Limerick GAA 2022 - Dual Kings (Part 1)

Jahan · February 1, 2022, 1:56pm

Changed Munster SHC Fixtures

Limerick v Tipperary TUS Gaelic Grounds – May 8 (was May 15)

Clare v Limerick at Cusack Park Ennis – May 15 (was May 8)

Julio_Geordio · February 1, 2022, 2:00pm

They are out to get us

Jahan · February 1, 2022, 2:01pm

I think they want us to give Tipp a hiding in round 3 to ensure qualification rather than go handy on them in the last round.

Julio_Geordio · February 1, 2022, 2:02pm

They must reckon there’s a better chance of Clare being in the hunt than Tipp

Jahan · February 1, 2022, 2:02pm

It’s all coming together now.

Batigol · February 1, 2022, 2:15pm

I bought the new soft-shell on the O’Neills website there. Hope I have it for Sunday

Aristotle · February 1, 2022, 2:23pm

If it’s to stop teams playing three weeks in a row, that’s fair enough. Although, I thought the schedule had been altered to prevent that anyway.

You’d wonder how they didn’t work this out beforehand.

Jahan · February 1, 2022, 2:30pm

Crazy it wasn’t thought about before.

Munster always seems messier than Leinster - having six teams helps them. Limerick’s last round robin game is on 15/05 with the other four playing on 22/05 and Munster Final on 05/06.

Raylan · February 1, 2022, 3:52pm

Another entry into the legal diary imminent

peddlerscross · February 1, 2022, 3:55pm

I heard that at the weekend.

Lets just allow justice take place. No need to say anymore on it.

BruidheanChaorthainn · February 1, 2022, 9:50pm

The minors or under 17s beat Kilkenny over the weekend. They must be decent enough ?

manbehindthewire · February 2, 2022, 5:36pm

Enda McEvoy: How long can Limerick last at the top of the mountain?
Because most of John Kiely’s troops are in the sweet spot agewise, may they – a jarring thought for the pack – get even better before the onset of rust?
Enda McEvoy: How long can Limerick last at the top of the mountain?
Declan Hannon of Limerick lifts the Liam MacCarthy Cup after the All-Ireland SHC final win over Cork at Croke Park. Picture: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

WED, 02 FEB, 2022 - 16:15
Enda McEvoy
Enda McEvoy
Interesting question posited by an Examiner reader. “Will the morning of December 9th 2021,” he muses, “prove to be Limerick’s high-water mark?”

All-Ireland champions for the third time in four years. Munster champions for the third time in three. A record-shattering 3-32 in the All-Ireland final, a tally that could have been greater still had they been minded. A record-shattering 12 All-Stars, a tally that was a short head off being 13 All-Stars and that would have generated little outrage had it been 14. But from Olympus’s peak there beckons only one direction.

So will Limerick hang around on the mountain top indefinitely? And because most of John Kiely’s troops are in the sweet spot agewise, may they – a jarring thought for the pack – get even better before the onset of rust? And thus, 2022 being to them what 2008 was to Kilkenny, will they not only make it a MacCarthy Cup three in a row but do so pulling a train, a couple of battleships and a fleet of tractors?

It is not a far-fetched scenario.

Alternatively, they might undergo a small decline this summer but still be far too good for the rest. Again, far from unfeasible.

Then again, they may fall halfway down the mountainside and get caught in June or July by someone coming barrelling out of left field and getting it right on the day. May. Might. Possibly. Theoretically. Hypothetically.

But that’s clearly the unlikeliest of the three scenarios and for one excellent reason. Who’s going to come barrelling out of left field?

This is not 2009. At various stages during Kilkenny’s four-in-a-row Cork, Tipperary and Waterford were all formidable while Galway were permanently unknowable and the more dangerous for it. Even in 2008, at the height of the black and amber raj, Liam Sheedy’s youngsters were patently set for bigger things. Right now there is no coming team.

Waterford are earnest and admirable and likeable, yet Limerick still had 11 points in hand on them last season. The champions had five in hand on Tipp, 16 in hand on Cork and by extension Kilkenny, and heaven knows how much in hand on Clare and Wexford. Galway might have set them some difficult questions but none they wouldn’t have answered.

Not that the formbook of a title race automatically carries over into the following season. Limerick start on the front row of the grid in 2022, however, and there’s no car alongside them and no car on the second row either.

