All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final: Limerick 0-30 Waterford 0-19
PERFECTION, in this most imperfect of years.
Winners of every game they played in 2020, Limerick yesterday picked up a second All-Ireland in three years and served notice that they will be back for a whole lot more.
They are frightening, not just in the youthfulness of their numbers, but in the way players so young set the tone across the board for them.
Gearoid Hegarty will be hurler of the year. He is 26.
Tom Morrissey will be second in line for that gong, only undone by his own selflessness yesterday as he could have had half Hegarty’s scores for himself.
He, Aaron Gillane, Sean Finn and Cian Lynch are 24.
Seamus Flanagan is 23. Kyle Hayes is 22. Only Nickie Quaid (31) and Graeme Mulcahy (30) are over 28.
Their average starting age yesterday was just 25.6.
It is not so much the bare numbers. All-Ireland winning teams tend to create some prosperity from youth. Seldom, though, is the leadership provided by so many so young.
Think of their competitors and how they’re largely led by men at or beyond their peak years.
Galway still rely massively on 32-year-old Joe Canning. Tipperary have Seamus Callanan of the same vintage, as well as Padraic and Brendan Maher (31).
TJ Reid is 33 and Kilkenny will be in bother when he goes. Cork are in the same boat with 32-year-old Patrick Horgan.
One bad championship performance in the last three years, the semi-final aberration against Kilkenny last year, is all that stood between Limerick and a probable three-in-a-row.
Now hurling is wondering how exactly to cope with them over the next six, seven, eight years.
Since the decade’s beginning, each All-Ireland winner has been lauded for the stamp they’ve put on the game and teams begin to wonder is this the new way to go.
Limerick are Tipperary’s fearsome attacking, Galway’s brute strength, Clare’s technicality, Kilkenny’s relentless, the whole lot rolled into one.
Physically they are a new benchmark.
Yesterday’s starting team averaged just under 6’2” and 13 stone 11 lbs.
And yet they are a team whose entire being is the speed at which they are able to operate. Big men with pace? Unstoppable.
They didn’t score a goal in either of the last three games and they didn’t need to. They hit 30 points yesterday. Teams have had bigger tallies but only Kilkenny in 2008 have ever raised 30 white flags before.
Waterford did not want to be part of more of the same type of history, but they were powerless to stop it.
Croke Park’s openness exposed them to a litany of one-on-one battles that they had been able to tie up better in Thurles in the Munster final.
They weren’t helped by losing Tadhg de Búrca to an early knee injury. His hook on Cian Lynch had brilliantly prevented an early goal, as had an astonishing double-save from Stephen O’Keeffe to deny Lynch and Kyle Hayes both.
Hayes was the outstanding player of the first 20 minutes but when Gearoid Hegarty started into it, there was no stopping it.
It didn’t help that Calum Lyons didn’t really seem to be under instruction to get tight to him. Hegarty kept drifting in-field and landed a remarkable 0-7 from play.
On any other day, his opposite wing-forward Tom Morrissey would have been man-of-the-match. He got five from play and a handful of assists, most notably for Hegarty.
You could go from back to front and you’d do well to pick a Limerick player who didn’t perform. Nickie Quaid’s saves were mostly of the comfortable variety, and he made them look so. Sean Finn, Dan Morrissey and Barry Nash gave nothing away.
Up front, Aaron Gillane was up against Waterford’s best defender in Conor Prunty and despite a great battle, still snaffled four points from play, more than any Déise man mustered. Seamus Flanagan got three, more than justifying his inclusion even though Peter Casey was good when he came on.
Don’t forget that this was a team without two key defenders in Mike Casey and Richie English, while Shane Dowling sat, stood, bellowed and roared his way through the game in the relative privilege of a Hogan Stand media seat.
He would have known when he retired through injury what he was potentially leaving behind. Any other county would have mourned the absence of such a talent. Limerick just ploughed on.
“It was next man up, next man up, it didn’t matter who went down,” said John Kiely after the game.
Dolores O’Riordan’s distinctive tones boomed through Croke Park as they had in much more emotional circumstances two years ago. Her death, the ending of Limerick’s famine, the outpouring of emotion, it all seemed so absent yesterday.
And yet there seemed a release for Limerick in the lack of fervour in which the game played. There was no nervous crawl across the line, almost throwing it away as they had against Galway.
They were three up at the break and had Stephen Bennett played in Jack Fagan rather than going for goal himself, it could well have been a level game. But Waterford were already barely hanging on and in a third quarter period that they’d won in each of their previous games this year, they were blown away.
Seven of the first nine scores went Limerick’s way in that period, and even for a side that had produced such heroics in coming back from the dead against Kilkenny, there never seemed any real hope.
Austin Gleeson gave it all he had, as did Bennett, but the gap between the teams was just too pronounced for them to hold the game together. Waterford’s defence were badly exposed, with the starting Limerick forward line scoring 0-19 from play between them, even with Cian Lynch and Graeme Mulcahy scoreless.
John Kiely promised that when everyone has their vaccine and some form of normality has returned that the Liam MacCarthy Cup will be brought down the road into the Gaelic Grounds and a county can party then.
Even if the road is too far travelled by the time that is possibly, it’s hard to see a future without more winters of celebration for Limerick hurling.
MATCH STATS
Limerick: N Quaid; S Finn, D Morrissey, B Nash; D Byrnes (0-1 line ball), D Hannon (0-1), K Hayes (0-1); D O’Donovan, W O’Donoghue (0-1); G Hegarty (0-7), C Lynch, T Morrissey (0-5); A Gillane (0-10, 0-4 frees), S Flanagan (0-3), G Mulcahy
Subs: P Casey for Mulcahy (48), D Reidy for O’Donovan (59), P Ryan (0-1) for Flanagan (62), A Breen for Gillane (68), P O’Loughlin for Hayes (71)
Waterford: S O’Keeffe; I Kenny, C Prunty, S McNulty; C Lyons (0-1), T de Búrca, K Moran (0-1); J Barron, K Bennett (0-1); J Fagan, N Montgomery, S Bennett (0-11, 0-10 frees); D Hutchinson (0-1), A Gleeson (0-4, 0-1 line ball), J Prendergast
Subs: I Daly for de Burca (21), D Lyons for K Bennett (40), C Gleeson for Montgomery (44), P Curran for Moran (52), S Fives for Kenny (55)
Referee: F Horgan (Tipperary)