Enda McEvoy: Limerick set the template for 2023 - now comes the hard part for the pack in pursuit 

HEROES: Limerick Hurling Stars Cian Lynch and Aaron Gillane lift the Liam McCarthy aloft to joy of the thousands of fans at the TUS Gaelic grounds as the Limerick hurlers were greeted to a huge reception at Colbert station to meet them off the train and follow them on an open top bus through the city and on stage at the TUS Gaelic Grounds.

SO a little later than usual, certain unforeseen developments having intervened last week, let’s set about the last few items of housekeeping from the 2022 hurling championship.

A great All Ireland final? Not quite. At the risk of getting all Eamon Dunphy on it, it wasn’t a showpiece straight outta Valhalla — the first half was way too one-sided, regardless of what the scoreboard said at the interval — but it can certainly be placed in the front rank of the very good ones. Full value for money, all kinds of fun, the issue in doubt till the last whistle and something for everyone in the audience.

Yet this much has to be said: the Munster final was more satisfying because its scores were harder earned, chiselled out of wind and rain and rock. The sight of all six half-backs finding the target from play last Sunday week was to be mourned rather than celebrated. At the risk of once more saddling up a familiar hobbyhorse, scoring should not come that handily.

The Clare jubilee outfit feted beforehand beat Tipperary 25 years ago with 0-20. Limerick had equalled Clare’s total by half-time. Wexford, also feted, won in 1996 with 1-13. Sounds laughable from this remove, huh?

The hurling of 2022 is so much better on so many levels than the hurling of 1997, most of all in terms of precise high-speed execution of the skills. This does not render it commensurately more compelling.

Here’s another question, rhetorical rather than otherwise. If this is a truly great Limerick team, about which there can be no argument, and if they performing at the top of their game last week, which they were, how come they had only two points to spare over brave but patently limited opponents?

There is no easy answer. Perhaps there is no answer at all other than to hold that it was one of those things, or rather one of those afternoons.

Every sporting encounter has a number of potential outcomes, give or take the UK snooker championship clash many moons ago between Steve Davis and some also-ran, such an obvious mismatch that a professor of mathematics who was a keen punter happily had his tonsils on Davis at 1/10 on the basis that the pair could meet 40 times and Davis would win each time. Hurling, being an affair of so many quickly moving parts, albeit controlled these days to a degree that would have baffled and dispirited the old-timers, has more potential outcomes than most sports.

Play the 2022 All Ireland final 10 times and Limerick, who performed better than John Kiely expected (they had trained well without hitting the scintillating levels of previous final buildups), win it seven, even eight times. Three or four of those times they win it by six points and counting.

The version of the contest that took place 12 days ago, however, was the one where Kilkenny’s focus, cohesion and — ta dah! — spirit left a puck of the ball in it at the end. In much the same way Galway won the quarter-final in this universe, on the day it was played, and Cork won it in a myriad of alternate universes where they took their first-half goal chances, Jack Grealish’s long ball was safely fielded by Patrick Collins and so on. The controllables that weren’t controlled.

Whether Noreside folk ought to have been quite so satisfied in defeat is a question only they can answer. That the MacCarthy Cup holders always had another gear was indisputable, responding to John Donnelly’s 47th-minute leveller with three points on the bounce and to Richie Hogan’s 62nd-minute leveller with five points on the bounce, the withering kick for the finishing line that sealed the issue. Had the challengers somehow managed to scramble a goal in injury time you just know their opponents would have produced another response.

On which point, are we now guilty of forgetting that Galway hurled at least as well in the semi-final as Kilkenny did in the final, if not downright better? And looked likelier winners, however fleetingly, than Kilkenny did at any stage?

Limerick’s campaign will eventually become a module on further-education courses. It was a triumph of strategy, tactics, planning, logistics, the works. After a 2021 championship of four outings they had to gear themselves for a 2022 championship of seven outings.

Despite being obliged to make and mend without the services of the dual Hurler of the Year, they paced themselves perfectly and reserved their fitness for Croke Park, segueing from hitting 0-27 in the semi-final to hitting 1-31 on the big day. Not a drop in the tank went to waste.

The template for 2023 is already set. Get the heavy training done during the league; target the first two fixtures in Munster to get four points on the board; reach the provincial decider and win it, thereby guaranteeing a month’s break before the All Ireland semi-final.

The latter stage will remain the juncture of maximum opportunity for the pack.

Coming off their four-week hiatus, Limerick were far more vulnerable on July 3 than they were on July 17. Shades here of a discovery Cyril Farrell’s Galway made over the years: the players who weren’t at quite 100% for the semi-final would train on and be 100% for the final.

Any insider in a position to supply a readout of the winners’ collective pulse rate in the closing ten minutes last week knows where to get us. They run as fast as ever, they hurl as fast as ever but they think more slowly than ever. Ice not so much in their veins as in their brains. They never get flustered, they’re never let down by their first touch, the sliotar never does anything other than to stick and in case of emergency they have an option nobody else has: the out ball to Hayes or Hegarty.

Most in-game issues, as you’ve been informed here ad nauseam, are coaching issues. Limerick are a symphony to elevated coaching; Kilkenny’s All Ireland display was evidence that better habits cannot be hardwired in the space of six weeks; Cork were an object lesson in inferior defensive coaching.

SOME last observations. It is always a privilege to observe greatness, that rare flower. And the Limerick of 2022 are more likeable, being more warm-blooded, than the Limerick of 2020.

Erwin Schrodinger, the noted cat owner, would have been intrigued by Galway, the second-best team in the country when they’re facing Limerick and the fifth or sixth-best team in the country when facing anyone else. They’ll remain the greatest threat.

Conor Whelan entered the All Ireland semi-final in the centre of the frame for Hurler of the Year. Presumably the All Star selectors will not forget this small detail.

We’ve long been familiar with the concept of teams trying to convert backs into forwards, usually with limited success. The Limerick defence contains not one but two converted forwards. That Barry Nash and Declan Hannon like to attack, albeit not at the expense of their guard dog duties, promotes creative thinking and offers an additional weapon. But it’s hard to see it becoming a trend.

The defenestration of Colm Bonnar.

It was a tawdry little episode although we shouldn’t lose sight of one thing. Should Tipperary thrive under Liam Cahill the clumsiness with which Bonnar was despatched will be forgotten.

Nonetheless, it is no stretch to suggest that the Tipp county board executive should be having a long hard chat with themselves, not so much for dispensing with Bonnar as for appointing him. If he was the right placeholder manager last October he ought to be the right placeholder manager now.

Let’s face it, a management dream team of Paddy Leahy, Babs Keating and Liz Howard might have done better with the Tipp of 2022 but not by much. With Seamus Callanan in situ they would probably have beaten Waterford and possibly beaten Clare. Bonnar was categorically not one of those lucky generals beloved of Napoleon.

Apropos of Cahill, he now knows how to handle, and not to handle, the demands of a provincial round robin. Betcha any money Tipperary will not be seen at the business end of the 2023 National League.

With youngsters at one end, veterans at the other end and not a lot in the middle, Kilkenny’s run to the final may end up amounting to much the same as Cork’s 2013 All Ireland appearance did for them. An outlier that portended precisely nothing.

Many Shannonsiders of uncertain age would have been happy — nay, overjoyed — to witness one All Ireland victory, and were it the poxiest, most forgettable All Ireland victory in history so much the better. What they got to witness instead, unbelievably, was John Kiely’s Limerick.

Sadly not everyone lived to see the high days. Modern communications being what they are, one trusts they’ve heard the good news on the other side.