“It’s champagne stuff,” said Anthony Daly at the break after watching Limerick produce a first-half performance against Cork that you might only ever have seen from the Harlem Globetrotters. Well, if hurling had been their code. “It’s beautiful to watch,” Dónal Óg Cusack agreed, although he added, somewhat ruefully, “if you weren’t a Cork person”.
Granted, there weren’t too many who predicted that when Cork left them in the shade in last year’s All Ireland’s semi-final, banjaxing their drive for five, that that was the end of Limerick’s spell in the hurling sun. And that they’d have to wait, say, another 45 years before they returned to it.
But the few who did indeed make such a forecast would have been left with cheeks as red as those spotted in the crowd at the Gaelic Grounds on Sunday, the ones owned by folk who’d forgotten to apply their factor 50.
“There’s a long year yet,” Dónal Óg hollered at the whooping and cheering Limerick crowd that gathered beneath RTÉ’s gantry at the ground come full-time, and there is too. Nobody will be getting their paws on Liam MacCarthy until July 20th, and God alone knows what might happen between now and then.
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But “they’re far from gone away”, said Dónal Óg, conceding that Limerick remain half useful. Maybe more than that. “Have we ever seen a better team?” he asked. Anthony and Liam Sheedy couldn’t think of one.
Dónal Óg and Anthony, incidentally, had turned up looking like “the men from Del Monte”, as Joanne Cantwell noted, the pair resplendent in their creamy suits, the only let-down that they weren’t donning Panama hats.
Anthony admitted that shouting for Cork would be tough on his soul, but he needed a favour from them. If Cork won “we could be alive in the morning”, he beamed, we being All Ireland champions Clare who were in severe danger of not progressing from their Munster group.
Would that have been a shock? Possibly not as big of a one as the sight of Lee Chin in that bath with one half of the 2 Johnnies, the ad never not eye-catching. But Anthony would have happily shared a bath with the other Johnnie if it kept Clare in the championship.
Off we went, the stands looking a bit like the Portuguese flag, stuffed with red and green under the bluest of skies. Lovely. As was Limerick’s hurling.
“This is exhibition stuff,” said Marty Morrissey, Limerick even treating us to - technical-term alert - flicky, tippy-tappy, poppy, reverse-y no-look passes. They had the look of a team not averse to winning their seventh Munster title in a row, nor staying on course for their sixth All Ireland title in eight years.
Relentless. Hunting in packs. Scoring for the laugh of it. Fifteen points up at half time. By then Anthony was losing all hope, as was the second Johnnie of ever having a bath with him, Dónal Óg torn between singing the praises of Limerick and lamenting Cork’s defensive shortcomings.
And it was, largely, as you were in the second half, Brendan Cummins, alongside Marty, left swooning over Limerick’s “energy and hunger”, the moral of the story being that when you start to doubt them they’ll make you look like a right eejit.
“They think the referee has blown the whistle - and he has now,” said Marty, channelling his inner Kenneth Wolstenholme, as the crowd swarmed the pitch at full time.
Clare out, Anthony will bathe alone. Limerick march on. “It was close on the perfect performance,” said Liam, although a modest Adam English, who joined the panel post-match, wouldn’t say as much.
English was in the running for the RTÉ man of the match award, but he was pipped to it by Kyle Hayes. That was unfair because there appeared to be at least four Kyle Hayes on the pitch.
“Not a bead of sweat on him, and us sweating up here in the shade,” said Anthony after English left them. Limerick’s rivals for Liam MacCarthy will, most likely, be sweating too after that performance. “Back in business,” said Joanne. Liam, Dónal Óg and Anthony nodded. Rumours of their demise? A bit previous.
