Treaty’s triumph over adversity

The glory that was Tipperary, the grandeur that was Limerick.

Poe used Greece and Rome as the placenames when he wrote that, but the crackle and flash of yesterday’s Munster senior hurling semi-final deserve the classical touch. Olympus in Tipperary North Riding.

Thunderbolts optional.

Limerick won, with a late, late 1-2 before 24,962 spectators in Thurles. The men in blue and gold were left bereft, having led by three with three minutes remaining, but the Shannonsiders never gave up.

“I looked up at the clock with 67 minutes gone and personally I knew we’d get a chance,” said Limerick midfielder James Ryan after the game. “Thankfully it went in and we kicked on from there.”

The chance came when Kevin Downes careered through the middle before parting to Shane Dowling, who deliberated for that exquisite split-second which allows you just enough time to speculate before he crashed home the game-changing goal.

“I thought he was going to come out to the ’65 to hit it,” laughed Ryan. “But great spatial awareness, he came back out and he didn’t have much time, but he slotted it.”

The auguries didn’t favour Tipperary.

Their intermediate team’s decline in the face of a tigerish Limerick in the second half of the curtain-raiser, despite eventually nicking the win late in extra time, gave their followers pause before the senior game, and the main event followed an eerily similar trajectory.

Neither Tipperary and Limerick were unable to establish a commanding lead at any stage, and in the first half the main talking points were the two goals.

Dowling’s came from a free which was a model of restraint for this modern age, the Limerick man taking a bare couple of metres before cracking home a goal: it sparked a bad couple of minutes for Tipperary.

Noel McGrath was indicted for a pick-up, and Seamus Callanan ran the ball over the sideline.

The home team needed inspiration and they got it from their traditional source of perspiration, the indefatigable Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher.

The number 11 had an amount of work to do when he won the ball near the Limerick goal – if you were wearing green yesterday in Thurles you might have queried the amount of steps he took – but his eye-of-a-needle goal kept Tipperary in the hunt and the half ended level.

Gearoid Ryan’s goal early in the second half looked an ideal springboard for victory, but Limerick – calm yet driven – hit the next four points.

Tipp rallied and more than once they created goal chances, only to find Richie McCarthy doing a fair impression of Horatio on the bridge.

Afterwards Tipp boss Eamon O’Shea acknowledged they’d come close to a third goal: “We did, but sure close is close and until we get them they are not goals.

“I wouldn’t use that as a thing I would say, we came close. You try to make sense of the game and we tried this, that, the other.

“I thought we gave away possession hitting it into the goalie’s hands a few times. I don’t know whether wind was an issue or not.

“Maybe we searched for the winner, the fourth, and we pushed it a bit, and when you push it a bit you are anxious, and when you are anxious you make bad decisions like striking the ball into the goalie’s hands and trying to take a shot when maybe you should hold onto it.”

O’Shea’s diagnosis was piercingly correct.

Tipperary had late, late wides which deflated them visibly, and when Limerick saw the jugular they didn’t hesitate.

“If you win it looks like all the decisions you made are correct,” said TJ Ryan afterwards. The Limerick boss wasn’t getting carried away: “Maybe if we were beaten by a point, you’d be asking me different questions. That’s the fine margins involved in hurling, one or two points either way and in fairness our boys gave their all.

“The response of my players and to my management team, who have put in a huge effort over the last number of weeks . . . all I can say is a big thank you to them. We go again. It’s a bit like Liverpool.”

Clearly TJ doesn’t mind alienating those immune to the charms of Anfield, but that’s a matter for another day.

His opponents yesterday face another searching week or two of introspection.

Tipperary are not in an existentialist crisis, but rather an essentialist one; is withdrawing a forward to create space for Callanan and Maher (‘Bonner’ version) a tactical stance that goes too deeply against their grain? Do they need to go back to their own version of what James Ryan called “old school hurling”? They may need to search further back than the French Left Bank for philosophical succour, though: the Greek motto on the walls at Delphi was gnothi seauton, or know thyself, words usually accompanied by the injunction to disregard the opinion of the multitude. Eamon O’Shea faces hard selectorial calls ahead which may not find favour with the multitudes of Knocknagow.

In the other corner James Ryan was right when he said there’s plenty to work on: Richie McCarthy can’t always be in the right place to make a telling hook, and TJ Ryan will be keen to shut down the space in front of his full-back in the Munster final. Tom Condon also faces an anxious wait after his entanglement with Niall O’Meara in the second half as well, an interaction that may be revisited in the next couple of days.

But Limerick also have it in them to prove an old saw from Virgil correct: they can because they think they can.

Three things we learned in Thurles

1 — Limerick and Tipperary people come late to matches.

Rolling through Thurles at the same time as last week, it was oddly quiet and traffic-free. Yet there were almost ten thousand more people than attended Cork-Waterford. Extra routes in, obviously. Or maybe they just knew the curtain-raiser was destined for extra time.

2 — There’s an alternative to the Anthony Nash technique.

Shane Dowling got a goal from a 21-metre free yesterday which didn't rely on throwing the ball into the small square. Thousands of concerned onlookers wiped the sweat from their brow(s), though they were presumably concerned for health and safety reasons by the rocket Dowling slammed home in the second half.

3 — Visible chink in the Tipperary armour.

Their opponents in the qualifier rounds will take note of Limerick overtaking the Premier yesterday in a driving finish and seek to reach the same position in their own games. Expect other teams to target Tipp in the last ten minutes if they can remain neck and neck until then.