Hurling & Camogie

All-Ireland champions Limerick await Waterford in Division One decider

Jamie Barron's Waterford take on reigning All-Ireland champions Limerick in tomorrow's Allianz National Hurling League Division One final. Picture by Seamus Loughran
Jamie Barron's Waterford take on reigning All-Ireland champions Limerick in tomorrow's Allianz National Hurling League Division One final. Picture by Seamus Loughran Jamie Barron's Waterford take on reigning All-Ireland champions Limerick in tomorrow's Allianz National Hurling League Division One final. Picture by Seamus Loughran

Allianz National Hurling League Division One final: Limerick v Waterford (tomorrow, 2pm, Croke Park, live on TG4)

AT the end of what can only be described as an odd Allianz National Hurling League campaign, several giant question marks still hang in the air.

The principal query is whether or not the main protagonists actually cared that much about winning the competition.

Limerick and Waterford will inevitably contest tomorrow's final at Croke Park with gusto but does the absence of Cork, Tipperary, Clare or Galway from the occasion truly bother those counties? Probably not.

Likewise, does anyone really think that Brian Cody is overly concerned about losing a 'relegation play-off' - that wasn't actually a relegation play-off - to Cork? We don't imagine so either.

The lack of a relegation threat from Division 1A this year, allied to teams having now experienced one season of the ultra intense provincial Championship series and sensing the chaos that awaits them throughout May and June, meant that few teams were likely to obsess about the League.

So does that ultimately devalue the competition and place an asterisk beside the name of tomorrow's winners?

"No, I don't think so," said Waterford midfielder Jamie Barron. "And I think Limerick would feel exactly the same way as us about that. Look, there are only three major competitions every year - the league, the Munster championship and the All-Ireland. This is one of those, it's the one that's in front of us right now, so it would be stupid to devalue it or take it lightly."

Yet even the two-time All-Star has to admit that the competition has been missing something this year, a vital cut and thrust that was there in previous seasons.

"I suppose Division 1A teams maybe didn't feel as much of a threat to them (with no relegation)," he said. "For us, we just wanted to top Division 1B, that was our goal. Ultimately I know we didn't do that but once you get into the quarter-finals, you are just going at it hard again.

"I'm not sure in Division 1A what way teams were approaching games and stuff like that, maybe it did lack a small bit of cut-throat stuff when you don't have that little bit of 'leave it all out there' mentality due to there being no relegation or whatever."

For that very reason, pundits predicted that we could have a surprise winner this year, a team like, say, Wexford that might take the competition deadly serious and steal off with the title.

It is a relatively novel final pairing too with Limerick, chasing a first title in 22 years, back in just their second final since. As for Waterford, they claimed the title in 2015, but that was only their third ever.

Limerick's lack of League success masks the fact that they're reigning All-Ireland champions and probably the best team in Ireland now.

Waterford, beaten All-Ireland finalists in 2017, aspire to that position themselves and have reverted to a more traditional, direct approach under Paraic Fanning this year.

"We didn't set any goal of winning the league or of getting to a league final," said Barron. "At the start of the year we said we'd focus on every game as it comes. Slowly but surely we gathered a bit of momentum and we've got a few lads back from injury now that are pushing us hard again. We've also got a few new lads on the panel who are driving the thing as well.

"I think the competition is healthy and everyone is trying as best they can to get right, to get fit and to push the fella in front of them or beside them. The way it has panned out we've ended up in a league final and now that it's in front of us we'll be giving it everything we have to win it."