THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Former Limerick boss Kearns still has huge regrets over 2004 final
LIAM KEARNS is not a man for regrets but the presence of Limerick in a Munster SFC final in Killarney on Saturday afternoon only serves to remind him of what might have been. Twenty-nine minutes into the replay of the 2004 Munster final and his native Kerry were choking on the dust his Limerick team had kicked in their faces.
They were supposed to have missed their chance the previous Sunday at the Gaelic Grounds when Darragh Ó Sé clawed a couple of Eoin Keating free-kicks out of the air at the death, allowing a Kerry team under rookie manager Jack O’Connor to get out of Dodge.
But that Limerick outfit were not a group to cower in the face of an assumption. Inside 15 seconds of the replay, Stephen Kelly had found the Kerry net and when John Quane punched over the bar six minutes before half-time, they were seven points up.
That is the closest they have been in the last 122 years to winning the Munster Championship.
It was gone in a blur, a couple of goals, including a contentious penalty, meant their lead had evaporated by the break but they pushed Kerry all the way to the line in a four-point game – a Kingdom side that would end that year as League and All-Ireland champions.
But the sense that they deserved something more tangible than credit is as strong now for Kearns as it was back then.
‘The Tipperary group have a Munster medal and they deserved it. That group of Clare footballers in 1992 have a Munster medal and they deserved it,’ says Kearns. ‘And that Limerick group more than deserved a Munster medal. I would be very proud of the boys but very disappointed for them. It would be a huge regret that they did not get a Munster medal.’
It could still happen, albeit the odds of it happening at the weekend – Kerry are 1/100 – are between slim and none.
But success is a relative concept and the current Limerick side do not need a medal to validate its progress.
And the biggest reason why goes right back to Kearns’ dugout.
For six years, including with an Under-21 team that reached the 2000 All-Ireland final, Billy Lee served on his management team. When it comes to deserving, it is hard to make for a more compelling case than the one that can be made for the Limerick manager. When the county board sought a successor to John Brudair in the autumn of 2016, Lee was on the sub-committee charged with finding the replacement, but the penny dropped in the absence of the Newcastlewest man who was on a family holiday. It was decided there might not be a need to look outside the committee room.
It was an honour for Lee but looked a hopeless and doomed project from the outside. After his first season, he lost 17 members of his panel while 53 players famously declined an invite to come and play for Limerick.
Three years ago, they were the 31st ranked team in the country after finishing second from bottom in Division 4.
‘I would be honest with you, I think a lot of fellows would have walked away and had enough after two years but Billy loves Limerick football and he persevered,’ suggests Kearns.
‘It is never about Billy. It is all about Limerick football, to try and leave Limerick football in a better place. Billy does not have an ego, he is not into doing it for himself – it is what he can do for others and Limerick football.
‘In my set-up, when he first came in he was a fantastic bridge between myself and the players because he is a people person, he gets on really well with the players. Everyone has great time for him.’
It has been his unifying presence that has ensured that the Treaty’s best available footballers want to play for the county team. And, of course, this at a time when Limerick has produced their greatest ever hurling team.
In a way, though, the latter underlines what Lee has achieved. He has consistently declared that John Kiely’s team have been a source of inspiration rather than envy.
That both codes are thriving at the same time would suggest those words ring true. It was not always like that.
When Limerick football reached its zenith under Kearns – they also lost in the League semi-final to Kerry that season by just two points – he was forced into a corner and threatened to pull the pin.
With half a dozen dual players on his panel – Brian Begley, Stephen Lucey, Mark Keane, Mike O’Brien, Conor Fitzgerald and Mark O’Riordan – they were given an ultimatum to either give up football or get out of the hurling.
‘It was our fifth year and we had targeted it. If the hurlers left I was going to step down on the spot but the hurlers did not leave and we backed it up by getting to a National League semi-final and a Munster final,’ he recalls.
The days of ultimatums may be over, but the reality is that in counties like Limerick and Tipperary, Kearns leading the latter to a first All-Ireland semi-final appearance in 85 years in 2016, being the second code still has consequences.
Gearóid Hegarty is at the front of the pack to be named hurler of the year for the second time inside three years, but he started out his inter-county life as a footballer.
‘Gearóid Hegarty was the best midfielder in Limerick and that was before he filled out his frame. He went hurling and now he is one of the best in the country but he was going to be, I have absolutely no doubt, one of the best midfielders in the country if he stayed playing football.
‘It is the same with Tipperary. If Peter Acheson had stayed around, if Ciaran McDonald had not got injured, if Colin Riordan had not gone to Australia, I often wonder what would Tipperary have achieved. And if I had Steven O’Brien (who opted for the hurlers) in 2016, how far could we have gone?’ wonders Kearns.
And it is fighting that nature that becomes the biggest challenge in sustaining the kind of momentum that Limerick are now enjoying. There is a fear next Saturday could take a wrecking ball to all that progress Lee has overseen. Unlike 2004, this Limerick team is coming from a very different place.
Kearns explained: ‘We were further down the road. We competed in Division 1 while this team has come from Division 4, through Division 3 and are now up to Division 2 but they have not been playing at the level we were playing at.
‘It is not realistic to expect them to win the game in Killarney but at the same time they will want their best performance and see where it takes them. ‘That is all that can be asked.’
That Limerick group more than deserved to win a Munster medal