The plastic Galwayman has spoken
You replied to me, dum dums
After getting a ticket through my club tonight. Over the fucking moon.
Cork county board gave an extra 30 or so tickets to every club that has a participant on the panel for Sunday. A great gesture.
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Kiss of death post.
I honestly think Cork are going to win. Cork have a great tradition of winning All Irelands where they were the underdogs, 1966, 1986, 1990 and 1999 the obvious examples. Even the great 3 in a row team of 76-78 had a hard time with Galway any time they met in a semifinal and yet when they got to the AI final found that bit extra. 2004 the same, even in 2013 they were robbed by the ref playing added on added on time.
I think the question is how are Limerick compared to the past few years and how are Cork compared to the last time the sides met in a serious contest in 2018. Limerick are more or less the same personnel wise, swap Casey for Mulcahy. Cork are a completely different side. The full back line is better with OâLeary and Downey, even if still a bit vulnerable. Millerick is a big loss but itâs still a better HB line than 2018. Midfield a complete clash of styles, but Corkâs running game could have the edge there. They simply have to break even at HF to win, I think Harnety could be the key here to cause disruption. But itâs the Cork inside line that could make the difference, Barrett and OâConnor will pose a threat that Limerick havenât seen in a knock out championship game since 2018 when Cork in all honesty should have won.
Cork by 2.
I think it is fair to say Cork were a far more experienced side in 2018 than Limerick. In the game Gillane missed two clear goal scoring chances in the first half that would have buried Cork in the same game. I would say the Limerick back line is actually stronger with Morrissey and Nash in the full back line, they can both win ball aerially where Casey and English would not have been as good fielding. Hayes at half back adds a completely different dimension to Limerick, he is the best attacking outlet in the country. As noted in 2018 Limerick were very inexperienced and the hardest thing for any team is to get over the line, they were 10 points a better team than Galway and still were lucky to win the game in the end, the confidence Limerick gained from the win has allowed them to express themselves with a lot more freedom. Limerick are a better team in every line I would think. I felt Kilkenny messed up 3/4 goal chances in the first half against Cork which would have put them 7/8 points clear. Cork had better chances themselves in the second half when Kilkenny looked to tire like in the 2020 semi final against Waterford. The one area where Cork can hurt Limerick is pace if they can get their running game going, it is easier said than done. I was not a fan of how Limerick backed off them in the first game this year. Limerick played poorly the same day and still won by 8 points. The penalty miss was a big turning point in the game. The question is if Limerick can get a lead and push up on Cork how can they break the lines to get ball to the forwards, launching it long will mean Limerick will turnover ball and going short will invariably lead to turnovers and handy points. I think Cork have a chance but they need everything to go right but they also need to keep their nerve if in the position down the home stretch, it is easier said than done.
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Presumptuous alright.
But you made it up 
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According to you I made it up
Sure we all know that.
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Des Cahill bemoaning no UFTM . He reckons the banter between Cork & Lk
The lad presenting ârising time â show reckons the banter is good as the game .
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Itâs the insecurity of the other Munster counties I reckon 
rears itâs head a lot of the time, must be awful to actually not be from Cork I suppose
The PM Group lives in more heads rent free than Hegarty or Gillane.
The gas thing is it was disbanded in September 2018 after completing its mission.
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Win Lose or Draw we will still be from Cork and that is a wonderful thing
Sundayâs going to be a long worrying feckin day- nerves wonât hold Iâll not be able to watch it live- same with anything Corks involved in, TBH didnât even know the final result in the euros Italy V england till the next morning ( I turn off all media) after the whures got an early goal my Apple Watch heart 
monitor showed me wayyyy above normal,
So with hurling Iâd risk a banger( ol man died at 52 from one )
Irrespective who wins itâs the 2 best in the country on stage
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Jackie Tyrrell: Cork must stifle Cian Lynch but Limerick should have too much
Treaty men have class everywhere you look while final experience is all new for Rebels
In one key respect, Limerick go into this All-Ireland final with an advantage. They have been here before. They know the terrain and they know how to navigate their way through it. Cork havenât been in an All-Ireland final in eight years. They can tell themselves theyâre getting ready for just another game but they wonât be able to avoid the fact that this is different.
