Treaty triumph is fitting ending to a crazy year
Kiely’s men deserved and classy winners
ON TUESDAY night we held the Offaly county convention. In its own way, it summed up the strange year we’ve all had. It was held online via Microsoft Teams – a remote way of doing business that has now become part of our lives. You miss the human touch with so many meetings having to be held online, but we got through it.
I had to do a chairperson’s address which made me reflect further on the year just gone. We’re nine months on from Covid-19 coming into our lives and yet it feels like so long ago since the world felt normal.
Go back to that spring period when games were gone and the first lockdown came in – sport felt like it was well down the list of priorities. There was a genuine fear there about life. Nobody knew where it was all going.
I was involved in the community response in Offaly and what I saw gave me great faith in the GAA community in the county in the way people mobilised and did so much. It all had to be structured and focused and for me, the response was uplifting and so encouraging for the future.
After lockdown then, it was about getting back on the GAA ladder. I pushed hard for the games to return – while also feeling we had to take the right steps along the way. And that meant inter-county training not happening when it wasn’t meant to, then taking all the necessary steps to get back. We’ve seen since the lift the club championship and All-Ireland Championships have given to so many.
Which brought us to last Sunday and an All-Ireland final behindclosed doors. Despite shopping centres being full all over Dublin, no supporter was allowed through the turnstiles at Croke Park. And the better team won – which, I guess, represents some sort of normality after such a crazy year.
I was on commentary duty with RTÉ and made a point of keeping my match programme. While Croke Park might have been empty, this is one final that will always be remembered. We had the Bloody Sunday commemoration and such a powerful reminder of the past. Historically, this is one final that will also be remembered for events outside of the game.
It might have been a different format due to circumstances but there is no question mark over the winner. Once the county teams got back, everybody got the same crack of the whip. Tipperary and Limerick was played in a monsoon and the players had to adapt to all the different conditions.
Things didn’t all go Limerick’s way either from the start. They lost Mike Casey and Richie English to injury – two-thirds of the full-back line. The great Kilkenny team coped with losing players along the way to finals – JJ Delaney one year, Michael Fennelly another and Henry Shefflin too – but to lose two key players in the one line, I can’t think of another team who did that and still won the All-Ireland.
Dan Morrissey was switched from wing-back to full-back and Barry Nash filled in at corner-back. Both looked a little under pressure initially, Nash giving away a few frees early in the campaign. Overall though, the team as a whole only seemed to improve.
Nash became an important part of their defence. It’s an amazing story to go from wing-forward to being tried at wing-back and then in such a specialised position of corner-back. But last Sunday showed his value once more. When Nickie Quaid wants to go short from the puck-out, he’s the go-to man. His distribution then is just top class. There was one moment when Waterford tried to press with two players closing in on Declan Hannon but such was the speed and accuracy with which Nash pinged the ball to Hannon, it allowed the Limerick captain that split second to get the ball away to Kyle Hayes and then Limerick were away.
If Hayes went forward, it was Nash who covered for him. I watched him off the ball last Sunday – his movement and intelligence were brilliant to behold.
From one to 15, they are all brilliant hurlers. We saw the stats: average height 6ft2in, average weight 13st 11lbs, average age 25.
Much has been made of the two wing-forwards, Gearóid Hegarty and Tom Morrissey scoring 12 points between them, with Hegarty patrolling the field like a colossus.
‘THE WAY THE MANAGER CARRIES HIMSELF IS SO IMPRESSIVE’
We’ve all seen Henry Shefflin in full flow or Seamus Callanan but I don’t think I ever saw a lad score seven points so effortlessly in an All-Ireland final.
John Kiely seems to have the man-management touch. We saw the list of 20 names as part of an extensive management team and he has been able to pull all those parts together. He runs a school as well and, like Brian Cody with Kilkenny, it’s all about Limerick and their people, their spirit. The way he carries himself is so impressive and we saw a lot of that in the winning speech by captain Hannon.
They are serious about their hurling but serious, too, about how they represent Limerick – it’s very admirable.
The level of their performance is very worrying though for the chasing pack.
When Tipperary made a big breakthrough in 2010, it took them six years go come back; Clare didn’t come back after 2013.
So Limerick are different in that way. They won all 13 matches they played this year. They lost last year’s semi-final by a point so, conceivably, they might have put a three-in-a-row together l ast Sunday.
They look way ahead of where they were in 2018, even in the likes of Hegarty. While it feels like they’re at their peak, the age profile of the team would suggest there is more improvement to come.
Now it’s about their own determination and drive to stay up there.