Treaty should pluck as many apples from the branches as they can
Some match previews contain a twist in the tale, a dash of legerdemain, a final-paragraph dice roll that is at variance with the tone and tenor of the preceding paragraphs. Yes, X are expected to win, for all the following, entirely sensible, reasons — but here’s why Y will win.
As this preview is not such an exercise in smoke and mirrors, we’ll avoid teasing the reader and cut to the concluding scene of the movie here and now.
So: Waterford are in the same place, or at any rate the same postcode, as Limerick were this time last year. Limerick for their part are the MacCarthy Cup holders and have produced one off-day in league and championship over the past season-and-a-half. Logic thus leaves little room for debate.
The favourites, being further down the road than their opponents, will win by a few points — two or three or four — and both teams will head into championship training in good heart.
There you have it. The preview in a paragraph.
Perfection for readers with short attention spans. Thank you and goodbye. Oops. Turns out you want something more than that and the strictures of the page design demand it. Ponder this, then: Is tomorrow’s fixture likely to be the kind of National League final that will be remembered in, say, five years’ time?
Three or four decades ago nearly every National League final had been forgotten five years later. Two or three decades ago nearly every National League final had been forgotten a year later. Then the noughties and the current decade introduced the concept of The Importance of League Finals.
Thus Dublin’s triumph in 2011 was memorable, and Galway’s victory in 2017 mattered because it hastened a return to mislaid glories, and all those Kilkenny/Tipperary collisions — bar, with the pair on the slide, last season’s entertaining but irrelevant throwback affair — were a dip rod for where the sport was at, with the protagonists being ahead of where every other county were at.
Galway v Cork in 2010, on the other hand? Nah. A rare outlier. But tomorrow’s encounter ought to produce vibrations in due course. Here are two progressive teams whose best days lie ahead of them. This is a match that matters in the here and now and is likely to be viewed in a few years’ time as having mattered when set against the backdrop of the seasons that followed.
Limerick continue to churn it out. Every single may not be in at number one with a bullet but is a top-10 hit nonetheless. Dublin asked them a couple of interesting questions at Nowlan Park last Sunday. Halfway through the exam it was clear that John Kiely’s charges were headed for honours. “Some days you just have to grind it out and this was one of those days,” as Kiely remarked afterwards. Quite. No team bar Galway is better built to grind it out than these boy-men in green. Dublin turned the dancefloor into a mosh pit; Limerick still found a way. The best teams always do.
Having led by nine points with eight minutes remaining, the MacCarthy Cup holders might have gone on to win by 12 or 13. Instead they won by three. The slippage does not constitute grounds for concern. One would be more worried if they had gone on to win by 12 or 13. There is a time for double-digit victories. The month of March is not that time.
Whether Limerick needed to reach a league final is neither here nor there. Kiely’s priority here is to ensure their momentum is not squandered. We’re in Goldilocks and the Three Bears territory and finding a happy medium will not be an exact science.
The ideal scenario would be to win by a point; that would be just right. The far from ideal scenario would be to win by 10.
Yet Limerick are not such serial accumulators of silverware that the prospect of a second national title in the space of seven months is to be sniffed at. Success in sport has many imperatives. The most basic of them all entails plucking as many apples from the branches as you can when you can.
Last Sunday was not the forward line’s finest hour, with four members being replaced, the entire half-forward line included. Limerick have seven forwards more celebrated than Gearoid Hegarty, who nevertheless may only be fully appreciated by the fans when he’s gone. He is far from a classic wing-forward, he doesn’t get many shots off and his cornering is limited. But he knows his task, he does it diligently, he makes the ball stick and he’s smart enough to leave the Cian Lynch and Aaron Gillane stuff to Cian Lynch and Aaron Gillane.
On the other hand, that classy point in the second half notwithstanding, Peter Casey might have done more than he did with the possession that came his way. He has scarcely made the championship XV yet.
Limerick are becoming the team Clare failed to become. That said, it is far too early to talk about the possibility of them building an empire, even a mini-empire, not least because the demands of the new-look championship have almost certainly signalled the end of empires. But Kiely’s Limerick take the field every day expecting to win and knowing how to win. And whereas one All-Ireland title is exactly that, a one-off, an All-Ireland title followed by a National League title signals reliability, consistency, and the possibility of futurity.
For a county that went 44 years in modern times without winning the competition, the National League has been good to Waterford of late. Back in 2015 it provided the springboard from which the Derek McGrath era was truly launched; 12 months later the Déise came within an ace of making it back-to-back titles. What better and more practical way for Páraic Fanning to make his managerial bones and earn the confidence of a county than by winning the league at the first time of asking?
By reaching the final he has already generated confidence and accumulated brownie points. That Waterford won their semi-final slightly against the head matters not a whit; every emerging team needs the hop of the ball at times. On which point Micheál Donoghue may be forgiven for wondering if we’re in danger of returning to an era where Galway goalkeepers and the poor will always be with us.
To tip one team doesn’t mean — and surely every manager of an underdog knows this by now — writing off the chances of their opponents. Can Waterford win here and go on to uproot a few trees in the championship? Of course they can. Even recent history bulges with teams who landed a year or two before their supposed docking date.
Clare in 2013. Limerick in 2018, come to that. Waterford are not conceding goals (five in seven outings). They have experience. They have pace. They have Jamie Barron back and with Jamie Barron back, all things are possible. And here’s a thought.
Now that he no longer has to worry about the frees, which in any case were clearly never a worry for him, it will be worth watching to see if Pauric Mahony can broaden his palette, develop his game, and become the kind of forward who fires 0-3 from play every day.
Waterford possess one treasure Limerick do not. A genuine cast-iron, copper-bottomed, cut-glass superstar.
It is not difficult to envisage Austin Gleeson having a blinder tomorrow and dragging his team over the line with him. Neither is it difficult to envisage him visiting so many areas of the field that his influence becomes diluted.
But Gleeson will have to produce an 8/10 performance for Waterford to win. We finish more or less where we began. Keyser Soze does not appear in this final paragraph. Limerick, to repeat, are further down the road and don’t do off-days. That should suffice.