All-Ireland final week is like no other week in your life. There is nothing normal about it. All you want is for it to be 3.30pm on Sunday afternoon. You want nothing to change between now and then. You want every minute of every day to be exactly the same. But thatâs not how life works. Itâs impossible.
Your mind races in bed at night. You try to dodge as many people as possible in your day-to-day life. In work, in the shop, going for a coffee, getting petrol, at the butchers. You canât get away from it, itâs relentless. And even if it isnât relentless, your guard is up so high that it feels relentless.
Your phone is an open gate to anyone who wants to contact you for tickets or for hurling talk or just wish a general good luck. I found myself making sure my conversations got shorter - if they had to happen at all. Short, brief and to the point. I never left room or a gap for a âhow ye fixed for Sundayâ tangent.
I couldnât abide loose talk so I tried to push my mind into a prison cell to avoid it all. You hold the key to who you want to let in and who you keep out. I found that keeping the head down is very important.
Long before Teresa Mannion ever became famous for it, I was living by an All-Ireland final week mantra that said: âDonât make unnecessary journeys.â Walking into the supermarket pretending to be on the phone. Logging off social media by the Wednesday. Locking myself away from the world. Home is your safe house. Netflix is your best friend.
Carnival
You can overdo it. I didnât know it then but I can see it now. I remember before an All-Ireland in 2014 my mam and sister were shopping in town on the Saturday before the game. Kilkenny city has a buzz about it, it was like a carnival because of the game. Black and amber everywhere, all sorts of colours and flags and all the rest of it being sold on the streets. Everywhere was filled with chat and anticipation. Hurling is our religion.
My mam and sister were walking down the street when they were approached for a word from the local radio station KCLR who were out and about sampling the atmosphere. It was harmless chat - just stuff about being the family of a player before the game, about how the nerves were holding up, all that stuff. Small talk, really. Nothing to see here.
You wouldnât have thought that by the way I reacted. I got wind of it through a text from a friend who had heard them on the radio. Well, I let them have it over a text message, both barrels. I was so tetchy the week of a match - and especially a final. I had been building myself up for three weeks for this game and I saw this as a complication that I didnât need from them.
Which, of course, it wasnât. They hadnât said anything remotely out of place. I felt really bad the week after the game when I reflected on it, as I know my mam would be very low key and reserved. I could imagine her going into the credit union and being too polite to say no or offend anyone when asked for a brief word. But 24 hours out from war with Tipperary, I couldnât see it that way. My bad!
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Most of the Cork lads will be living through all this for the first time this week. Even the small few who arenât still havenât experienced it since 2013. Limerick well know the drill at this stage. They know how to leave the sideshows to the supporters and how not to get distracted. Itâs not the winning and losing of the game but it is an energy drain that they know how to avoid.
I see this final being decided in a couple of key areas. What Cork do about picking up Cian Lynch is the most obvious one. There are a handful of players in the country who absolutely need to be man-marked regardless of what else happens on the pitch and he is right up there with Tony Kelly in that regard. So a big part of Corkâs build-up will be focused on dealing with him.
You canât allow Lynch to drift around without anyone shadowing him. If your plan is to pass him on to the next player across, he will think all his Christmases have come at once. A combined effort is too loose an arrangement for some like him because a yard is too much space to leave someone with a hand like Harry Potter. He could score or engineer 1-2 off his first four possessions and by then itâs too late to send a man-marker out to him. The damage is done.
Price to pay
Cork would love to have Ger Millerick fit and able for a full 70-75 minutes. My sense of it is that itâs very doubtful he has had enough time to recover. Eoghan OâDonnell couldnât do it in the two-week turnaround for Dublin earlier in the summer and itâs hard to imagine Mellerick can either.
If heâs not there, what can Cork do? There has been talk of pushing Mark Coleman onto him but personally I think this would be too big a price to pay. Coleman is too important to the game Cork play coming out of defence. If you send him off after Lynch for the day, you take out a key building block of what has got you to the All-Ireland final. I donât think they will do that.
