Kieran Shannon: Has everyone forgotten the epic Clare-Limerick rivalry?
KEEPING TABS; Daithi Lohan of Clare and Seamus Flanagan of Limerick during the 2025 Munster SHC clash at TUS Gaelic Grounds in Limerick. Photo by Tom Beary/Sportsfile
Remember Clare-Limerick, everyone?
A few days before the counties met in a third consecutive Munster final, I met up with Niall Moran in Limerick at a café on the Ennis Road, a fitting location given the primary focus of the interview and how interconnected both counties are.
In Moran’s mind there was no doubt which side Limerick at that point privately regarded as the best they had encountered since their ascendancy under John Kiely. Not Kilkenny who they had encountered in two All-Ireland finals and in 2019 had also inflicted upon them their only defeat in Croke Park up to that point. Not Cork, though Pat Ryan’s team had beaten them only the previous month by a couple of points in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. It was Clare, even though Brian Lohan’s team at that juncture hadn’t even made it to an All-Ireland final.
“With these group of players I think in years to come when lads have retired, it’ll become more apparent the respect they have for each other is off the charts.
“I mean, both sets of players staggered off the field after the last two Munster finals. That doesn’t evoke hatred in you; that only evokes the kind of respect that you can only talk about 10 or 15 years later. And that respect manifests itself in battle.
“I know it’s simple to say that they bring out the best in each other but it’s true. They just can’t openly say it because to acknowledge it would be almost a sign of weakness. But there’s no doubt that Limerick know the best team they have come up against during their time has been this Clare team.”
Since that conversation Clare have won an All-Ireland, something Cork for one have failed to do, and have beaten Kiely’s team as often as they have lost to them in championship. Yet who now regards Clare as Limerick’s greatest rivals? Who now considers Clare-Limerick as the outstanding hurling rivalry of the 2020s?
Last Sunday Cork beat Limerick by the same margin they did at the same venue when Patrick Horgan scored that late penalty on an electrifying Saturday evening – and by the same margin they would beat them by yet again later that summer in 2024, only on that occasion in Croke Park. Throw in a Munster final that extended to not just extra-time but penalties and it’s clear that whatever about being Limerick’s outstanding rivals, Cork have become their most troublesome and obvious.
To put in context, Cork have now beaten Limerick more times in championship over the past 24 months (four) than the rest of hurling has (three – Dublin in 2025, Clare 2025 and Clare 2023) over the past seven seasons.
Their rivalry predates Horgan’s season-saving and era-defining penalty too. While Limerick have tended to win the more mundane games between the pair (this year’s league final, the 2025 round-robin blowout, to which you could add the one of 2022 and most particularly the 2021 All-Ireland), they haven’t allowed Cork win all the classics either, most namely the 2023 round-robin shootout in the Gaelic Grounds that ensured that season for Cork didn’t extend beyond Munster.
At a stretch you could even include the two epic games between the counties in 2018, though only two of Cork’s starters last weekend featured that year.
Add it all up and there’s reasonable grounds to conclude, as Seánie McGrath in these pages has, that it is “the GAA’s greatest modern-day rivalry”, and one to match any of the others of the 21st century: Cork-Waterford, Kilkenny-Tipp, Armagh-Tyrone, Dublin-Mayo, Dublin-Kerry.
But yet that assertion is not conclusive. As thrilling and sweeping and colourful as Cork-Limerick is – that mesh of red and green is an astonishing backdrop in person or on TV, especially in the new Páirc Uí Chaoimh – there’s a danger we’re all succumbing to recency bias.
Clare have to re-enter the equation.
Even in the gap year that 2025 ended up being for them, they contributed handsomely to the hurling year, most notably with their 12-point comeback against Cork in Ennis. That draw meant for the sixth consecutive championship game there was either nothing or just a puck of a ball between the teams. Any time Cork-Clare go to war, you’re almost assured a cracker, and tellingly what it has over their respective rivalries with Limerick is that it has been showcased on All-Ireland final day – in as glorious an All-Ireland final as there has ever been.
The Clare-Limerick rivalry that would have impressed and enthralled more than just Moran has only a couple of shortcomings: since 2013 it has yet to extend to Croke Park and in those trilogy of Munster finals Clare never ended up with the girl.
But they did end up with Liam MacCarthy in 2024. A trophy that has to date eluded Cork.
Until Cork get over the line, does that count against the supremacy, whatever about the majesty, of their recent rivalries with Clare and Limerick?
Not necessarily so. Waterford never reached the mountaintop in the noughties yet their games with Cork are more fondly remembered in the public memory than Kilkenny’s were. Mayo similarly never won any of their multiple All-Ireland final clashes with Dublin during the 2012-2021 period, yet in the public’s affection that series of matches eclipses even all the classics that Kerry and Dublin, both of whom reached the mountaintop in those years, served up during the same period.
Time may well prove that Moran’s 2024 thesis still holds: that long after Kiely’s warriors hand back their shields and hurleys, it’ll be Clare they’ll remember as their greatest opponents – because they were Clare’s most constant obstacle when Limerick themselves were at their greatest. That their losses to Cork were more a measure rather than the cause of their gradual and gallant but undoubted decline.
Next Sunday Limerick enter Cusack Park, that other venue along with Páirc Uí Chaoimh that has helped define as much as it has been defined by the round-robin Munster championship. The last dance for both teams could well be that siege of Ennis.
Which is all the more reason to savour the music that will be served up. The GAA has seen various trios produce a string of remarkable games– Kerry-Armagh-Tyrone in the noughties, Dublin, Kerry, Mayo (and Donegal) in the 2010s, but never a trio in the one province like Cork, Limerick and Clare.
Not just the best hurlers are with us now. So are the best games and rivalries. Just appreciate that they won’t last forever.
