In the white hot heat of battle, the Treaty will fight or fry
MY hope is that as the great thaw set in this week, it might serve as a little reminder to some of my giddy county folk that heat changes everything.
Look, I am not going to bellyache about Limerick hurling people losing the run of themselves with excitement, given that for large swathes of our existence optimism was about as plentiful as a sliced pan on a shop shelf last week.
But hope has to be tempered by reality and we should get an icy blast of that in Salthill tomorrow, which might be no bad thing.
It bothers me a little that some people are beginning to think that this Limerick team is the finished deal.
A recent conversation with a friend who knows which end of a hurl to hit the ball with nearly had me taking to the bed.
‘Tom, I have been to all the games and I honestly can’t see how a Na Piarsaigh player will get onto the team,’ insisted my man.
Seriously, thus far we have played Laois, Offaly, Dublin and Antrim and I hope that I don’t offend the sensibilities of hurling folk from those counties, but if you took the pick of those four teams all you would end up with is a handy Christy Ring Cup team.
Two of those counties, Laois and Antrim, will play in the Joe McDonagh Cup and, truth be told, Offaly should join them there.
Dublin will get better but even with the Cuala players back, they look to be in such a mess at the moment that you could not seriously consider them to be top level opposition.
So that is why some of our tribe need to take a chill pill before they deem that the likes of Shane Dowling — still the best full-forward in Ireland by a country mile — Kevin Downes, Ronan Lynch or Peter Casey are not good enough to start for the county team on the basis of what they have seen this spring.
That is why this game tomorrow is heaven-sent in providing Limbers erick supporters with a reality check and providing the players with the kind of stress-test that they are in such dire need of.
It is not that I am not excited about this Limerick team — we have some excellent young players all of whom have tasted AllIreland success at Under 21 level — but it is just that I am curious as to how they will hold up when faced with a serious challenge.
Players like Aaron Gillane, an exceptional talent who has been on fire this spring both in open play and from dead balls.
In his four games to date, he has racked up 3-32 — 3-9 from open play — which are the kind of num- that are designed to impress.
But that was racked up while riddling barrelled fish, but tomorrow he gets to swim with the sharks.
It is not that I fear for him — he is such a good player that I believe he should have seen regular gametime last season — but he needs to experience what it is like to play against a top class team who will also relish the prospect of getting back to playing meaningful competitive hurling.
You can’t buy that experience, certainly not when shopping in Laois, Offaly, Antrim and Dublin hurling retail outlets.
Another of Limerick’s bright young stars Cian Lynch also serves as a reminder that even the most gifted young talents have to ride a severe learning curve.
When he first arrived on the senior scene two seasons ago he was feted by the media for his bag of tricks, but you learn at this level that if you are popping balls over the head of an opponent no good can come from it. One day you will run into a Padraic Maher, or one of his like-minded defensive disciples, and you cotton on that the only thing that tricks like that get you is a taxi ride to the local A&E.
He is a different player this year, his body is filling out but he is also showing the mental maturity that is allowing him to hurl up a storm in the middle of the field. I don’t know if that is going to be his position longterm — again we might have a bit more clarity regarding that after tomorrow — but I do know that he is now primed to deliver on all that potential because he has been exposed to the kind of experience that still awaits some of his team-mates. And that is why if Limerick show enough tomorrow that they can push the All-Ireland champions hard, the result will not matter as much as people think. I expect Galway to be seriously motivated for this; they saw at first-hand — indeed they were the principle benefactors in more ways than one — the price that Tipperary paid for not taking the League seriously enough and I expect that they will respond to that.
I believe that the prize of promotion is over-hyped — it would still be welcomed in Limerick given their expulsion from the League’s top tier since 2010 — because we all know that the spring League has been displaced by a far more important one in the summer.
But that does not take away from the fact that both of these teams, for very different reasons, will view this as the opening Championship game of the year.
For Galway, it marks the end of their lap of honour and for Limerick it marks the start of a journey which will reveal if they are really as good as some believe they are.
Galway will win but if Limerick make them earn it there will be no losers.
Tomorrow Limerick get to swim with the sharks