Limerick for Liam? It’s not mission impossible

Damian Stack looks at some of the stories making backpage news over the past seven days

HE’S standing there with his hands in his pockets.

He’s your GAA man from central casting. Grey slacks, shirt and pull-over with Limerick green and white around his neck where on any other Sunday a tie would sit. He carries a look of utter bemusement, shock and just a little disgust.

He’s standing there, head turned slightly towards a man as responsible as any for the horror that had just befallen the people of Limerick. To say their dreams were dashed would be an understatement, they were shredded in one of the most dramatic turnarounds in the history of hurling.

Bad enough as it was that Limerick failed to win the final, bad enough as it was that Offaly overwhelmed them with two goals and five points in the space of five minutes, it was worse still that the man in the Offaly bainisteoir’s bib was one of their own.

And not just any Limerick man, Eamonn Cregan was more, much more, than that. He was then, and remains to this day, a Limerick icon. In that most famous picture from the 1994 final the poor man looks every bit as haunted as his compatriot.

He wanted to win the All Ireland that year with Offaly, of course he did, but not like that and certainly not like that against his beloved Limerick. Conflicting emotions were to be expected and veteran snapper Ray McManus captured the whole gamut with that single click of his camera.

Even now, over twenty years on, it remains the defining moment of Limerick hurling. To paraphrase Bono – and we promise it’s the last time we ever will on these pages – they’re stuck in a moment they can’t get out of.

There this sense that Limerick are nearly men, destined always to miss out, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. You could make the argument that this was the case after the All Ireland semi-final last year. The Shannonsiders were the better team and, yet, it was the Cats who marched on.

An unfair interpretation? Absolutely. Until they finally get the monkey off their backs, until they win that long awaited All Ireland that’s just the way it’s going to be. There will always be doubts.

Instead of looking at how good they were against Kilkenny last August, we instead focussed simply on the fact of the defeat, not the manner of it. If any other team had done what Limerick did last year they’d have been spoken of as a coming force.

Instead pre-championship attention turned to Waterford and, for a time, Cork. There’s nothing wrong with that. Waterford are impressive, Cork do have potential, but so too do Limerick.

Right now there isn’t as much as a hair’s breadth between the top hurling sides. It’s eminently plausible that any of five or six counties could claim the Liam McCarthy Cup come the first Sunday of September and, to our mind, Limerick’s claim is as valid as any.

Their mediocre National League campaign – they failed, yet again, to secure promotion to Division 1A – hasn’t taken away from the threat they pose in the race for the Munster championship.

Their fundamentals remain strong. We saw that on Sunday when they defeated Clare fair and squad – we’re not even going to entertain Davy Fitzgerald’s latest strop, save to say he looked more than a little ridiculous standing before Claire McNamara, looking at his feet with quivering lip, like a petulant five year old who just had his toy taken away from him.

The way Gavin O’Mahony drove the team forward from centre-back ought to give Limerick real confidence ahead of the visit of Tipperary to the Gaelic Grounds, but more than that the emergence of Cian Lynch as a player ready to mix it on the biggest stage of all will warm Limerick hearts.

Even with the emergence of Shane Dowling and Declan Hannon over the past couple of seasons, one got the sense that Limerick could have done with at least one more quality forward.

Lynch ( below) has the right pedigree – he’s Ciarán Carey’s nephew after all – and from what we saw in how he gave Domhnall O’Donovan the run-around he’s got the self confidence to light up the championship this year and for years to come.

The game with the Banner was no classic. The first half absolutely stank the place out of it. Even then Limerick showed they can mix it up and grind it out. James Ryan and Páidí O’Brien more than coped in difficult conditions. And, then, when they had to open it up in the second half the Treaty men could do that too. To say that Limerick have it all would be to over-egg the pudding, but they stand a good a chance as most to win this year’s All Ireland title. Not that we’re saying that they will for definite. It’s far too early in the year to give quite so much hostage to

fortune.