You know how in a morose moment you wonder what your funeral might look like? Well, I need wonder no more. All week, there has been a steady procession of solemn-faced visitors calling to the Ryan homestead, shocked and coming to terms with their grief. It got to the stage where I had to check at the bottom of the road in case the local undertaker had erected a ‘wake house’ sign.
In the end, I could take no more as another neighbour came through the door, head shaking, voice breaking, ‘Jeez, Tom, I just can’t believe it.’ ‘Look, I said, just to be clear no one died above in Croke Park. One team won, another team lost and that is pretty much the standard outcome any day that you are up there,’ I told him.
He seemed taken aback, but when you lose a couple of All-Ireland finals as a manager it is amazing the perspective it provides you. O f course, people are disappointed here after what happened last Sunday, but more than anything they are proud and they have good reason to be. All Limerick lost was a match and in doing so, their players once more reminded why they have been such a special group, emptying themselves in the process.
As a Limerick man, I feel that sense of pride about them, but as a hurling man, my disappointment subsided quickly. Why? How could anyone who loves our game not enjoy that spectacle last weekend. You will have winners and losers, but it is how you win and how you lose that matters to the game and both Cork and Limerick served hurling well last Sunday.
Of course, there will be regrets on Limerick’s side, some justified, some not. They spurned a couple of chances late on that might well have been dispatched had Graeme Mulcahy been sprung for what might have been a final cameo, but missed chances are part and parcel of the game. One of the things that all my Limerick friends have suggested is that had Barry Nash not been injured, he would have made a difference because of his ability to get up the field and get a score.
I disagree. The fact is that had Nash been fit to play he would not have been able to get up the field because he would have had a man to mark because the beauty of Cork’s set-up is that they went back to the game’s fundamentals, played man to man direct hurling and went after the Limerick backs. I have been suggesting that as the blueprint for success for an age, and was told by a lot of smart men that I was living in the past.
Well, it just turns out that the past is the future. Who would ever have guessed? Limerick’s biggest regret may well be that they were too prepared for this game. All year, John Kiely has made a point of saying that the team had ‘more work to do’ and I understand he was true to his word working them hard during the four-week build up to the semi-final.
I believe that they were put through a rigorous work-out in Killarney and that the preparations were intense right through and the end result was a team that if anything looked to be overtrained. They looked flatter than Cork when it came to a race for possession, almost heavy-legged at times. For all the excitement and hype which attached itself to the provincial championships, the bottom line is that the two provincial winners were slayed at the first time of asking.
That happens, but whatever way you weigh it up, four weeks parked up is too long a period and the GAA would do well to review it or otherwise the provincial championships will become devalued and the optimum position may well become being a beaten finalist and not a champion. As it is, the GAA has already seen the Allianz Leagues reduced to an irrelevance, and it can ill afford a second competition to go down the toilet. One suggestion is to get rid of the preliminary quarter-final round and go straight to the quarter-finals, reducing the waiting time for the provincial champions from four weeks to three.
But if Limerick have regrets, far more importantly they also have a future. I was never in the business of retiring players and I am not going to start, but it may well be that a couple will choose this as their opportunity to leave the stage. If they do, they will not owe Limerick hurling anything.
The critical thing is whether Kiely and Paul Kinnerk will stay and I really believe they will. They know the potential that is still in this group and they may also feel that the hurt of losing might make a great team even greater next year. It is an evolving group with Shane O’Brien, Adam English and Adrian O’Connor likely to see a lot more opportunities next season, when Peter Casey, Barry Nash and a fully fit Darragh O’Donovan will be available from the start.
There is nearly half a team in that alone so there is no reason for Limerick folk to be in a funeral mood. They should be heading someplace happier because no one has died, but there is every chance in 12 months time they will bear witness to a rebirth..
