Joe Quaid: Limerick do the basics quicker and better than anyone else

Joe Quaid: 'We can’t forget Tipp last year absolutely cut through them like a hot knife through butter'. Picture: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

Former Limerick goalkeeper Joe Quaid says you’d be a fool to back against his county for the 2022 All-Ireland title but has pointed to Tipperary’s first-half showing in last year’s Munster final as an example of teams matching Limerick.

Quaid, who features in Thursday night’s Laochra Gael, TV programme on TG4 says: “Hurling is such a fickle game, anything could happen. Looking at the bookies and what they come up with, in general they’re rarely wrong.

“On Dalo’s podcast they said if someone on the Limerick panel gets up in the morning, they’re probably thinking ‘I’ve a great chance of winning an All-Ireland’.

“Fellas on teams in the other counties are getting up and thinking ‘is it worth it, to go and face Limerick, how are we going to beat them?’

“We’ve been in the doldrums long enough, for 45 years every hurler in Limerick woke up in the hopes of winning an All-Ireland, but none of us thought it would take that long to do it.

“What annoyed me about the talk about Limerick is the talk about the system and so on — there’s no bloody system, they do the basics quicker and better than anyone else, and if you ask me they work harder than anyone else.

“They still catch it, hand pass it, hit it, strike it — they score points and goals from 80 yards or inside the 20 metre line.

“A couple of years ago Waterford came close but watching that game, there was a ball played out to a Waterford wing back, and he fumbled it, just for a millisecond - but the fitness of the players means when that happened he was swamped.

“A Limerick player would have caught it, popped it off to someone running off the shoulder. They seem to have time and space to deliver quality ball while the opposing teams seem to be under serious pressure.

“But we can’t forget Tipp last year absolutely cut through them like a hot knife through butter. They couldn’t keep it up, but it can be done.”

Quaid saw many of the current Limerick senior players excel at underage level and was confident their talent would flourish once they graduated to the senior ranks.

“I’ll put it like this - in 2012 we won an All-Ireland U16 title beating Galway 3-20 to 0-8, so it was on the cards.

“Between the pessimistic crowd for Limerick, and never having won a whole pile, and always being nearly-men, you would doubt it, but that’s the level of talent that was there.

“That was just with that crop, and they are the backbone of what is there. The academy system has worked, and you need a culture but you also need talent. We have been blessed with just an extremely talented bunch of lads. “You could see from 14 they were special. They were a different gravy, and we just knew it needed to be nurtured.”

The former goalkeeper doesn’t see his old teammate John Kiely departing as manager any time soon: “I had a conversation with him a few years ago and I’d say if they had beaten Kilkenny (2019) he probably would have gone.

“He has a young family, he was kind of looking forward to being a supporter again and next thing they won in 2020 and won in 2021. I actually rang him and one of the first things I said to him was ‘Kiely, you haven’t a hope of getting out of that job for a long time!’

“I said ‘you can’t go, if you go when they are beaten you’ll get the blame!’ So he’s in a catch 22 situation now, because he’s going nowhere. The only way he can get out of the place with any credibility is to get sacked, and that’s not going to happen.”

Quaid identifies Kilkenny as a team with the weapons to trouble Limerick.

“The tradition, I think they have got the physical size, the physical edge that could take on Limerick.

“I suppose would you ever back against Kerry in a football match or would you ever back against Kilkenny in a hurling match?

“I thought Galway had come really close in ’19 and ’20, but I think without Joe (Canning), an unbelievable loss to that team.

“To me, I’d be more wary of Kilkenny than anything else.”

Quaid was part of the Limerick side which lost All-Ireland finals in 1994 and 1996, the former defeat being particularly dramatic with Offaly’s late surge.

“I suppose it is part of who I am, it is part of hurling and hurling was very good to me.

“I don’t think your life or your playing career should be defined by how many All-Ireland medals you have.

“Sambo’s one (Terence McNaughton on Laochra Gael) was in a similar vein. Would I love to have two All-Ireland medals? Yeah. Would my life be so much different now? Probably.

“And that is something I don’t think I would like. The way my life has turned out — I often said if we’d won two All-Ireland’s in the 1990s we could have ended up sitting outside of SuperMacs drinking out of brown paper bags, so it did not work out too bad.

“You just don’t know. Hurling has been very good to me and has given me a massive focus in life, and I am still involved in it.”

That said, he’s not blinkered about how the game has progressed.

“I went to see Mary I against UCC last week, and it was the first time I was at that level watching Rob Downey and these lads — the power and the pace of the game was phenomenal.

“Was it as exciting? Probably not, but when you look back at matches on TG4, in one between Clare and Offaly the camera never moved or panned beyond 40 yards and the ball had been hit about 10 times.

“There was swiping, belting and all-on body contact - but the skill level might not have matched the endeavour.”

- Laochra Gael with Joe Quaid, TG4, Thursday 9.30pm.