Enda McEvoy: Limerick now a normal team but definitely not an ordinary team

Over the course of their past six championship outings, counting the Munster final as a draw, John Kiely’s men have been batting at 50 per cent in win terms. Not good enough to win this All Ireland, maybe not good enough to even be there on July 20th.

But every journey begins with a single sliotar. After that, stuff happens. Even if it’s not stuff controlled by Limerick with the fearsome authority and icy precision of a few years ago.

They are, like Elton, still standing. What’s more, it’s not as though they were knocked down a fortnight ago.

All they did was commit the most venial of sins in coming out the wrong end of a penalty shootout and while a penalty shootout is not “a lottery” in the way English football spent two generations insisting it to be, at least until Gareth Southgate conceived the revolutionary idea of having his players – yes! - practise spot kicks, upon which they made the stunning discovery that shootouts were not a lottery after all, it came as a mild relief to discover that here was one tiny element of the sport that Kiely and Kinnerk had not in fact algorithmed to within a millimetre of its existence.

They lost but they weren’t beaten, as the saying goes. So what of it if Kyle Hayes and Cian Lynch faded after imperious openings? So what of it if Aaron Gillane missed that late free in normal time or Nickie Quaid fumbled that even later hop in extra time? So what of the extra-time wides? These are the kind of small imperfections that befall normal teams, which is what the former champions are now.

A normal team but definitely not an ordinary team.

Everything about Limerick’s performance on the night spoke to their resilience, their sense of self, the coherence of the collective - all the important bits, in other words - and spoke handsomely to them. 

Thus with all the greatest outfits, whatever the sport. Such are the traits that mark them out as great outfits and without which they could not be great outfits. And not that their conditioning or muscle memory have ever been in doubt but in the additional 20 minutes Kiely’s troops went stride for stride with opponents who’d run the legs off them 11 months ago.

You may as a non-Shannonsider and neutral have got bored with Limerick long ago. You may have wished, frequently, they’d feck off and not win anything again for another ten, whatever about another 45, years. Part of you, however, cannot but acknowledge and admire the will which says to them, hold on.

There is a difference between a classic and a gripping contest. The Gaelic Grounds a fortnight ago was the latter rather than the former and was none the worse for it. It was all the more satisfying, indeed, for the very reason that the contestants, straining to surmount their own shortcomings, didn’t shoot the lights out.

There was imprecision, there were wides and there were 23 scores to 21 scores, all of them hard won. Great. Neither side came within an ass’s roar of 30 white flags. Better still. Limerick’s benefactor would have recognised it as a true run race.

Last year’s All Ireland semi-final was patently easier on the eye, largely because both teams were operating closer to the full breadth of their powers. Yet some pearls need grit. This particular specimen had dubious shooting, controversial refereeing (always good for adding to the fun), the sight man in the middle falling victim to the pace of the proceedings (cue some gaiety, much needed to interrupt the tension), timekeeping issues and a downright hilarious communal outbreak of management silliness after the half-time whistle sounded. It was one of those rare nights on RTÉ that make you feel glad you paid your TV licence.

As with all great teams when they find themselves on the far side of the mountain there’s something infinitely more interesting about Limerick now than when they were tattooing 30 points a game into the foreheads of the other crowd. That they’re losing altitude, and have been since the All-Ireland semi-final, is not a surprise. That instead of plunging to earth in Icarian style they’re losing it gradually, and as a consequence are merely flying at the same height as everyone else left aloft, may be.

Kiely remains obliged to try and refuel the plane in mid-air. He’s coping. And Aidan O’Connor and Shane O’Brien hit 2-3 between them here, so it’s not as if the younger generation are failing to add their shoulder to the wheel.

In reaching the last six Dublin have found their level. They won’t go farther but they weren’t guaranteed to get this far to begin with. They won’t lose the physical battle this evening and they could perform well for long spells until they reach the last 30 metres of the pitch. The usual Dublin thing.

Not their fault. They are where they are. If that sounds condescending, fair enough. It’s also true.

A day after the earth moved at the Gaelic Grounds the Croke Park equivalent triggered less than a whisper on the Richter Scale, the losers’ late flourish rescuing the Leinster final – just about - without in any way redeeming it. It was the most awful Galway performance against Kilkenny since the one two months earlier and was even more awful. Which took some doing.

We’d assumed the abjectness witnessed at Nowlan Park in April had been the ne plus ultra in terms of Wretched Galway Performances Against Kilkenny. We were wrong. For an hour on Sunday week they were more abject still and once again sloppy housekeeping by the man between the sticks gave Derek Lyng’s troops the opening green flag, as if they required any leg-up. Death, taxes and Galway goalkeepers.