A leftfield move would be to draft Damien Cahalane back in as a man marker. But I think itâs more likely that Luke Meade gets the job with Cahalane as a Plan B if it doesnât go well. This is slightly by process of elimination - I donât see Cork taking any of the others out of their usual role for the job. Itâs a huge assignment for Meade and it will be fascinating to see how he measures up.
Cork fans are finally back at an All-Ireland final. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho
Against Kilkenny, Cork were able to open up space and channels for their runners to exploit. This was particularly fruitful when they went at the Kilkenny half-back line the further the game went on - look at what havoc Shane Kingston and Jack OâConnor were able to wreak.
A lot of these spaces came from good possession retention in the Cork defence and a patient build-up. They watched for the space and waited for the runs of the Cork forwards to happen before pinging it to hand or into space to run onto. The Cork backs werenât afraid to go back to Patrick Collins if they did not like what they saw up the field.
Thereâs going to be a really interesting tactical battle in this area. Limerick are experts at setting traps in their forwards to tempt teams to run the ball out. One of their big ideas is to get a team running out with the ball so they can swallow them up and turn them over. But what happens when the opposition actually want to run the ball out and when they have planned it and drilled it and had lots of success doing it?
Itâs one thing trying to trick the opposition into doing something they donât want to, ie try to run the ball out of defence. But if theyâre going to do it anyway - and if theyâre actively good at it - how good are your traps going to be? The Cork defence uses lots of width, looking to create space for Coleman to float around picking up ball and then delivering it with pinpoint accuracy.
They might just be good enough at it to avoid the Limerick traps. And if they do, then the Limerick defenders suddenly have more on their plate than theyâre used to. Will the Limerick half-back line be pulled all over the place in tracking the Cork runners? I doubt that. But those Cork runners are going to have to be matched somehow. Itâs a problem Limerick havenât come up against so far.
In a lot of ways, Limerick remind me of Kilkenny in the mid- to late-noughties. The success we had around those years made us feel bulletproof. It gave us huge self-esteem going into finals.
We had built up a serious level of confidence through our silverware. Most of all, we felt that if we were right, we could beat anyone. We would analyse the opposition and see what they did. But above all, we would trust that our gameplan would win out, seven days a week and twice on a Sunday.
Skilled stickmen
Limerick have a distinct style of play. Nothing they do on Sunday will surprise any of us. They have a power game built on massive work-rate and energy levels. They have a deep lying half-forward line, they have excellent distribution levels from defence, they have a clinical full-forward line and they have a wizard in Lynch in the middle of it all. To a man, they are skilled stickmen.
So thereâs no rabbit they will pull out of a hat here. Their Plan B, if itâs needed, will be to do Plan A better. Water breaks offer them a chance to break down the opposition, make subtle changes and go again. And a bench to call on if needed and keep them all grounded. They are strong, strong favourites and deservedly so.
Cork are coming. And, much as it pains the rest of us, Cork are Cork. When they come to Croke Park, they bring the lot. Colour, blood and bandages, Rebels, Rebels, Barryâs Tea, calling everyone langers, Cyril Kavanagh and his sombrero, Jackie Lennoxâs chippers, all that stuff. They bring a swagger, genuine belief. Thatâs admirable.
They are underdogs here but you can be certain that nobody in Cork is thinking itâs okay to go up to a final and lose. Itâs a young team, yes. But this is an All-Ireland final. Go and win it and weâll talk about what age you are afterwards. None of this lose-one-to-win-one carry-on. Nobody in Cork thinks like that.
I actually think it will bring them very, very close. And I think it will get them there eventually. But here and now, in 2021, Limerick have too much and they will complete their two-in-a-row.
Needs an NFL reference
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You are definitely in for nerves on Sunday I would think. Enjoy the game, ye have a good team and they have done well to get to the final. They have a good chance and Cork are coming back and will be there for the foreseeable future I would imagine.
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Lovely twee preview there on Morning Ireland from Donal Og.
Hail Limerick
Thanks but honestly I canât watch it,even the under 20s the other night kept channel hopping, watched the last 3 minutes once I knew they were safe
Weâve a chance alright, and at long last on the right road, coming soonâ:crossed_fingers:
Era Iâd leave him off , clueless at timeâs- neutrals are better to get honest down-to earth straight opinions