Goal-hungry Cats feast on listless Limerick
ONLY time will tell whether this was the laying down of a marker or the prodding of a beast.
What is certain is that whichever way this potentially historic season rolls now, Limerick have been handed their reference point, although what will resonate with John Kiely is that yesterday they were handed a lesson.
Kilkenny will line out in the Allianz League final in a fortnight’s time, a result which is likely to have been cheered as loudly in Clare and Tipperary as it was in Stripeyman land.
After all, it removes the two Munster counties from the horns of a dilemma – up until yesterday evening it looked like they had to make a call as to whether it would be better to lose to Limerick twice inside a month or just the once.
Now, should Limerick play like this, they may have not to worry about losing at all.
Thing is, the champions were so rank poor yesterday that it ridicules the very idea of reading anything into it other than the likelihood that when we see them again in a month’s time in Ennis, they will be something closer to their old selves.
Mind, even then they are certain to bear the scars of this result given that last July’s All-Ireland final man of the match Peter Casey looks certain to miss that game after being shown a straight red card at the start of the final quarter for striking Paddy Deegan.
Not that the incident had any relevance to the outcome. Kilkenny already had Eoin Cody sent off at the start of the second half after picking up a rather harsh second yellow card, and yet they were still the better side by a distance.
For most of the opening half, this was Limerick as we have not seen them and they have not seen themselves for the bones of a decade – disorganised, distracted and devilishly lucky to be trailing by just two goals at the interval.
Only the shirts and the start was the same, getting off to a flier when Aaron Gillane took advantage of a Cillian Buckley slip in the third minute to fire low and hard to the Kilkenny net, a goal sandwiched by Diarmaid Byrnes and Cathal O’Neill points.
It all changed in the blur of three minutes and a sequence of five Limerick lost puck-outs in a row that yielded 2-2 in little over three minutes, Eoin Cody gathering Jordan Molloy’s centre to fire home the first in the 10th minute. A little over a minute later, the Ballyhale man was in again and while his goalbound drive was beaten away by Nicky Quaid, it fell kindly into Luke Hogan’s path to score.
It was a period that rocked the champions to the point that they were almost unrecognisable. After that start, they would manage just four points and shoot nine wides in the firest of the half, most of which fell in the ‘woeful’ category.
At the other end, they were racked with so much doubt that every time Kilkenny attacked they only had goals on their minds, with the only wonder that the Cats had to wait until the 30th minute when the excellent TJ Reid slipped behind the inexperienced Aaron Costello to catch Paddy Deegan’s centre before firing to the net.
But the source of that goal went to the core of Limerick’s dysfunction – seeing an off-colour Cian Lynch having his pocket picked by John Donnelly summed up their flat, almost leggy, performance.
They were beaten all around the pitch, but it was the manner in which they were dominated around the middle which jarred, to the point that they coughed up 11 of their puck-outs.
The expectation that they would come storming back in the second period – heightened by Cody’s dismissal and their well earned reputation as thirdquarter specialists – never materialised. And even with the extra man, they were left hanging on.
The final scoreline failed miserably to capture the gulf between the sides, the four clear-cut goal chances that Kilkenny spurned on top of the three they scored offering a far more accurate measure of that gap.
More than anything, this was a win that Derek Lyng’s team needed, the county’s first against Limerick since the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final and with it the promise that Limerick’s drive for five will be no cruise.
You suspect that John Kiely will bleed that reminder for all it is worth.