Nobody saw it turning into this. Or if they did, they were impressive in their discretion.
In the press conference after the 2021 All-Ireland decider, Cork manager Kieran Kingston was asked for his take on the drubbing his side had just been subjected to. Limerick had rinsed them by 16 points, the biggest ever defeat suffered by a Cork team in an All-Ireland final.
Given the context, it was probably little wonder that Kingston felt inclined to turn the klieg lights away from his county and on to the champions. “I suppose initially, your first reaction is it’s all about Limerick, to be fair,” he said. “You’d want to go on record – it’s huge, huge credit to Limerick ... From our perspective, it was like trying to stop the tide with a bucket.”
Nothing much changed in 2022, either. Cork won a ho-hum league game in the Gaelic Grounds the following February before being strong-armed again in the championship in May. Páirc Uí Chaoimh had its biggest crowd yet for a hurling match that day but it was still a few thousand short of capacity. The last knockings of Limerick’s 11-point victory were played out to emptying stands.
Nobody left Cork that day thinking they had just seen the next great rivalry. In his Examiner column the next morning, Anthony Daly was withering and precise. “This bunch of Cork players just can’t beat Limerick at the moment ... When Limerick’s main men are back to their best, Cork just haven’t the physical or mental fortitude to get near them. That’s the bottom line.”
That was just three years ago. In five league and championship games since, Limerick have only won once. Cork have come out on top three times, lost one and drawn the other. There hasn’t been a single clash that was decided by more than two points. Nobody leaves before the end of a Cork v Limerick game now.
“When you have that shared border, there’s always going to be that extra rivalry,” says TJ Ryan. “When you look over your shoulder and you see the neighbours are going well, you always want to up your game to put them back in their box. And I think for a while, there was a realisation that Cork weren’t good enough.
“But over the last two or three seasons, everyone has seen that’s changing. The underage success in Cork, Pat Ryan getting the job – things are improving. Last year they came with a head of steam and that Cork cockiness came back in a big way.
“How do you know a fella is from Cork? He’ll tell you! So now that has come back in a major way because there’s much more confidence among Cork people that they have a team to back it up.”
Insofar as you can measure these things, Cork v Limerick has probably become the biggest game in Irish sport. Attendances at these games since the start of 2023 have gone through the roof and will come close to 250,000 after this weekend. That’s in six games, league and championship. For comparison’s sake, the last six encounters between Munster and Leinster in rugby have seen just short of 234,000 through the gates.
It hasn’t only been the big blazing days of summer either. In 2023, 19,516 were in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on the first Saturday night in February for the opening round of the league. That number far outstripped every other game in that year’s league, including the final between Limerick and Kilkenny.
They were back again on February 1st this year and the crowd swelled to 23,402. The final beat it this time around, as 43,423 turned up to see Cork tear Tipp limb from limb. But it beat the football final between Mayo and Kerry, as well as every other game in the hurling league.
The key addition to the Cork v Limerick rivalry has, of course, been Cork. Limerick’s part of the deal hasn’t changed all that much. Though not quite the threshing machine they were in their imperial phase, they’re still the sport’s biggest beast with a huge support behind them. All that has happened really is that Cork have come up to their level, on and off the pitch.
“The 2021 final was such a disappointment,” says Seánie McGrath. “Cork had been quietly building at underage and the two under-20 titles in the space of a few weeks got us all really excited. And then Limerick hammered us that day.
“But that team kind of came out of nowhere that year. This feels different. Cork have had good teams over the past 20 years since the last All-Ireland but there’s just something different about this one. People are very excited about the pace of them, the height, the strength. You can see that the S&C stuff has been done properly with them and they’re able to compete with Limerick physically now.
“All that has led to a situation where you get the sense around Cork that there’s a newfound support. There’s a new demographic there. The amount of young people that are going to matches now is unprecedented. Cork hurling is very fashionable at this moment down here. Munster and Cork City get a good support as well but it just seems to be the cool thing to do – go support the team, get your terrace ticket, put the colours on and go in and have a carnival.”
That injection of pure uncut Cork has been like human growth hormone for the whole scene. In this year’s league, Cork matches were responsible for five of the six biggest crowds. Last year’s second epic against Limerick is the only time in history that Croke Park has sold out for an All-Ireland hurling semi-final. For the first time since 2018, more people watched the hurling final on TV than the football final.
“This Cork team have changed the narrative,” says Ryan. “For a long time there, it would have been like the old Alex Ferguson thing – Limerick would have looked at them and a bit of them would have been thinking, ‘It’s Spurs, lads.’ But that’s gone now. Cork feel they are in the equation and rightly so.
“The two wins last year were such epics and Cork came out on top both times. I think both teams picked their battle to some extent in the league game this year because they’re basically eyeballing each other now. I think there’s a good chance that this game will be the first of a trilogy.”
When you’re there, when you’re down by the Lee or on the Ennis Road or up in Croke Park, the unspooling drama can feel inevitable. But it has been nothing of the sort. Of all the teams that were going to come and challenge Limerick, it always felt like there was something lacking in Cork. Too wristy, too knacky, too pure somehow.
You are who you are until you change who you are. The game that transformed everything came a year ago last weekend. Limerick came down to the Páirc and Cork met them with extreme prejudice. They took them on in the air, sourcing 2-5 from Patrick Collins’s puck-outs. On a balmy night down by the marina, they outscored the champions by 1-4 to 0-1 in the closing four minutes. Bedlam.
“Cork have been the catalyst for Limerick to make changes,” Ryan says. “Going back to three up top, their use of the long ball, Brian Hayes knocking the ball down to runners, playing with goal on their mind a bit more than other teams. Limerick forced Cork to do that and now that they’ve done it, it has forced Limerick to change things up as well.
“But none of that would have mattered if Cork hadn’t the players. It’s all very well to say that, ‘Oh, you need to do a, b and c to challenge Limerick. You have to have the players to do it. We often overlook that.
“Once they had the players to do it, you could see the Cork public really getting behind them. It was as if they were going, ‘This is us.’ And then that game in the Páirc last year when their backs were against the wall and they won it on a lovely summer’s night and the crowd came on the pitch afterwards – that was credit in the bank. That sent the whole thing to another level.”
A couple of weeks back, McGrath’s seat at the Tipp game gave him a head-on view of the Cork full-forward line in action. Darragh McCarthy’s early red card obviously dilutes most analysis of the game as a whole but even allowing for it, Tipp had to be buried. McGrath saw the process up close.
“I think in general, hurling has undergone a huge tactical change over the past few years anyway and every team is so tactically astute. But Cork have made that change to really using their aerial ability in a way they haven’t had it in a long, long time. The whole Connolly-Hayes dynamic is really different to what went before.
[ Ciarán Murphy: A high-performing Cork hurling team is a boost to the GAAOpens in new window ]
“They’ve got great pace and they still play Cork hurling, if that makes sense. Brilliant wristy ability, great ability to eke out goals. Cork got criticised – actually, that’s a strong word for it. We had excellent players for a long time but maybe they were all of the same type, a lot of them. Similar styles, low to the ground. That full-forward line now gives you huge variety.
“I had a great vantage point at the Tipp game and what really struck me was that there was ferocious communication going on between them. I think more of a team ethic has been built into the team over the last couple of years since Pat came in. They’re very unselfish.
“Against Limerick last year, Decky Dalton basically sacrificed his game so as to bring Kyle Hayes around the place and make space in the centre. But then he was still able to come back into his half-back line and score a point from nearly 100 yards. Cork have those options now and Limerick have to combat them.”
Kingston was probably right in 2021. It was all about Limerick.
It’s not any more.
