Refreshingly ruthless
Limerick’s big danger lies in Munster bearpit
The Munster SHC will tower above everything else in the GAA world over the next month. It refreshes the parts other provincial championships can’t reach. Leinster hurling will boil down to whether Dublin or Wexford qualify to get beaten in the quarter-finals while the provincial football competitions are largely irrelevant. The Munster championship will be charged with tension from the word go.
Competition and jeopardy make it special. Last year’s average winning margin was less than two points. Eleven matches saw two draws, four one-point wins and one two-point win.
It’s not always this close, but last year wasn’t a once-off. The average winning margin in 2018 was three points with three draws and something similar looms this year.
There’s a sudden-death feel about a province where four teams with genuine title pretensions must battle for three places. All would easily take third spot in Leinster. So in most years would Waterford, All-Ireland finalists just four years ago.
At a time when 24 games will be played in the football championship group stages to eliminate four teams, Munster is refreshingly ruthless. Two single-point defeats and a draw sufficed to send Cork packing last year.
No better example of the province’s pitfalls exists than Limerick’s 2023 travails. The ease with which the champions swept aside Kilkenny in the All-Ireland final lent an air of inevitability to their triumph. Hindsight made it easy to forget how close they’d come to elimination at provincial level.
Had Cork beaten Clare and Limerick lost to Tipperary, the four-in-a-row bid would have ended on May 21. Entering injury time, the first match was level while Tipp were leading the second. Clare won by a point, Limerick and Tipperary drew. No plan can take such fine margins into consideration.
Even then John Kiely’s side weren’t safe. Defeat by Cork in their final game would also have doomed them. Limerick edged it by a point after a couple of key refereeing decisions went their way. Once reprieved, they pulverised the opposition in Croke Park, helped by not having to face Munster opposition outside the province.
Kilkenny’s win over Clare and Galway’s over Tipp in the knockout stages didn’t prove Leinster is on a par with Munster. Teams from the latter province are disadvantaged by a gruelling provincial campaign. Galway and Kilkenny had the luxury of breezing through theirs.
The truth is that Munster, with seven of the last eight All-Ireland champions, the last five National League winners and 11 of the last 12 All-Ireland under 20 champs, is just better. Its competitive intensity is matched by its quality.
That’s why the biggest danger to Limerick’s five-in-a-row hopes is being caught on the hop in Munster. They’ll get the best possible check of their combat readiness next Sunday in Ennis. A shock defeat by Clare landed Limerick in trouble this time last year and the Banner have improved since. Their league title victory suggested a team reaching their peak under Brian Lohan. Clare are in the same kind of ‘now or never’ position Waterford were in two years ago.
They’re unlikely to crumble in the same way. Should Limerick emerge from Cusack Park with a win it’ll be hard to see anyone stopping them. Lose and the meetings with Tipperary and Cork will be fraught with danger. A sense of expectation attends the traditional kings. With Limerick’s invincibles built round the All-Ireland under 21 winning teams of 2015 and 2017, the annexation of that title by Tipperary in 2018 (then U20) and 2019, and Cork in 2020, 2021 and 2023 boded well for both.
In Liam Cahill and Pat Ryan they have managers who’ve given hope to two of the country’s most demanding fan bases. Cork’s early 2023 exit didn’t give rise to the usual gloom because a young team had been so unfortunate. A win over Clare and draws against Cork and Limerick saw hopes soar in Tipp before losses to Waterford and Galway brought things back to earth.
Last year still represented progress for Tipp and Cork too but it was something of a honeymoon period for two first-year managers. This year, while nobody expects an All-Ireland, failure to get out of Munster would be a serious setback.
The sides have a lot in common. No one scored more goals in the league, Tipperary hit 12 and Cork 11, and their attacking potential makes them very dangerous. Their biggest problems may have more to do with psychology than personnel.
Cork would have benefited from an extended league run. They were denied that, and a crack at an outof-sorts Limerick in the semi-final, by Kilkenny.
Their performance, going eight points behind early on, fighting back to take the lead and losing to an injury-time point showed how their form can oscillate wildly within a single game. What Cork really need is to tough out a narrow victory against top-class opposition.
Tipp’s most worrying league performance was their semi-final loss to Clare where a tendency for heads to drop when things are going against them, apparent last year against Galway, showed itself again. These crises of confidence may derive from their catastrophic 2022 campaign.
Yet the draw has been kind to Cahill’s team who’ll finish with home games against Cork and Clare. The Banner must also travel to Cork which means defeat by Limerick will immediately place them under pressure.
It’s not looking good for Waterford. Davy Fitzgerald has confounded expectations before and last year’s win over Tipperary showed Waterford can’t be entirely written off. Two home games, against Cork and Tipp, give them a chance to build momentum. Fail there and things could be very ugly when they travel to Ennis and Limerick.
There’s always been a mystique about the Munster championship. In 1931 the writer Daniel Corkery described its hurling final as the quintessential Irish experience. It hasn’t always lived up to its legend but right now Irish sport can offer no better spectacle.
This month and the next the real action all happens down south.