Patrick Horgan: That Limerick flag plant will come up in Cork discussions. That's for sure
STATEMENT: Limerick players, left to right, William O'Donoghue, and Darragh O'Donovan, celebrate in front of their supporters on the City Terrace. Pic: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
There’s been a lot of discussion of the ending of the Munster hurling final — the timekeeping and the free, and the final whistle sounding as the ball dropped into the Limerick square.
Some of that discussion has focused on Cork players surrounding referee James Owens after the game, and complaints after the game that James didn’t inform them how much time was left at the very end.
A few people have made the point that the clock was gone well past the five minutes announced when the last passage of play occurred, but as everyone in Cork knows well, that’s a minimum amount of added time. It’s at the ref’s discretion to add on more time if he sees fit.
You can reduce the discussion about the ending of the game to a very simple point. If Patrick Collins was told that time was up and he had to score direct from that last free he would have gone for a score; if he was told that there was time for a play he’d have passed the ball instead, which was what he did.
Anyone who’s played hurling or football will be familiar with a referee telling a player he has to score direct from a free because the time is up. On the other hand, if the referee says you have enough time for a play or two then you’ll obviously try to work a better shooting chance, but on Sunday it was seemed to be neither one or the other. It was strange the referee allowed time for Cork to make one pass from that last free but not the second at the very end of the game.
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The entire match was no great spectacle anyway — it was very stop-start, and the rainy conditions didn’t make it a great experience for people in the stadium.
Cork will be concerned by the fact that they didn’t get a score from play after the 38th minute. To be fair, they were playing against the wind and the rain got heavier, while Nickie Quaid made an unbelievable save from Mark Coleman as well, but Cork will be unhappy with that return, obviously, and will seek to rectify that the next day.
They also felt the loss of Darragh Fitzgibbon on Sunday. Both teams will probably be thinking this week that they could have gotten more out of some key men; Limerick won but will feel that some of their top players didn’t hit absolute top form, for instance. However, the fact that Fitzy didn’t even play was a major blow for Cork and they’ll be very keen to get him back on the field for the All-Ireland series.
In the context of how big players performed, I was surprised John Kiely took Aaron Gillane off: he wasn’t on fire from play but he was certainly causing Cork problems at the back. Sean O’Donoghue had to come off after picking up a yellow card, and I would have thought Limerick would leave Aaron on to see who’d pick him up and to test his marker out. It wasn’t a decisive switch, and it worked out for Limerick because Gearoid Hegarty and Peter Casey were able to chip in with scores anyway, but it was still a surprise.
Attention now turns to the All-Ireland series, of course. Cork will face Offaly, who have made huge strides in recent years. It’s great to see them back at the top table because they’re a fantastic hurling county, but Cork will expect to win this one.
They’re far more experienced and are at a higher stage of development than Offaly, and — even allowing for the misfires Sunday — they have huge attacking power. That’s not knocking Offaly, who will get better and better as their team matures and gains experience, but I’d expect Cork to make the All-Ireland semi-final.
In the other quarter-final Clare will take on Dublin, which is a very interesting one. I hear people saying that Clare are coming into this one fresh, but if Clare weren’t fresh coming out of the second division of the league I don’t think they’ll be any fresher now.
They’ve had a good break to get ready for this game, but are we giving them credit that they haven’t earned in their performances this year? I still expect them to beat Dublin because the latter are down players through injury after the Leinster final last Saturday. They’ll also be very disappointed after their showing in that game, and it’s a big ask to pick it up now again.
For that reason, I expect Clare to have too much of them, but this expectation that there’s a sting in the Banner...I think they’d want to have shown that sting a long time before now. On paper they still have terrific players and huge potential, but against the two best teams in Munster they never really raised a gallop.
Winning Munster will give Limerick a good boost - they celebrated winning and celebrated well, just as Cork did last year. That’s important - the game is taken very seriously, but you should also celebrate the fact that you’ve won silverware.
Last year there was some discussion of the songs being sung by Cork in Charleville after winning the Munster final - I don’t really remember the details, to be honest - but I’d expect plenty of discussion about Limerick planting a flag in the middle of the Pairc Ui Chaoimh pitch after the game on Sunday, a bit of a call-back to Graeme Souness planting the Galatasaray flag against Fenerbahce.
I haven’t seen that done before, and it’s something that could come up in Cork team talks in the future. People forget that Souness himself later regretted doing that, by the way.
Whether or which, if these two meet again later in the championship, which a lot of people are talking about, then it’ll be even tastier.
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