Shouldering responsibility

WHEN Limerick’s Brian Geary and Waterford’s Seamus Prendergast met shoulder to massive shoulder in Semple Stadium in Thurles in the 60th minute of Sunday’s Munster SHC semi-final, the collision sent ripples through the crowd.

In the stands along both sides of the pitch, in the terraces at either end, people flinched at the violence of the impact, this two-man, human car-crash, and afterwards, the roar of the Limerick fans came from deep in the chest.

Those same people, however, those followers of hurling, male and female, Limerick and Waterford, also allowed themselves a little smile; as much as the subtlety of a Henry Shefflin goal-touch, as much as the sweetness of a pure Eoin Kelly strike, this was hurling as it always was — raw, pure, ageless.