Luxuriate for a while in the glory of Tony Kelly's display

Clare’s Tony Kelly tackles Diarmaid Byrnes of Limerick. Picture: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Years after the French Revolution, and its bloody sequel, the Terror, the Abbé Sieyès was asked what he had done in those days.

“I survived,” he said.

Perhaps that’s the starting point this morning, rather than a brisk evaluation of quality or a searching examination of the fare we saw on Sunday evening. Or even, spare us, a lengthy discussion of the colour of the ball.

A Munster championship game was played, after all, even it was with November on the doorstep.

Limerick’s eventual winning margin was a non-flattering 10 points. They began well, stretched ahead, saw Clare catch up, and then stretched for home with scoring bursts at both ends of the second half.

Yet this is hardly the take-away for anybody who watched the game. Tony Kelly’s one-man imitation of Horatius at the bridge was the abiding memory, a display that yielded 0-17 and kept Clare in touch over 60 of the 70 minutes.

The first great move of the Brian Lohan management era was to shift Tony Kelly to the tip of the spear. In recent years one of the comforting sights for opposing teams has been Kelly sweeping up loose ball near his own 45-metre line: in other words so far away from the opposition’s danger zone that their defenders could relax.

Not so yesterday, when Kelly’s timing and movement was impeccable in the first half as he ranged the half-forward line.

His reading of the game meant that the merest hint of sloppiness in the Limerick support play was punished. Twice Kelly drifted across and onto ball he snapped over the bar, but in truth a camera could have been trained on him for the first 35-odd minutes to give younger players an idea of how to influence the course of a game.

At the break he was already in double figures — 0-12 on the board, seven of those from frees.

Yet the seeds of Limerick’s victory had already been sown. Stars such as Cian Lynch were relatively quiet, though Aaron Gillane showed a sharpness that his manager no doubt relished.

Limerick were level at the break but they were also the side with huge room for improvement, and they showed that with five points in a row within the opening four minutes of the second half.

One of their key men was willing workhorse Gearoid Hegarty, whose selfless running and carrying has been supplemented by a sweetness to his striking: one point he scored in the second half came when he barely seemed to flex his wrists, but the ball carried over the bar with something to spare.

With Limerick’s half-backs expertly marshalled by Declan Hannon, the winners eventually pushed on for a comfortable victory.

Clare, meanwhile, were immediately confronted by some challenges that will need swift action.

They shipped yellow cards down the left hand side of their team, for instance, and the lack of support for Kelly was alarming, to say the least.

In the green and white corner, the array and variety of Limerick scorers is simultaneously a rebuke to teams which rely on an outstanding individual and also a statement of their virtues: if you hold Aaron Gillane or Peter Casey, Kyle Hayes and Tom Morrissey are available. Or Graeme Mulcahy. Or Seamus Flanagan. Or someone else.

Spreading the scoring load means shifting the opponent’s focus, and Limerick have been benefiting from having three or four players each chipping in with 0-3 or 0-4 for some time now. Other sides please copy.

It was interesting, however, to hear Lohan say he felt Limerick’s full-back line was too comfortable at times, a phrase likely to commend itself to other managers.

Limerick are without two expert specialists in Mike Casey and Richie English when it comes to manning that zone, and John Kiely will not enjoy watching how Ryan Taylor’s goal developed from an innocuous ball into his side’s defence.

But that’s for another day. Luxuriate for a while in the glory of that incredible Kelly display.

Lohan’s decision to move the Ballyea man closer to goal may be of interest to a couple of other managers as well, of course. Liam Cahill in Waterford and Galway’s Shane O’Neill both have outrageous talents of their own to harness, but the precise location of Austin Gleeson and Joe Canning in championship sides has been an endless source of debate. Perhaps they saw the template in Semple Stadium Saturday night.

Not every side has a Tony Kelly, of course, and not every Tony Kelly has a night like Sunday night.

And even when that happens, it’s as well to remember how it turned out for Horatius all those years ago.

For all his glory he was still outgunned by the Etruscans when the final whistle blew that day, too.