John Fogarty: Where would Limerick be without '73?

Kilkenny goalkeeper Noel Skehan in action against Ned Rea of Limerick during the All Ireland Hurling Final match between Kilkenny and Limerick at Croke Park, in Dublin. Photo by Connolly Collection/Sportsfile

For a team making their own traditions, who have secured over a third of their county’s 11 All-Ireland senior hurling titles, this Limerick team have never made any secret of their disdain for history.

“We're not a group burdened by past lives,” Tom Morrissey famously declared in 2018 after a first championship win over Kilkenny since 1973. And not a group that looks back for inspiration either, as John Kiely indicated last week when asked if they might lean on this the 50th anniversary of Limerick beating Kilkenny to claim seventh senior All-Ireland. 

“No, zero. Zero. That’s not the way we operate, that’s just not the way we operate.” 

From unlimited heartbreak to unbridled happiness, the selective amnesia has worked for Limerick but would they be where they are now if Kiely wasn’t so repulsed by the hammering by Tipperary in the 2009 All-Ireland semi-final that he decided to enter inter-county management?

Would they be where they are now had 1973 not made such an indelible impression on JP McManus? Kiely had only turned one when McManus’s South Liberties clubmate Eamonn Grimes led Limerick up the Hogan Stand steps but McManus was 22 and snuck himself through a small window high in the dressing room to celebrate with the team.

Save for 2020 when Covid restrictions disallowed it and he had to make do with a phone call with Kiely on the field afterwards, McManus has entered a similarly jubilant Limerick dressing room three more times in the past five years albeit by more conventional means. The team sponsor since 2005, the academy he, Gerry and their family put in place with Joe McKenna, of the ’73 team, has honed some of the greatest players to wear the green jersey. 

As ’73 centre-back Eamonn Cregan said three years ago, “Without JP, Gerry and Joe McKenna, without their backup and help, we’d be nowhere.” 

For the 40th anniversary of ‘73, McManus combined the occasion with the opening of Staker Wallace’s new grounds, which he funded. The current Limerick and Kilkenny teams played a challenge game in Fr John Ryan Memorial Park as their predecessors from that final were wined, dined, suited and booted.

“I’m telling you, for a crowd that got bet in an All-Ireland, we got suits and shoes from JP,” recalled Noel Skehan, Kilkenny’s goalkeeper that year. “We could do with losing another but oh Jesus not next Sunday. They’re a great crowd, the Limerick boys. We still play golf with a lot of them. (Eddie) Keher and myself were only over there a few weeks ago – the South Liberties boys were celebrating the 50 years.” 

It wasn’t long ago that the 1973 team felt their achievement was a noose around the necks of modern Limerick teams. Prior to the 2018 All-Ireland semi-final against Cork, the late Eamonn Rea only agreed to speak to this newspaper on the stipulation ’73 wasn’t to be discussed for fear it would “haunt” Kiely’s side.

Now, with Limerick in their greatest hurling era, they can remember it a lot more fondly. At an event to commemorate the ’73 team before the game against Cork in May, full-back Pat Hartigan said: “I think what makes it a wonderful achievement is Limerick won an All-Ireland back in 1940 and it took 33 years and we bridged the gap by winning one, and it took 45 years for Limerick to win in 2018. It (’73) broke a 78-year cycle, which would have been quite dramatic in the context of Limerick and always being regarded as one of the top hurling counties.” 

A substitute on the day, future Limerick manager Tom Ryan felt the winning display wasn’t a great one. “Kilkenny were defeated because they were without three or four players. We were lucky to beat London in the semi-final. The match that counted that year was the Munster final in Thurles. Richie Bennis’ was a famous score like (Ciarán) Carey’s in ’96. It was most unbelievable in Thurles against a very good Tipperary team.

“In the All-Ireland final, things went our way. Kilkenny are always very hard to beat and it was a fortunate win but nobody begrudged Limerick that win because they were a long time waiting. Cregan played centre-back and played a huge part. Seán Foley was the man, the star player. Cregan, Grimes, the two Hartigans, McKenna… they were in the top bracket.

“It was a very genuine team and should have won more but the management and coaching in Limerick at the time was very low. We were behind things in that era as regards coaching as well. They deserved the All-Ireland. We left one after us in ’74, I thought. To get to that final again against Kilkenny was a fine achievement.” 

As Ryan alluded to, Kilkenny were without Keher who had a broken collarbone, Eamonn Morrissey, Jim Treacy and Kieran Purcell, who came on as a substitute. And yet they had been expected to beat a county playing in its first final since that ’40 victory. The game also marked a 19-year-old Brian Cody’s first senior final.

The dreadful weather contributed to a disappointing 58,009 crowd, the worst in 15 years. “Wind and rain, they were a bitch,” recalls Skehan, who was forced over the goal line for Mossie Dowling’s goal. “It took them a long time to put us away. The goal had a hell of a say in it but that goal wouldn’t be allowed now.

“I’d say the 1973 Leinster final (v Wexford) was the best performance I was ever involved in with a Kilkenny team. Then to turn around and lose so many and not win the All-Ireland was a pity. But they were always that bit better than us. They were a fair team.

“I want to steer away from saying we would have won if we had all the lads because you’ll never know that. We weren’t playing with 11 or 12 lads, we were playing with 15 and it wouldn’t say a lot about the boys who played that day. It’s unfair to them.” 

Ryan, who led the county to two All-Ireland finals in three years in the mid-1990s, likes that Limerick don’t refer to what went before them. “History to me doesn’t count. What goes on the next Sunday is all that matters. I don’t look because I’ve no control over that. In Limerick, we were looking back a lot and the thing we should have done earlier was put in the work to bring it back up and that was the problem of the leadership in the county board and among some players.

“We made serious progress when I was there and on from that again we dropped it. The focus wasn’t there. Our main loss in the last 50 years that I can remember and I can remember more than 50 because I’m 79, was lack of coaching. We had no fucking coaching. I hurled 10 years with Limerick and I was never told what I was doing was right or wrong.

“This Limerick team is a good team but the managerial back-up and coaching they have is there. (Paul) Kinnerk is the brains and him and Kiely have married well.”