Tommy Martin: Limerick need Waterford, a worthy adversary to give shape to what they have built

Gearoid Hegarty of Limerick in action against Calum Lyons of Waterford. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Limerick’s victory over Waterford ended as all good Saturday night get-togethers should – with everyone saying we should do this again sometime.

Nickie Quaid had just burst from his goal with the sliotar and the game in his hand when Sean Stack blew the whistle. There would be no third Waterford sucker punch. Quaid clenched his fist and let out a contained roar of satisfaction. His teammates exchanged manly hugs. The fans stood and applauded as if they’d just heard the final guitar kerrang and thangyouverymuch of a cracking gig. The mood wasn’t celebratory, it was appreciative.

Great show lads.

The enjoyment was both in the moment and outside of it. The match was a rip-roaring belter in and of itself. It ebbed and flowed, as the managers like to say when they are in reductive, tell-em-nothing mode, as if games were governed by the moon’s gravitational pull. Limerick had put it to sleep then Waterford did a Glenn Close on it, sitting bolt upright in the bath.

But you can’t beat a bit of context. The real pleasure was in seeing somebody drag Limerick onto the canvas and engage them in a good old-fashioned grapple. Seventy minutes of elbows and knees akimbo and it was the All-Ireland champions again standing victorious, but at least this time with a few hairs out of place and the necessity to straighten their ties.

Waterford had gifted us the pleasure of anticipation. A sequel or perhaps a trilogy beckons, hopefully more Godfather than Matrix. Afterwards Liam Cahill gently chided those Waterford supporters who hadn’t made the journey, the manager perhaps in his mind juxtaposing the bollock-busting winter of work his players had undertaken to get to within the puck of a ball of Limerick with the disinclination of some supporters to sit in a car for two hours.

Maybe there are a lot of Ed Sheeran fans in Waterford. Or maybe they felt, after enduring beatings by a cumulative 22 points in their last two championship meetings, that a trip to the lion’s den was not a good idea, especially when that lion keeps insisting on biting your legs off every time you visit.

“Hopefully now they will get behind this team,” Cahill said, “because they have something to look forward to with this group of players if they get behind them and support them.” 

The extent to which Waterford confirmed themselves as Limerick’s true challengers has been mulled over in the days since. Some feel the two late goals put a gloss of respectability on what was shaping up to be another one of those imperious Limerick frogmarches.

This view hints at a strange suspicion towards the concept of goals held by some GAA observers: that they are perfectly fine but only as part of a balanced diet. A team that is over-dependent on goals, it is felt, is like someone who lives on Coco Pops, eschewing the healthy roughage of ample point tallies. There is definitely some sort of Catholic guilt here, a reluctance to allow ourselves have nice things.

More to the point, it ignores the fact that the pursuit of goals is one of the trademarks of Cahill’s Waterford team – they scored 22 of them in winning the league – and, indeed, of the manager’s previous work in the Tipperary underage system. Suggesting a Cahill team relied too heavily on goals is like criticising a Formula One driver for being too fond of the accelerator.

Whether Waterford turn out to be Empire Strikes Back, or Weekend at Bernie’s 2, will be revealed in subsequent meetings, presuming they happen. Counterintuitively, it will be a good thing for Limerick if their putative nemesis franks its early season credentials. If one of the question marks over Limerick after three All-Ireland titles in four years is whether they could sustain their hunger, then the prospect of Cahill’s Spartan shock troops stealing their dinner has clearly sharpened appetites.

While there was gruesome admiration to be wrought from watching Limerick disembowel their opponents with ritual precision on the way to their last two All-Irelands, it was a lot more fun to see them in a scrap. Gearóid Hegarty treats opposition defenders with the same care and attention as Godzilla does the build environment of a Japanese city, but the physical challenge of Waterford drove him to greater heights of skyscraper-smashing plunder.

Diarmaid Byrnes and Declan Hannon had to roll up their sleeves but came out swinging, the former pinging over points from the car park as usual despite the maelstrom. Aaron Gillane found that seam of inside forward gold, when they become wing-heeled Hermes to the mortals of the opposition backline.

They were fist-pumping the crowd, they were flexing those biceps, they were alive.

Put simply, a great team needs a rival. No more than Manchester City have needed Liverpool to define the contours of themselves, Limerick require a worthy adversary to give full shape to what they have built. Without the true challenge represented by Jurgen Klopp’s team – and those febrile Champions League nights against others who probe their weaknesses – the sense of Pep Guardiola’s creation would be of endless sleepy Saturday afternoon thumpings of the likes of Burnley and Watford.

So too for Limerick and the whooping hordes in the Gaelic Grounds last weekend. Whatever about the players, there is no sense that the Limerick public is sated, not when circumstances have denied them the chance to fully savour this team. The closed doors championship of 2020 and last season’s partially accessible affair have been banked. Now the prospect of a no-holds-barred, proper, hanging-from-the-rafters championship season stretching ahead is sharpened by the presence of an opponent that may just drive their heroes higher again.

This was fun. Let’s do it again soon.