Cork
Shane O Brien in the roving 15 role going forward.
Hopefully Flanagan back for AI semi.
It seems ye donât do any type of rubbers, dead or alive, and havenât done since 2019, an absolutely pathetic following. But ye did take some amount of rubber this year 
The self professed Home of Hurling with 200 supporters. Embarrassing stuff. Decent players like Noel McGrath, Bonnar Maher, Dan McCormack and Cathal Barrett deserved better.
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Event Junkie is such a silly phrase.
Everything in life is an event. Going to mass is an event.
Tipp exited the Championship last week. Yesterday was a box ticking exercise in fixture fulfillment and the Tipperary public as is their right, wanted little or nothing to do with it.
I wouldnât be reading too much into it.
You abandoned your own.
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No i saw Tipperary exit the championship last week in the flesh, like i have done every year bar Covid for the past 20 odd years.
Sounds like you are bad luck
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That sort of treachery doesnt be forgotten for generations in a county like Tipp.
You can exit the Championship by winning the All Ireland too.
That would be completing the Championship.
The same Tipp lads who do be holding commemorations on Talbot St whenever they reach an All Ireland final turn their back on their own very easily. Terrible support
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Heâs a serious operator. Must be catching pigeons in training to jump ahead of o dallaigh and a few others.
Its funny how the Limerickâs were telling the Tipp posters to stay out of the Munster Championship thread for the last week because Tipp were out, and now are all concerned by Tippâs game yesterday.
Limerick respect Tipp more than the Tipp crowd respect their own
The Tipp support in the Gaelic Grounds this year, and in 2022, was absolutely pathetic.
Iâll say one thing about the Cork crowd, when the chips were down after 2 defeats they backed their team. There was some atmosphere in PUC for their crunch game v Limerick. Their team responded in kind.
Cahill is sick and tired of begging the Tipp crowd for a bit of support. They abandoned their âHall of Famersâ pretty quickly. Embarrassing stuff.
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I presume weâll need him for the traditional FF role now that Flanagan is out? Itâs either himself or ĂâDĂĄlaigh and youâd imagine heâll get the start after yesterday.
He did well, a fine debut.
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An embarassment is right
Youâd wonder how the likes of Bonner and Noel are feeling this morning. Aten bread is soon forgotten.
Random thoughts.
Limericks policy was obviously shoot on sight to get over the Waterford defence, but fuck me there was some woeful efforts.
Limerick withdrew their half forwards completely meaning there was a big gap to the two lads inside, with spare men in front of them. So we just didnât hit that ball. Meant shots were coming from further out the field as well.
Gillane was starved of possesion and when it did come in he was behind his man. Not his best outing.
SOB was excellent when he came on, his touch isnât quite there yet but heâs a great man to win his own ball. Himself and Gillane are a bit similar and he was blocking Gillane a lot of the time making the same run except sooner. Great outing from him though. If himself and Gillane can figure it out theyâll be a very hard combo to hold.
Waterford conceeded the middle third and Limerick had basically too much time to think about it and were over doing the passing constantly as they saw people in better postions, when they themselves were already in a good postion.
Half forwards moved up the field a bit second half when it was clear Waterford had no plan and they were able to pick off some more scores.
There was absolutely no need for that game to be so close at times in the second half, Limerick should have been out of sight at half time.
Kyle was phenonmenal, the man is elite. Was MOTM for me. Could have seen red, Waterford could also have seen a red TBF.
CON and SOB showed the kids are alright.
Casey was outstanding considering he is just back. Nash was superb.
But Waterford got it all wrong. You cannot drop off Limerick, I donât know how many times teams have to see it before they get it.
Davy looked to target Byrnes understandably, but seemed to completely miss what happened in the Cork game. Cork exploited Limericks zonal defence by landing two or three lads on top of Byrnes or Hannon and ran at Byrnes with pace which he couldnât handle.
Waterford just lumped ball down on top of his head and made him look a hero. Man is 6 4" like. Madness
They made no battle out of midfield either, which you have to do.
Iâd be sending Davy the p45 fairly rapid anyway. All that said they should have qualified, left it behnd them other days. Emotion can get you a one off performance, but its not repeatable or consistent. Think that lets Davy down
It should have been much worse than it was really, could have been 20 points.
Some good signs for Limerick. Another fucking injury though. Still a lot of lads not firing on all cylinders but we are getting there
At least two more days out, chance for 6 in a row and 5 in a row. Incredible times
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I thought we played pretty well yesterday. The wides were definitely very frustrating in the first half. The vast majority of them were definitely on and very scoreable, just poor execution, particularly because a lot of them were the same wide, trailing on the Mackey side. Byrnes had a couple that werenât on but Flanagan (3), Lynch, Cathal, Reidy, Hannon all had ones youâd expect them to get. And the vast majority of these were very early on so, despite having dominated and created lots of chances, we found ourselves a goal down after about 15 minutes. And then we lost Flanagan, who had scored 3-3 the last day, on top of having lost Casey. Definitely not ideal. If you were a club team or even Limerick back in the day, you would be thinking that we were throwing the game away considering how strong the wind was. Weâve learned not to panic, but itâs not something that we can afford to replicate, I donât think. We did it against Clare and just about got back, and did it again yesterday. The one day we did lose, we were quite accurate tbf.
