Kiely won’t be sorry to see hype downplayed
The Kilmacud Crokes-Craobh Chiaráin Dublin league game threw in yesterday morning at 10.30am. As soon as the referee blew the final whistle, I had a quick word with the Kilmacud boys before running for the car. The Craobh had given us a licking but I hadn’t time for any major autopsy because I needed to get out of Clonshaugh quicker than Batman got out of Dodge.
I had just over two hours to get to Limerick to do RTÉ Radio 1 co-commentary on the Cork-Limerick match. I made solid time but, with no car pass, I was scrambling once I got near the Gaelic Grounds.
It was 2.10pm when the beads of sweat started trickling down my brow. The place was jammed but I went for broke. A sign up outside the Retail Park on the Ennis Road said ‘Customers Only’ but I turned into Woodies. This fella in a yellow high-vis stopped me in my tracks. “Are you goin’ shoppin?” he asked in his Limerick drawl. I’d say he had as much interest in hurling as the man on the moon but I gave it a shot. “I’m in a bit of a jam but I promise you, I’ll be back one of the days and I’ll fill the boot with stuff from this place.”
He guided me down to a fella called Shane who had a look that suggested someone in Mars knew more about hurling than him but I kept the charm offensive going. “Shane, I promise I’ll never do this to you again,” I said. “But I’m on the radio and I’m late.”
He waved me on but I still had ground to cover. I’m not as fit as I used to be but I bolted for the ground. By the time I took my position beside Liam Aherne, it looked like I’d come from the Limerick warm-up on the pitch.
I might as well have been playing for Limerick early on because they were leggy and lethargic. After seeing Cork live in two of their opening three games, this was easily their best display of the campaign. They were sharp and slick but they also set up to counter Limerick’s strengths.
Cork stifled them; Bill Cooper was swinging off Cian Lynch, never letting him run forward freely; Robert Downey and Christopher Joyce were doing the same adhesive man-marking jobs on Tom Morrissey and Gearoid Hegarty. Eoin Cadogan went everywhere with the roaming Seamie Flanagan.
Cork were more up for this than any other league game they’ve played in 2019. They bossed the first half. Limerick were on the back-foot until Patrick Murphy, the referee (who had a decent game overall) made a decision that seemed to jack-knife the direction of the match.
Mikey O’Brien was shouldered into the back under a high ball but Murphy never gave the free. When he gave a free in to Cork shortly afterwards, and then moved it further forward when one of the Limerick players said something to Murphy, the Limerick crowd went mad. Shrieks of disgust and rage rose up from the belly of the Mackey Stand. And, nine points down, the reaction seemed to stir the Limerick players.
Shortly afterwards, Pat Ryan rounded Steven McDonnell and popped the sliotar into Peter Casey — who was Limerick’s best forward — and he drove it past Patrick Collins. Game on. Limerick did virtually all of the hurling in the second half until they conceded the second goal.
The deficit was down to two points when Nickie Quaid gave Tom Condon a short puckout. Tom turned back in towards his own goal and went to give a hand pass to Sean Finn, who wasn’t on the same wavelength, and Conor Lehane interpreted the potential for maximum damage. And inflicted it.
As I always keep saying to the boys in Crokes ‘Everything counts’. Apart from that mistake, Limerick’s first half display cost them because they put so much into trying to rescue a desperate situation that they couldn’t sustain that intensity. Cork were always going to get a chance to staunch the bleeding and lacerate Limerick with the inevitable counter-punch.
Cormac Murphy came up with a couple of massive points and Patrick Horgan, even though he was off target with a couple of placed-ball attempts, nailed a couple of late frees. Limerick still had a chance to salvage something from the game but Murphy blew for a free when he didn’t think that Hegarty had gained an advantage after letting the play develop.
Yet Cian Lynch was inside him in a threatening position as Hegarty was about to sling the hand-pass into him.
Cork deserved to win but John Kiely won’t be too disappointed either because this will downplay the spiraling hype after Limerick throttled Kilkenny. Early on, I thought Limerick were a strange mixture of cockiness and tentativeness, which is always a lethal cocktail primed to blow up in your face. As well as being slightly casual and sloppy, some of their defenders were playing from behind and not attacking the ball. Shane Dowling had a rake of wides from play and placed balls in the first half. Darragh O’Donovan had a couple of terrible wides too from in front of the goal.
You could sense that slackness in the air. Hegarty and Tom Morrissey had no real impact in the match. Declan Hannon is still off the pace. Tom Condon, who was man-of-the-match last week, almost summed up Limerick’s diluted attitude. After ferociously going for every ball against Kilkenny, Condon’s body language was almost screaming, ‘Hi, I better not attack every ball here in case Horgan gets inside me.’
Yesterday’s results elsewhere beautifully set up this weekend’s final round of games, especially with three local derbies on show.
After four rounds, Limerick are the only team with a positive score difference in 1A, which underlines just how crazy the pattern has been. It’s all to play for now but the managers of the counties who have a couple of rounds of club championship fixed for April may not be too disappointed if they end up not making the quarter-finals.
With no relegation in 1A this year, that scenario may just cross a few minds in the coming days.
I had plenty of time to ponder the permutations and match-ups in Woodies car-park afterwards because I was stuck there until 5pm. Shane and his buddy were probably sipping tea by then as the traffic was gridlocked, slowly snaking its way out the Ennis road. I just had to suck it up. I can’t have it every way.
