Premier running into the juggernaut.. but holding an ace up sleeve is wise
YOU could say Limerick have been the invisible All-ireland champions this year – but that will change this evening.
John Kiely will be quietly pleased because the team has picked up three wins without attracting much attention, keeping the hype at bay.
And that’s particularly important in this a year where Limerick bid for something unprecedented in the game’s history. The hype will find Limerick eventually whether they like it or not eventually, but best to keep it to a minimum when you can.
There was a taboo around hype when I first joined the Limerick panel in 2012 because there was no better county at feeding and believing it.
For too long, it crept into what was happening out on the pitch.
Now, there has been plenty of hype around the team over the past number of years but that was it – it was only around them and the maturity was there within the group to deal with it, particularly once they got that first All-ireland in 2018.
But it will be of a different nature this year given what’s at stake and they’ll have to be wary of that.
Coming into the second week in
March,
Limerick still haven’t played a home game and have yet to be on live TV so people aren’t talking about them and nobody has a clue what is going on with them.
It’s perfect really, from a Limerick point of view, six weeks out from the Championship.
Granted, they beat
Dublin by 18 points a t
Croke Park but the narrative after that focused more on how bad Dublin were. There’s no hiding place tonight as they’re live on television against their neighbours and fierce rivals, Tipperary, who have made a fast start to the League again.
They met in the NHL semifinal last year, a game I watched alongside
Liam Sheedy and his daughter in the stand. Like the rest of the Tipp crowd present, they were wound up for it, feeding off Liam Cahill’s animated body language on the sideline, as the players did.
Limerick eventually pulled away in the second half.
A year on, I wonder what Cahill and Mickey Bevans’ approach will be. Last year you could understand them going after it; the first year of a new management, coming into the Gaelic Grounds to face the All-ireland champs.
Do they approach this game in a similar manner? I‘d say no, certainly not.
If I was in Cahill’s position and I had a few players that I wanted to find out about, I’d toss them into the action in Pairc Ui Chaoimh and see who sinks and who swims.
He has built up credit from last year and won’t be judged on anything that happens in this League as they’ve already effectively secured a top three spot which seals a spot in next year’s top flight. That’s not to say they should breeze into this one and leave themselves vulnerable to a rout. They will still want to win, but Cahill could do worse than leaving tricks up his sleeve for when it really counts.