For the second time in two years, the cream of Clare and Limerick hurling will face off for the right to move in better circles and dream bigger dreams in the season that follows. Limerick, with some justification, may have travelled to this year’s league opener with a sense of indignation at yet again having to slum it in the lower tier with the vanquished barbarians to the North. Such notions, however, must have given way to mild surprise, shock, and the outright horror over the course of that single evening in late February as the side which so impressed last season disintegrated in front of them. The smart, organised, and ultra-modern exterior of last year’s campaign had given way to something more suited to the post-boom Limerick landscape. It wasn’t pretty.
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Teams like Ard Scoil Ris, the Limerick U-21s of 2011, along with the Clare minors of 2010/2011, and the Clare U-21s of 2009 have populated the hurling landscapes of both counties with outstanding talent. At Fitzgibbon Cup level, the championship winning sides of 2010 (NUIG) and 2011 (UL, defeating LIT) were sprinkled with players from both counties. The epic semi-final clash of 2010 between NUIG and LIT featured fourteen Clare players, with NUIG going on to win the final thanks to an extra-time winner from Clonlara’s John Conlon. The following year, it was Patrickswell’s Tommy O’Brien grabbing a goal with the last act of the game to win an all Limerick final for UL. In surveying the aforementioned landscapes then, it is hard to deny that young, confident, and most importantly, successful players abound in both territories.
Yet both counties are acutely aware of the dangers inherent in that most enticing of sporting delusions - potential. Limerick began the last decade with just the third three-in-a-row in the history of the U21 competition, an astonishing achievement which yielded astonishingly little at senior level, producing perhaps nothing but a sense of expectation which made the failures of the following decade all the more difficult to stomach. In Clare, excitement at this bumper crop certainly bubbles beneath the surface, but chastening championship defeats at the hands of Dublin and Galway in the last two seasons have driven any notions of entitlement to a deep and early grave. Any Clare fan who sat through the massacre of Salthill could not be left in any doubt as to the distance yet to be travelled by their young team.
Saturday evening, however, represents a small but hugely significant staging point in that journey. Both sides may see themselves as contenders, worthy of shots at the bigger names in the hurling world, but for the moment at least they are each other’s gatekeepers. Both block the other’s road to better things in a manner not too dissimilar to the young Clare and Limerick teams of the mid-nineties. The platform Limerick want for Hannon, Downes, and Dowling, is the one Clare want for Conlon, O’Connell, and McGrath.
Yes, the main stage calls, and both north and south of the Shannon there are young and talented hurlers who feel they have outgrown the small venues, hurlers who are sick to the teeth of being on the undercard. The experience of having competed with and beaten the best at other levels will do that, and even Pairc Ui Chaoimh, Nowlan Park, and Thurles are glamourous destinations when compared with the provincial tours of the last two or three years. These are hard times though. For generations of Clare and Limerick players, hurling in the spring against the top sides in the country was a normal part of being a Clare or Limerick hurler, but league restructuring has meant those days are no longer. And with Dublin or Galway on their way to 1B next year, that ticket to the top flight is even more valuable for Saturday’s combatants than it was twelve months ago.
In that fixture, it was Limerick who, like in 1994, won the bragging rights but were denied the ultimate prize. In 1995 Clare won those bragging rights back and landed a much bigger prize as well. What odds a repeat of history? Well, narrowly favourable if you believe the bookmakers. Clare’s superiority in the opening clash (like Limerick’s last year) was such that it would be hard to pick against them. It is very much a question of how much of last year’s lustre has returned to the Limerick squad in the intervening period, and the extent to which Clare’s victory in February was based on physical, as opposed to technical or tactical, superiority.
In any case, it would be nice to close by saying that regardless of who takes the honours on Saturday night, that both sets of talented young players are likely to meet each other on bigger and better days in the years ahead. But such statements, while pleasant sign offs, are largely meaningless. Progress in this game are hard earned and gradual, and what you can’t win next week you are in no way entitled to next year. Ger Loughnane once said that while competitions in the spring don’t matter all that much, days come along for teams that really do. The two squads who will do battle at the weekend have accolades and medals that in the fullness of time will easily push a second tier league trinket out of their CV. But for the time being, it is hard to imagine anything that could matter more. Another year in the wilderness is the last thing either side wants, but one of them is going to get it. To the winner the spoils, and vae victis.
written by http://www.thefreekick.com/board/index.php?/user/903-watch-the-break/]Watch the Break
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