilkenny by 0-11 to 1-2 but the numbers right across that period underline how much they got a grip on Kilkenny’s throat and squeezed the life out of them. Their conversion rate was 85% to Kilkenny’s 42%. Limerick mined 0-5 off Kilkenny puckouts, while they sourced 0-6 off turnovers in that quarter.
All those numbers are even more impressive considering that Limerick only had two shots from play in the first quarter. They only managed eight shots from play, and 14 in total, in the first half. And they went into overdrive after half-time when recording 21 scores, ending with a 71% conversion rate.
When all the numbers are crunched now, Limerick won the third quarters in their seven matches by 0-23.
At a key stage of the first half, the Limerick puckout was under serious pressure. Kilkenny won four of Nickie Quaid’s restarts in-a-row and translated that possession into 0-2. It could have been even worse shortly afterwards when Eoin Cody was adjudged to have pushed Mike Casey, when it was a stonewall goal chance, which had also stemmed from a Quaid puckout.
Limerick still sourced three first half points from their own puckout but one of their biggest issues in that half was not being able to shut down Eoin Murphy’s puckouts, like they had last year. In that opening half, Limerick got just 0-2 off the Kilkenny puckout.
That immediately changed in the third quarter though, which set the tone for the remainder of the game. By the end of the match, Limerick had sourced 0-11 off Murphy’s restarts.
It was more difficult for Murphy to get as much pace on the ball when striking into the wind. The ball was hanging more too on top of the Limerick half-back line, but Limerick’s set-up and structure was far better, especially how deep their half-forward was positioned to scavenge and hoover up breaks. In total, Kilkenny only won eight of their 20 long puckouts.
Limerick only won 50% of their long restarts, partly because Kilkenny had learned so much from last year, especially on dealing with Limerick’s bunch and break tactic. In total, Limerick only scored 0-4 off their own puckout, which was down 0-11 from the 0-15 they mined from their own puckout in last year’s final.
Yet the 0-11 Limerick mined off the Kilkenny restart was critical to making up that deficit.
On the day that Limerick beat Cork in Limerick in May, Diarmaid Byrnes became the highest scoring defender in hurling history. The Patrickswell man went into the game level with Clare’s Seánie McMahon, who had hit 0-98 in an outstanding career between 1993-2006. Byrnes was on 1-95 but his 1-4 in that game pushed him seven points clear of McMahon.
Byrnes’s numbers were not as high this year as last year, but that would have been nearly impossible given the levels he hit in 2022. But when the need was greatest again yesterday, Byrnes gave a dead-ball exhibition, with 0-7. His display in the 20 minutes after half-time was monumental.
Byrnes was incredible under the Kilkenny puck out in the second half but, with 2-110 now from 39 games, Byrnes moved to the second highest scorer in this Limerick squad, behind Aaron Gillane.
Greame Mulcahy was the second highest scorer but Byrnes’ total yesterday took him 0-1 ahead of Mulcahy.
Incredible.
There were times in the first half when Eoin Cody looked capable of beating Limerick on his own; as well as his goal, Cody nearly had another goal, while he was fouled for a free and had a hand in another score. Crucially though, Cody only got one score in that half. And, similar to last year’s final, he ended the match with just one score.
His impact in the second half was limited to winning a free, a saved shot and an involvement in a score. Kilkenny had targeted hitting Cody and the full-forward line with long ball but, while it worked at stages of the first half, it didn’t work as well as Kilkenny wanted or needed it to. In total, Kilkenny only won eight of the 20 long balls played into their full-forward line.
Limerick also struggled to win those long balls in the first half, when winning just two of the nine long balls into their full-forward line. Yet they changed their approach in the third quarter by running the ball more through the middle third.
Limerick cleaned Kilkenny out on turnovers, mining 0-10 from that source in the second half. And once they got control of the game, Peter Casey in particular began to profit from that long ball inside, with Limerick scoring 0-5 from that tactic in the second half.
Kilkenny did err by taking Mikey Butler off him. However it happened, Tommy Walsh found himself on Casey, who was having a decent game on Seamus Flanagan. By the time Butler was switched back onto Casey again in the 62nd minute, Casey had wrecked Kilkenny.
This time last year, Cian Lynch wasn’t even togged out for the final, having suffered a serious leg injury in the lead-up to the match. After picking up a serious hamstring injury in Round 2 in Munster against Waterford in 2022, Lynch hardly pucked a ball all season.
The last time he had played really well, hitting the heights he is capable off, in a championship game was the 2021 All-Ireland final. But Lynch finally reached those elite standard again yesterday by effectively running the game and, critically, grabbing hold of it when the need was greatest.
From 20 plays, Lynch scored two points but he had five assists , two more assisted shots that were missed, while he was centrally involved in two more scores. In essence, Lynch’s fingerprints were all over nine scores. Massive.
At the end of the 2022 All-Ireland semi-final against Clare, when TJ Reid was interviewed for his man-of-the-match award, Reid gave an insight into how driven he and Kilkenny were to win that match.
After having lost successive All-Ireland semi-finals in 2020 and 2021 to Waterford and Cork, which was even more of a shock considering Reid had won all eight of his first eight semi-finals, losing another semi-final was unconscionable. And unacceptable. “No way was that happening today,” said Reid.
Reid knew nothing else only glorious days in Croke Park. In his first eight All-Ireland finals, Kilkenny won seven. Now? Yesterday was the fourth All-Ireland final in-a-row that Reid, Eoin Murphy, Walter Walsh, Cillian Buckley, Richie Hogan, Pádraig Walsh and Conor Fogarty have now lost.
Kilkenny have actually been here before. They lost four finals between 1893 and 1898 before finally winning a first title in 1904. Kilkenny also lost four finals between 1940 and 1950. Yet they never lost as many in succession again. Until now. And so many Kilkenny players have never tasted such disappointment in one period.
Reid and his team-mates couldn’t have seen this level of hurt coming after 2015. On the other hand, back in 2015, when Limerick won an All-Ireland U21 title under John Kiely with a raft of players that played yesterday, who could have seen this crusade laying waste all before it?
