Pride only takes Tipp so far before Limerick stamp their authority

Ger Browne of Tipperary during their Munster SHC R3 defeat to Limerick at TUS Gaelic Grounds on Sunday afternoon. 

This way for the punishment beating. Take your seats for the ritual disembowelling.

This was the general sense around the Gaelic Grounds heading to 2pm yesterday, the kind of hum you probably once had approaching busy afternoons at Tyburn in London. The preamble to Limerick-Tipperary was an odd one in that the sense of resignation was palpable among some Tipperary supporters, who seemed to be bracing themselves for the kind of scourging that can scar a generation.

Were they right? The Premier arrived without last year’s entire full-forward line (the O’Dwyer-Callanan-Forde axis) as well as a couple of load-bearing pillars further back the field (Mahers Pádraic and Brendan). Perhaps the resignation was rooted firmly in the available evidence: come for the merciless slaughter. Stay for the painful analysis.

After seven minutes the conditions looked conducive for the hammering to begin. Gearóid Hegarty and Diarmaid Byrnes combined to find Aaron Gillane on the edge of the square for the first goal (a sequence of names becoming as familiar as Tinker to Evers to Chance in baseball). Once Gillane got in the air on Seamus Kennedy’s goal side then the green flag looked inevitable, and so it proved.

But Limerick didn’t zoom away as one might expect. Rather than become a dot vanishing over the horizon, they hit four wides in a row, and with Noel McGrath striking the ball so well from frees Tipperary stayed in their slipstream and eventually overtook them.

That striking action - McGrath’s unmistakable sweep and flourish, like a veteran matador working the muleta - yielded an equaliser on 20 minutes while Limerick were busy with another sequence of wides (five this time) and, fittingly enough, Tipperary were two ahead at the half, 0-14 to 1-9.

The uncertainties of the Cork and Clare games had been replaced by an appetite for work and an ability to find room around the Limerick 65 which has proved far beyond most of the All-Ireland champions’ opponents.

The metrics for Limerick, meanwhile, weren’t flattering. Hitting double figures in wides is never a welcome announcement in the half-time dressing-room, while the men in green were uncharacteristically indecisive up front. Every time they broke the Tipperary defensive line out the field there was open prairie in front of them, but they couldn’t convert the space they created into real goal chances. Then again, Tipperary didn’t let them create those chances.

In a sport where double-digit leads are routinely built and dismantled, however, Tipp never had a lot of comfort on the scoreboard. Two half-chances of goals were missed early in the second half as Limerick set to reeling them in, but the home side struggled to eat up the deficit: when Kyle Hayes panzered through on 50 minutes he spilled his shot wide.

(Size matters and matters of size: when Nickie Quaid looked downfield at one point Hayes and Gearóid Hegarty had stuck their hands up for a restart, with Barry Heffernan and Ronan Maher lurking close by. It must have been like pucking the ball into the Manhattan skyline.) 

On 61 minutes Diarmaid Byrnes’ 65 levelled matters, but the grandstand finish never really materialised. Sub David Reidy, Gillane and Declan Hannon suddenly jumped Limerick three ahead, and when another sub, Conor Boylan, improvised a goal with a forehand smash it was all over as a contest.

But all over on 68 minutes, which is a long time for a result to remain a live issue, particularly with the pre-match expectation of a turkey shoot. Aaron Gillane’s late goal gave a false colour to the final score which will rankle in Tipperary, particularly as another referee might have taken a harsher line on the Limerick man’s foul on Ronan Maher midway through the second half.

The ramifications for Munster final qualification? We still need some clarifying results, though Limerick have surely done enough even ahead of next week’s trip to Clare.

“We struggled for long periods to get into a rhythm and a flow, and I think the boys to be fair knew that themselves but kept battling away,” said Limerick boss John Kiely after the game. “They kept the heads and didn’t panic.

“They (Tipperary) were sharper, they were crisper today, and the bottom line is we struggled with them at times.

“I'm going to be very, very focused this week on just a much better performance next weekend. Our performance today won't be good enough next weekend and that's the bottom line. We have to find some improvement.” 

The conductor of the Tipperary orchestra was understandably disappointed.

“We brought serious intensity and hurling and passion,” said Noel McGrath.

“Everything you need for Munster Championship hurling in the first half and even coming into the second half, we know last year they hit us right after half-time in the Munster final but we held our own for a long part of that second half today and we kept in front ticking on scores and ticking on scores.

“Unfortunately near the end we just got caught with a couple of scores that they got that we probably maybe could have got at the other end to keep ticking on the points and that's why they're as good as they are. They're All-Ireland champions and they put you away when they get the chances.” 

The takeaways? Tipp may have restored some life to the All-Ireland championship by looking Limerick in the eye and engaging them; Limerick will hardly panic given the levels they know they can reach.

But those are levels they’ll surely need to reach to collect another All-Ireland - and more than once at that. The question now is not so much whether they can - we know what they’re capable of - but whether another team can produce a performance like Tipperary did in the Gaelic Grounds.

And for seven or eight minutes longer.