TOM RYAN ON WHY TREATY CAN STUN CATS —
LAST Monday morning, you could not hear yourself in this county from people wailing at the heavens. Except we were not all shouting the same thing; half the county was cursing the devilish ghouls who impersonated upstanding Central Competitions Control Committee officials on the transistor and not only plucked our name out of the draw drum with Kilkenny but, as if to salt the agony, also demanded that we travel to the Lion’s Den that is otherwise known as Nowlan Park.
But in other homesteads like my own, we raised our voices and gave thanks for the great opportunity that has come gift-wrapped to us tonight — a chance to check the strength of our gut and our sticks in the game’s ultimate killing field.
The outcome for Limerick tonight will depend very much as to which constituency John Kiely and his players belonged to last Monday morning.
The hope is that they are with me and that they see this for the university it is; a place which if they make best use of will serve them well into the future.
And that’s the thing, right now for the first time in an age Limerick hurling is in a better place than Kilkenny and I have been waiting a long time to write that sentence.
I saw at first hand last week just what kind of talent is in the county as the Under 21s torched Tipperary.
I am not getting carried away with that result — it was a pitiful Tipperary side weakened by the desire of their management to fast-track some of last year’s minors — but the quality of this Limerick team has been well sign-posted.
They are to my eye a better side than the one which won last year’s All-Ireland and also superior to any one of those teams which won those three All-Irelands in a row at the start of the noughties. They really are that good and I write that as someone who is deeply sceptical of what underage success can deliver. In fact, sometimes it Opportunity: Treaty boss John Kiely can hinder it in that young players can be lured into thinking that after winning an underage championship there is nothing left for them to learn.
If you don’t believe that to be the case let me refer to the less than bountiful dividend those three-in-a-row winning teams yielded Limerick hurling.
Outside of their talent, what excites is that a lot of the those on the field for Limerick — and that did not include Diarmuid Byrnes and Ger Hegarty who were both injured — like Cian Lynch, Kyle Hayes, Barry Nash, Tom Morrissey and Peter Casey are already in the process of making that step-up.
They have already experienced what it is like to hurl at the highest level but this will be on a whole different level tonight.
They are facing a battle-hardened team who will be desperate to show their own that they are still driven by ambition and will be desperate to defy those who believe them to be a spent force.
And they have some great players, Paul Murphy, Cillian Buckley, Colin Fennelly and, of course, TJ Reid who will lead the way for the rest.
But they are shy of a couple of more leaders; they desperately need Michael Fennelly back and they need Richie Hogan — who has seen injury rob him of some of his magic — become a beguiling presence again.
But even if all happened they would still only be half the team they once were.
That is the bottom line here; Kilkenny are vulnerable and are living and playing on borrowed time.
What is more, the pressure on them is the same as it ever was.
Brian Cody, his players and their supporters will only measure success on the basis on whether they win the All-Ireland or not.
They would not consider that making it to a semi-final or final could be spun as a success of sorts and that’s one of the things I like about them.
Sometimes it really does have to be all duck or no dinner.
And should they lose to Limerick, well that would be simply catastrophic for this Kilkenny side and they are painfully aware of that.
Now if you are a team in decline — and deep down Kilkenny know that even though they won’t admit it — and you are shouldering that kind of pressure, it would not take that much for you to buckle.
In contrast, Limerick can skip into Nowlan Park tonight under no such stress.
There is no All-Ireland in this team this year and they know it.
They also know that if they lose here, not a single eyebrow will be raised in surprise.
The only measure of their success will be on how they perform and how they are facilitated in delivering that performance boils
down to a test of Kiely’s management skills.
He has set out on a road which he must stick with in putting his faith in young talent but if they are to be ready for this test, he will also have to make changes.
Unfortunately, given the dummy team culture in place we really will not know what shape those changes will take until just before throw-in.
There are a couple of ones which are crying out to be made; Kyle Hayes needs to be moved to his natural half-back position, Shane Dowling needs to be moved from the wing into full-forward to spear-head the attack and allow Barry Nash to slip in alongside him to add to the menace.
Limerick have options here and they have hope.
That can carry them a long way but, even allowing for all that, I still don’t expect them to win.
But it is how they carry the fight, how true they stay to Limerick’s traditional style — and we all saw in 2014 how effective that was against Kilkenny — and how they keep going to the very end that will be the measure of their display.
Kilkenny are playing to win a match, Limerick are playing for the right to be the team we believe they can be in the years ahead.
Tonight there really does not have to be a loser.