Éamonn Cregan: If Gearóid Hegarty blows his nose, he'll get a yellow card

Limerick Hurling Great Eamon Cregan.

Éamonn Cregan is living testament to the theory that pain is easier to recall than pleasure.

Twice, he faced Clare at the Munster final stage and twice Limerick came out on top but the losses left a longer impression. 

“I remember them beating us in the Munster semi-final in Ennis in ‘72. Everybody was saying we were a great team and then they came along and beat us. It’s a ding-dong struggle all of the time.”

There was retribution in the equivalent game the following year and in 1974 there was a first Munster final success against them but even that was tinged with discomfort for Cregan. 

“I went into the game having had gastroenteritis for three weeks prior to the match and I didn’t know what was going to happen, whether I would be on the field and then suddenly have to rush off to the toilet. But I took a drop of brandy before the match. I don’t drink but it settled my stomach. If Noel Casey had known I was as weak as a sop, he’d have crashed into me all day.

“That was Joe McKenna’s final and in ‘81 he also had a great game against Clare. I think he was the difference between Limerick and Clare in those days because Joe was 6ft4in, a fine full-forward. He got the ball five yards out and it was a case of what’s he going to do.” 

Cregan points to the appropriateness of this final being the first to be played for the new Mick Mackey Cup given it was Mackey who led Limerick to the title against Clare 67 years ago. 

As with this time around, Clare beat Cork and Tipperary although Limerick weren’t half as fancied as they are now.

“Clare had a fantastic side. I was at the match. They were beaten by Mackey’s Greyhounds. The rivalry has always been there. You have so many Clare players with Ard Scoil Rís. Cratloe is out the road, Meelick is only over the bridge.

“We were also rivals in the Harty Cup, we (Limerick CBS) met Flannan's in the ‘64 Harty Cup final. Okay, they were a combination of Tipperary and Clare but the rivalry was there all of the time. We played them at minor too. A lot of us worked in Shannon. We wanted to beat each other all the time.”

The lines are blurred, though, for the Limerick man James Moran in the Clare camp and Banner men Alan Cunningham and Aonghus O’Brien in the Limerick set-up. 

Having faced and beaten his own at the ultimate stage with Offaly in 1994, Cregan knows a thing or two about divided loyalties.

“I went into the Limerick dressing room after the All-Ireland final and I had been with them at U21 level and at various stages. There’s nothing worse than going into your own county men like that. When I went into them, I said: 'Lads, I know how you feel. There is nothing I can say that is going to ease the pain.'

“I’m assuming the lads realise they have a job to do. It is difficult for them, without a shadow of a doubt. James Moran wants Clare to win and the Clare lads want Limerick to win but at the back of it all if Limerick or Clare win there will still be part of them satisfied. But with this Munster final the losers are still in it, which doesn’t make it too bad."

Cregan trusts it will be a game officiated with more than a modicum of common sense bearing in mind it’s a derby. 

He also hopes John Keenan will not buy into the perception that Limerick are the aggressors.

“I’ll put it like this, if Gearóid Hegarty blows his nose, he’ll get a yellow card. I go back to the Fitzgibbon Cup final with Cian Lynch. I know why (Aaron) Gillane was sent off in 2018 (v Cork) and I know why he did it. If it happened to me, I would have poleaxed the guy for what he did.

“There we are in Ennis the other week, an umpire 60 yards away seeing what Gearóid Hegarty must have had done, which it was proven later that he didn’t. But this umpire was able to tell the referee and he can’t see Hegarty being flattened inside 25 yards away?

“I question referees and their emphasis is on head-high tackles and the butts of hurleys being used but let it be fair cross the whole board. If I foul a fella by pushing or crashing into his back and an opposite number does the same to me there are two frees, cancelling each other, so apply the rules.

“There has to be common sense shown. Okay, it’s going to be an intense match but I learned one lesson years ago. We were playing Clare, the man I was on was a fella I knew from school and it got hot and heavy and he had done his job, which was to stop me from scoring. I was taken off with about 10 or 12 minutes to go. 

"A friend of mine came up to me later and said the marker had achieved what he wanted and I should have been concentrating on the ball the whole time. Instead, I was trying to sort him out and he was doing the same.

“As far as I’m concerned, if the referee gives a fair performance I don’t care. There are going to be heavy tackles and some of them might be wrong. It doesn’t matter who is shouldering who into the chest, it should be a free.”

As some Limerick players have had to learn to live with being given a bad name on the field, there have been incidents off it that have called into question some of their behaviour. The latest example came the night of last month’s Munster SHC Round 3 win over Tipperary when a player was removed from the panel having been arrested for an alleged assault in a Limerick city pub.

In the 2000s, Cregan was outspoken about how Limerick's over-socialising upset their performances. He questioned how a golden generation of under-age players were lost to distractions. Cregan believes John Kiely runs a much tighter ship. Knowing the hurler in question, he has sympathy for him too and raised questions about how the incident was portrayed in the media.

“We had our own stuff going on in the mid-2000s and it was troubling because it didn’t suggest that we were a united team. Stories were coming out of the camp. I’m amazed at how many people know what happened after the Tipp game. Babs (Keating) wrote an article two days after it happened and was talking about Limerick’s indiscipline. Like, Babs must have a very short memory.

“Now, I know the guy. I think he’s gone from the Limerick panel at the moment. John Kiely, Paul Kinnerk and the management are strict. Other than that, we don’t know much of what is going on in the panel – nobody can go out to Rathkeale and see them training.

“I played a club match in Bruff one day and for the first time ever I went into a pub afterwards with my family. I went up to order drinks – and now people will laugh at me when they read this because I’m supposed to be as tight as a duck’s arse. Going up to buy drinks wouldn’t be in my make-up but up I went and there was this fella beside me who was well on at this stage. 

"He turned around to me and he said, ‘Well, what happened to ye today?’ I turned to him and asked him was he at the match. He said he was and I said, ‘Well, you know what happened then.

“It’s very easy for somebody to approach an inter-county player and start calling him everything under the sun. I’d love to know the background and who really caused it because I know the young lad and he is not that type of person. The lads have got to be disciplined on and off the field.

"He wasn’t dropped off the panel for that, he was dropped because he broke one of the protocols that John Kiely was talking about.

“You have to ask the question why - why are they throwing it at Limerick? Does it not happen in other counties? As John Kiely says, we have parked it.”

Back to the field, winning a fourth straight Munster title is a nugget for Limerick but Cregan sense it’s a tricky proposition for them. 

“It’s one of these games you can’t go out to lose it and subconsciously are you going to give everything? Clare will give everything because they want to beat Limerick but with the round-robin it’s awkward.

“This could be the second of three meetings if both go on to win after the Munster final. The round-robin is a great idea but you need to pace yourself and you need a big panel. Limerick have had a lot of injuries. You can’t be going out peaking for every match, you have to win without peaking, which is a challenge in itself. Nobody wants to go into a Munster final and lose it.”