But the goal seemed to spark us into life a bit, took a little more care over our shots and opened up a bit of a lead. Kyle completely took over in this period, he was absolutely immense in the first half. Like Cork, they had pretty much avoided him with the puckouts early on (fair enough when Jamie Barron was the one competing with him) but Byrnes with Lynch in front were coping well on the other side; the wind also helped us to pin them back so they then decided to hit a few in a row on Kyle and he ate them up.
We were turning them over on the short puckouts too, they just have a couple of players who arenât as comfortable on the ball, we were getting them turned back and pouncing on the turnovers. I think Hego was very unlucky not to get a free when he turned them over and was through on goal. Looked a blatant trip from a despairing defender from my vantage point. With the sweeper in place, the only way we were going to get goals was from turnovers, I think, and we had a couple of half-sniffs but generally took the point. SOB scored with his first touch which must have been a nice confident boost and always looked an outlet.
5 points wasnât as much of a lead as you would have liked with the wind but the display was encouraging, wides aside. Kyle was obviously the best player on the pitch by a mile but Mike Casey and Hannon were superb aswell and tbf to Byrnes, Iâd be a little bit critical of his shot selection, but he dealt with a lot of pressure on puckouts really well, with Lynch doing a very good job on the breaks. Still can go to higher levels but a move in the right direction.
I know Davy is conservative and they were maybe afraid of conceding goals after we have banged in a few this year but TDB was very deep at times and it allowed Nash to sit in front for us. But, in fairness, they did press up for puckouts in the second half and didnât allow Nash to take a short puckout which meant we generally had to go long into the wind. I do wonder whether we could have worked short options even when they pressed but it was obviously a risk we didnât want to take. I thought we were under a little bit of pressure on our own puckout for a while in the second half.
Things were going fairly well though, until we conceded the second goal. And I wouldnât even mind that in isolation, was a little unfortunate. Mahony was bottled up fairly well, Nickie made the save but they were just quickest to the rebound. Iâm not sure if Hutchinson was trying to shoot or pass but it ended up being flicked home anyway. It was just, after that, Waterford got a bit of momentum and it felt, in the ground, like they were getting their scores a lot easier and that we were having to work very hard to even secure possession.
Itâs a weird one because Waterford obviously only scored 2-14 overall which is very low-scoring but, in that moment, it felt like they were getting chances easily. It all came down to breaking ball really. We had dominated in the first half but they just won a few in a row. Gap was cut to two and then they did have chances to close it further. But it seemed like we just upped the work rate another notch; I think the subs did make a big difference. English was first on and had a quiet first 10 or so minutes but then he got a few tackles, got on a few breaks. Fergal came in and made a big impact, just getting on ball, using it cleverly and Boylan worked really really hard, won a free and got a point of his own.
For me, there was one clear turning point where you just felt, we are kicking for home. English picked up the ball in his own half, looked up and pinged a pass to Lynch. Lynch missed it (was fairly fired at him from close range) and it looked as if we might lose possession but Cathal stuck up a paw and just snatched it. Unbelievable hands, and I donât think the TV coverage will reflect how important a moment it was. He carried it on a bit, delivered it straight inside to Shano, who also caught it clean, did his little dummy and popped it over the bar. Our best U-21 to our best U-22 to our best U-20 for what was the most important score in the game to kill Waterfordâs momentum and give us a boost again.
Cathal was absolutely immense in the second half. As I said, we were going long on puckouts and basically just asking him to win them on his own at times. He did an unbelievable job at just keeping the ball alive until support arrived. Hegarty was very good too but Cathal really stood out; won ball, won frees, set up scores.
Waterford did have goal chances also in that period of dominance but we had two brilliant defensive moments to turn them over. Bennett found himself in behind in a little bit of space but Kyle did unbelievably well to get back and just prevent the shot off his right and then the cavalry were able to arrive. And then, on the other side, Padraig Fitzgerald had Dan in his sights, running at pace, with a goal on but Will bust a gut to get across and give him support and they forced him away from goal. Again, little moments that maybe arenât appreciated on screen, but they were huge contributions that prevented shots on goal. And thatâs what wins matches, those turnovers at crucial times.
I thought Waterford did trouble us in that period but never went ahead in the second half. Personally, I didnât understand taking Stephen Bennett off. Iâm not sure I understood Jamie Barron against Kyle as a match-up. Barron was perhaps guilty of taking too much out of the ball, running into contact, rather than quickly moving it (maybe lacking the options inside) and thatâs where Limerick got their turnovers. In reality though, if youâre going to beat Limerick, you either have to hope that the wides continue for 70 minutes or you have to push up and really test their backs. Probably need to pin Nash back and stop him from cutting out balls inside and bursting forward. Our backs were generally quite comfortable yesterday, conceding only 2-14 and 25 shots is very impressive.
Still improvements to be had, Iâm still not 100% convinced by the new balance of the team, I feel like we look better if we had someone in the Mulcahy/Casey role but we seem to have gone away from that. Subs making big impacts which is good. Would be nice to get DOD back for a Munster final and maybe Seanie Finn too (although that didnât sound as promising). Flanagan will be a loss for sure, hopefully itâs not too bad but SOB looks capable of competing at this level at least. Sounds like Kiely didnât even have him in consideration until the 20s was over, let him play away with that. But he must be in decent form in training if he leapfrogged ĂâDĂĄlaigh who looked lively in the first couple of matches. Presume SOB will start in Thurles now but I suppose DOD2 will gave it a good go in training to win that jersey.
In fairness, weâre going for a 6th Munster in a row and have plenty room for improvement. Not a bad position to be in.
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