Tribesfolk who prefer their glass half-full may have derived some consolation in these mishaps occurring in Micheál Donoghue’s first year back rather than in his second or third; Tribesfolk of the half-empty persuasion will recall that the county departed last season’s championship with a six-point defeat to Dublin in Salthill, meaning that no great leap forward was to be anticipated just yet.

Neither demographic expected Henry Shefflin’s successor to possess a magic wand; presumably neither expected the team’s puckout strategy to collapse as emphatically as it did 13 days ago.

Nor have Galway been scoring enough goals or getting off a sufficiency of shots, the one a function of t’other. Although Donoghue, like any man in his position, wants to get the foundations right in season one before adding an annexe to the building in seasons two and three, they’ll surely have more of a cut tonight, not only in view of the identity of the opposition but also because there’s no downside for the manager in going for broke. In any case a heavy defeat will allow him go through the panel like a dose of salts ahead of 2026.

Festina lente and all that jazz nonetheless; the underdogs’ opening priority will be to brick up every avenue down the centre of their defence. If they’re not in the game at the end of the opening quarter they won’t be in it at the end of the second quarter. Nor do they possess a Noel McGrath figure to saunter in and do some puppeteering in the closing quarter, not unless David Burke starts on the bench.

It will be particularly incumbent on Donoghue’s charges to be strong over the ruck ball. Lose that particular battle and Tipperary will instantly have the means to create overlaps, prompting mass scenes of folk in maroon shirts looking on through their fingers.

All of which returns us to where we’ve so often been on the morning of a Galway/Tipp or Galway/Kilkenny game these past 25 years. The other crowd should win but beating them is exactly the kind of thing Galway could do. Losing badly is, of course, also exactly the kind of thing Galway could do.

Few people on Noreside or among the homes of Tipperary, incidentally, will disagree with Richie Hogan’s assessment of the pre-Donoghue Galway as a crowd who might beat you in a quarter- or semi-final yet didn’t have the balls to finish off the job by winning the All-Ireland. But that’s another tale.

Both logic, that strict and tiresome mistress, and the formbook are insistent. Today it has to be Tipperary.

After three years Liam Cahill has the bones of the kind of panel he wanted, the deadwood slashed away. The two hammerings by Cork might have floored an elephant; Tipp too are still standing.

They’re creating goal chances - they very sensibly kept the actual goals in the fridge for today instead of wasting them against Laois – and not conceding many. The u20s have brought competition for places and a new energy. Over and above everything else there is pace in attack.

Tipperary are not going to win the 2025 All-Ireland and there isn’t a single person in the county labouring under any such delusion. Dreams of winning the 2027 All-Ireland, on the other hand, are no delusion.

Fascinating one from our sultan of stats, an estimable fellow but shadowy and much too modest to relish his name appearing in the public prints. He informs us that of the 11 championship meetings of the counties this century, no fewer than five have been decided by a point, with four more decided by two points. Thank you, Seamus.

Adherents of the law of averages may draw (ho ho) their own conclusions from these facts. Upon which Tipperary will probably go and win by six or seven.

Some other observations.

Deciding the Munster final by way of a penalty shootout was not some monstrous insult inflicted on the honest horny-handed sons of the soil by the faceless powers, unelected bureaucrats etc in Croke Park. 

Let’s not be precious; these are big boys and consenting adults. Their self-worth is not going to crushed or their existence ruined by a missed penalty.

The championship being as abbreviated as it is, getting the weighting right between it and the club scene, the latter an entity that cannot be airily ignored, is a task that would defeat Solomon. If a provincial final has to be decided on the day, penalties are not the worst method of doing so. “Unfair on the players”? Au contraire, as a test of skill and nerve they’re perfectly fair on the players and are categorically preferable to those risible 65s.

Naturally idle chatter on Twitter is to be taken with all the seriousness it merits but one suggestion re-doing the rounds of late - allowing the fourth-placed team in Munster to advance to the All-Ireland series – must be terminated with extreme prejudice. No. Just no. That would be to render the Munster Championship a travesty. For the umpteenth time, top-level sport has to have consequences. And hard-luck stories. And losers.

Correctly inferring Limerick’s state of mind prior to certain outings is a trickier process than might be expected. If they decide they want to ease their way back into the swing of things this afternoon, with detonation deferred for a fortnight, victory along the lines of 0-31 to 1-20 can be expected. 

And Tipp with something in hand because this Galway iteration, well… Surely not. Not even for Galway.