They do so because they’ve continued to evolve and against Cork last August they scored a goal of such simple brilliance and brilliant simplicity it was easy to overlook.

Nickie Quaid, standing over a puckout, saw Diarmaid Byrnes in space on the half-back line, one of the Cork forwards having failed to get tight enough. Quaid found Byrnes. Byrnes arrowed the ball towards the right-corner forward position, the delivery bouncing up for Seamus Flanagan to gather without breaking stride. Flanagan caressed the sliotar off his stick to Aaron Gillane, who was waiting in space on the 20-metre line. Gillane buried it.

At that moment he and Flanagan were the only two men in green shirts inside the Cork 65-metre line, their colleagues having cleared the necessary space by congregating in midfield and on the other wing. That was part of it too.

Three passes, for passes they were, and the ball touching the ground once. Three chords and the truth.

Quaid may have extemporised with his puckout but imagine the choreography entailed in what followed. Imagine how often Byrnes practised the one-hop delivery to Flanagan. Imagine how often Flanagan essayed the lateral to Gillane inside him. And Limerick’s striking is one of the wonders of the age. The sliotar always sings off the bas and there’s always a receiver and his first touch is always made of velcro.

Just contemplate their rivals trying to replicate that move.

Kilkenny? Eoin Murphy would have wound up and tried to land the sliotar in Parnell Square, quite possibly putting out a few discs in his lower back in the process.

Wexford, or at any rate the Wexford of recent years? Short puckout. Solo run by the corner-back, handpass to the wing-back, solo run by the wing-back and so forth. Five minutes later they’ve got the sliotar all the way up to midfield and everyone in the ground has expired of boredom.

Cork? Grand up to the half-forward line but then the trouble starts and, unless Jack O’Connor is on the field, they settle for a handy point.

The Tipperary of the Eamon O’Shea era would at least have intellectualised something innovative. We will see what Colm Bonnar’s Tipperary do.

Gillane’s goal was a bracing synthesis of the old and the new, encompassing the best of the ancient verities (letting the ball do the work) and of contemporary thought (putting an address on the delivery). Limerick not only made it look easy, which of course it wasn’t, but preordained, even inevitable. It is what the greats in every sport do.

Among their myriad virtues, here’s one that hasn’t been acknowledged sufficiently frequently. They are not over-coached.

To the caveats.

Now that they’ve discovered the efficacy of green flags and the extent to which a couple of goals per game makes life so much easier, one wonders what directions remain for Limerick in which to develop themselves, a la Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Serial winners invariably seek and find some area for improvement.

A bit exoteric, that one, so here’s a more practical concern. Twelve of the XV against Cork last year had started against Galway in 2018, among them five of the forwards. A blast of fresh air will be required up front sooner rather than later, and not the kind furnished by an institutionalised substitute either.

If Aaron Gillane regressed a little last year, albeit not to any Dele Alli-esque degree, he has plenty of time for a second flowering. Yet Limerick are not so flush with attacking options as to be able to comfortably cope without Peter Casey.

Another practical concern: they’ll be attempting to go deep into the championship for the fifth year in a row. It is quite the ask. Metal fatigue can insinuate itself without warning, as it did for Cork in the late summer of 2006.

Above all, the return to the provincial round robin is unhelpful. More scope for injuries. More scope for unwanted exertions against hungry young bucks intent on making statements and making their bones. More scope for Stuff Happening. With defending champions, the fewer fences to be jumped the better.

Still. Limerick began the year by racking up 27 scores and 17 wides in the Munster Cup final. That’s 44 scoring opportunities in mid-January. Gulp. What’s more, we know the rate of leakage will decrease as the season goes on. It always does. Gulp again.

Last month also brought Walsh Cup success for Dublin, which is pleasing for them but scarcely a harbinger of further delights, while out west Galway’s new manager was quick to stamp out any nonsense about a possible return by Joe Canning.

Proper order too. Galway do not need sideshows. Henry Shefflin knows from his days in stripes that the most important person in the building is, and has to be, the manager. Uno duce, una voce. One last scenario to leave you with. Limerick pick up knocks and niggles in Munster and fetch up against Galway in the All-Ireland semi-final. The champions can’t quite summon the thunder and Henry gets a tune out of Galway. Who then get chinned by Waterford on the big day.

Not buying it? Fair enough.

Limerick create scoring opportunities at a faster rate than any team in the history of the sport. They convert scoring opportunities at a faster rate than any team in the history of the sport. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.