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Clare to win - their need is greater.
Unreal. A load of Clare lads and no Tony Kelly 
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One can only assume he is picking it off this years Championship or he is an even bigger moron than we give him credit for
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He’s picking off this years munster round robin
He’s just wumming thelimericks because JK doesn’t have much time for him.
Shane McGrath, John Mullane, Jamsie all tipping Clare
Nicky God went for Limerick
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A loss here could finish Clare. That’ll get them over the line at the finish. They can’t afford to lose another one.
Limerick want to win but they don’t need to win. The game is as good as done , no point travelling
Limerick will hammer Clare today
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Sure it’s all in the head.
If that happens Clare will have a totally different mindset going into a quarter final in 2 weeks time.
They’ll be angry rather than riddled with self pity.
A Clare win or a hammering is the best outcome for them.
A narrow heroic defeat would be a disaster.
It’s all in the head innit.
All these lads keep confusing what they’d like to happen with what’s going to happen.
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I can see it being a narrow heroic defeat for Clare.
I’ll travel anyway. A day out.
But, whilst Limerick will want to win, Clare HAVE to win. That’ll be the difference. A loss, again, and again to Limerick, would probably finish them.
Munster Final Day
MUNSTER FINAL | MICHAEL FOLEY
Can Clare claim immortal victory to halt Limerick’s winning machine?
Having lost past two Munster finals, Clare are looking to emulate the likes of Tipperary by stopping a seemingly unstoppable side winning six successive titles
Sunday June 09 2024, 1.01am BST, The Sunday Times
Clare were beaten by Limerick earlier in the season but will hope things are different this time around
RAY MCMANUS/SPORTSFILE
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At the end of the 1980 Munster final, the scale of what Limerick had just achieved was scrambling everyone’s brains. Cork’s unstoppable run of five titles in a row had been halted. Limerick had beaten them in a Munster final for the first time since the war and the crowd were in, hoisting players on to their shoulders and carrying them from the pitch to the dressing room, where the tears were already flowing. When Sean Foley, the Limerick captain, got there everyone realised he hadn’t even received the Cup and brought him back out again.
After he returned, Foley went to every player, shaking their hand and whispering thanks into their ear. “We have waited 40 years for today,” he said.
Where Limerick stood that day, Clare now find themselves — facing an apparently immovable object that has blocked their way to all sorts of riches for years. Before 1980, Cork had beaten Limerick in three Munster finals over the previous five years; Clare have lost the past two to Limerick. The same way Clare faded alarmingly away in their Munster championship game against Limerick in April, Cork roared past Limerick in the 1980 league final having been brought to a replay, winning by nine points having trailed with 11 minutes left.
Flanagan was a key member of the Limerick side that thwarted Cork’s second attempt at six successive titles
RAY MCMANUS/SPORTSFILE
All that meant the week before the 1980 Munster final was filled with implorations from Limerick players to each other — and anyone else listening — to set all history aside. “I do not believe there is this hoodoo about playing Cork and it’s up to any player to convince himself that there isn’t, if he has any slight doubt at all,” Pat Hartigan said. “This time we need to win.”
But the stress lines were visible on the team. In Henry Martin’s book Unlimited Heartbreak, Limerick hurling’s equivalent of an agonising Old Testament charting the sorrows before the enlightened New Testament of the John Kiely era, John Flanagan remembered the splitting headache that left him lying on the dressing room bench with a towel on his face while the minor game was on. “I would say it was from the tension and pressure more than anything else,” he said.
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Flanagan’s first incursions into the game included a collision with John Horgan, followed by another with Martin Doherty, the Cork full back. “I felt every bone in my face shaking,” Flanagan said.
Then he flattened Dermot McCurtain, Cork’s great wingback, in a tackle that left McCurtain hanging on by a thread till after half-time. The tone was set. On this day, Limerick weren’t taking a step backwards.
Limerick players celebrate last year’s triumph against Clare and are now looking for their sixth successive Munster title
EÓIN NOONAN/SPORTSFILE
It was all the Cork players could talk about afterwards: Limerick’s hunger. In the face of such impatience and utter defiance, Cork started to look weary. They hit 17 wides. Tommy Quaid saved a 21-yard free and Cork fluffed three goal chances in the last few minutes to lose by four points.
“It wasn’t one big thing,” Cork’s Denis Coughlan said in his autobiography. “It was a lot of small things that went against us.”
Before Limerick on Sunday, only three teams have ever tilted at six Munster titles in a row, all of them from Cork — 1906, 1980 and 1987. None of them succeeded, scuttled on every occasion by the same intersections of circumstance.
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The 1906 final was part of a traffic jam of overlapping championship games from other years in which Cork lost the 1905 All-Ireland final in June 1907 before losing the 1906 Munster final to Tipperary two months later, looking completely zapped. The same general miasma against a team playing without a safety net dragged Cork down again in 1987.
Like Limerick with Clare again, Cork had broken Tipp a couple of times in the previous few years, swiping the 1984 Munster final from their grasp and ploughing through them in the following year’s showpiece. There was a story that summer of Tipperary raising £100,000 for their training fund on the sale of a racehorse. “Tipp will win the Derby before an All-Ireland,” said Mickey ‘Rattler’ Byrne, one of the made men from Tipperary’s All-Ireland victories decades before.
Tipperary stopped Cork from winning six-in-a-row in 1987, having lost twice to the same opposition during that run
RAY MCMANUS/SPORTSFILE
But Tipp were different in 1987 with their suits, team bus and a level of science and tactical thought beyond anything they applied for years. They were seven points up with 20 minutes left after Nicky English side-footed the ball past Ger Cunningham, Ian Rush-style. Then Kieran Kingston struck a goal that put Cork got ahead with a few minutes left before Pat Fox saved Tipp with a point to draw. Executing that successful salvage job, in itself, felt different. “We haven’t missed the boat,” the manager Babs Keating said.
Tipp were only pulling out from port. At half-time the following weekend, in Killarney, Keating repeated the speech he heard as a player at the same venue when Tipp won their last Munster championship in 1971. “Don’t go home tonight and say, ‘because I didn’t chase a ball Tipperary lost a Munster title,’” he told them.
They didn’t. Cork eventually cracked in extra time and Tipp cherished a victory that has endured since, above and beyond plenty of All-Ireland titles. Limerick always felt the same way about winning in 1980. The same opportunity is there on Sunday for Clare, to deliver an immortal victory for themselves and leave a potentially devastating dent on a previously impregnable team.
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“Cork have made a team out of us,” Keating said that eternal evening in Killarney. Limerick have already done that for Clare.
Now, the next step.
Munster SHC final
Clare v Limerick
FBD Semple Stadium, 4pm
Live on RTE2
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Never known such a low key build up to a Munster final.
No result would really surprise me. Clare still relying on a lot of lads from 2013. Limerick have put up a lot of mileage in the last seven years too.
The end usually comes much quicker than many expect. I doubt either team thinks about it but in terms of the all Ireland having one less game and a months break is absolutely massive.
Tony Kelly looking to complete the set. He’s won it at all with club and county bar a Munster medal. Limerick looking to become the first Munster side to do the six in a row.
I was looking there both hannon and Conlon were playing in the forwards in the 2013 clash. Now but at number six 11 years on. Some innings.
If Kelly doesn’t start Lohan will be absolutely lynched after the game. Our lads on the sideline very rarely get it wrong and that just might tell in the finish. We’ll need injuries to go our way too. That could be a factor too.
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Clare to win this.limerick are finished
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In the Horse & Hound, loading up on grub before the trek starts.
Hon the Treaty, 6 Munsters in a row.
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