Clare's 26-year wait for Munster title 'inconceivable' to Ger Hegarty

4 September 1994; Ger Hegarty of Limerick during the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final match between Limerick and Offaly at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile

On one hand, Ger Hegarty can count the number of times he faced Clare in championship in 13 years. If not later this year than next season which will mark his 10th, his son Gearóid will be requiring a third.

Hegarty senior’s starting championship debut in 1986 came against the neighbours and didn’t last a half. It was another four years before he saw them in Munster again. “Now it’s guaranteed every year,” he reports not with regret but relish.

Thirty years ago, Clare were the opposition Limerick vanquished to end 13 years without a Munster title. Their 25-point tally in Thurles that day was a haul he knows “wouldn’t be out of kilter” with those struck by his offspring’s team.

“The 1994 game was probably a bit easier than expected,” he recollects of a game in which Mike Galligan shot seven points from play. “Don’t forget what Clare did to us the following year but we felt good going into that game having beaten Cork and Waterford. We were emerging and having lost to Cork in the final in ’92 hell-bent on winning one and that’s the way it materialised.

“But any match between Limerick and Clare, Limerick can win on a Sunday and Clare can go out and beat Limerick on the Monday and so on. The rivalry is so intense. It’s Celtic v Rangers, United v City. Anything can happen.” 

The 1992 final was the only time between Paudie Fitzmaurice lifting the cup in ’81 and Gary Kirby raising it again that Limerick featured in the provincial showdown. Somehow, that inexperience didn’t matter for the group, says Hegarty.

“We certainly didn’t feel the weight of the Munster pressure but we would always have felt that of 1973. That was always there. Every year we went back to training in January, it was there.

“Limerick have always produced great players and at the start of the season we always felt we would get to September. We always felt we had as good a chance as anyone else.

“The 13 years we bridged to Limerick’s last Munster, that wouldn’t have been mentioned in the dressing room. Our problem was getting to Croke Park in September. The ’73 team, that was a greater weight than anything else.” 

In contrast, Clare’s yoke now is all provincial and nothing to do with their 2013 All-Ireland success. “I find it almost inconceivable that Clare, who are a truly magnificent hurling county, have not won a Munster title in 26 years.

“It’s almost unbelievable for a team who are sitting at the top table are not winning Munster titles. It’s incomprehensible to me for such a brilliant county. My mind would suggest they should be winning a couple every decade, not waiting 26 years. I can’t put my finger on the ‘why’ there.” Either that record or another tumbles in Thurles on Sunday as Limerick could eclipse the great feats of Cork teams between 1901 and ’05 and ’75 and ’79 and claim the first provincial SHC six-in-a-row. Perhaps it’s the prospect of the All-Ireland quintuple but the possibility of creating that piece of Munster history hasn’t been a talking point in the county.

“No, it’s not,” Hegarty agrees. “I’m acutely aware Limerick are going for six-in-a-row in Munster, which to me is a phenomenal thing to have a cut at, but I don’t hear a whole lot of talk about it.

“The mantra of the players is taking one game at a time, see where that leads us and the public tend to take their lead from the players. They’re not caught up in history. They just want to be as successful as they can for as long as they can.” 

Hegarty is no stuck-in-the-mud. He doesn’t bother Gearóid but they speak enough for him to know what he puts into his craft and the contrast to his playing days. “The modern hurlers in all counties are superior to what we were in the 80s and 90s. Their hands, their ball-striking, it’s exceptional to watch.

“People are coming to games in their throngs now because they see that the players as well as being so fit and so strong are so skillful too. It all adds up.” 

But he does envy the amount of championship hurling they are guaranteed. The intensity of the current format may mean a tweak has a great bearing than the qualifier system but don’t try telling him they have it easier.

“Every game I played was a knock-out match and the psychology of a knock-out match is very different to the league format that’s there now. You trained five months for a match and if you twisted your ankle or pulled your hamstring or had the flu and missed the game and you were beaten the season was over.

“Whereas the new structure allows for players to get over injuries and their whole season doesn’t boil down to next Sunday. It’s a brilliant structure and has made the Munster championship what it is.” 

Like the Flanagans, Finns, Nashs and Quaids, the Hegarty bloodline has been strong for Limerick and for about 30 hours last year there was a possibility Gearóid was going to follow in Ger’s boots and take his place in the Limerick half-back line.

Given the No.7 jersey for the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway with Declan Hannon being ruled out, he ended up in his familiar spot on the right wing. “Gearóid doesn't play six well!” smiled Kiely in the post-match interview. But watching him grow up it had been where his father had imagined he would have been suited.

“I probably would have seen him facing the ball because of his physique and strength, but he’s really redefined the No.10 role. Other counties have done it with different positions but he’s almost made the No10 jersey his own.

“He’s a flexible guy. If you said to him to play in the corner-back in the morning, he’d be happy so long as he gets a shirt but he’s really blossomed into a fantastic half-forward.”