Munster SHC Round 4: Limerick 3-26 Cork 1-16
The much-touted championship rematch between Cork and Limerick ended up as the dampest of squibs. This may have been a disappointment to the neutral and, rather more than that to Pat Ryan and his Cork team, but it ended as a powerful restatement of Limerick’s credentials after their five-in-a-row came to nothing last year.
It could be argued the contest lacked consequence, as Cork are still the most likely opponents for Limerick in the Munster final but no team tumbles to this type of a beating without scars. And it was definitely consequential for All-Ireland champions Clare, who are now out of the championship a week before they play Limerick.
Delivered with the lethal intensity of a force de frappe, Limerick’s first-half performance brooked absolutely no argument on a scorching afternoon in the Gaelic Grounds before an expectant capacity crowd of 42,477.
Always a numbers outfit, the reigning Munster champions produced some impressive data on their way to dismantling the team that had blighted their 2024 season.
They hit 78 per cent scoring efficiency. The 30-point quota was comfortably exceeded and it probably didn’t escape their attention that the winning margin of 16, or more precisely, 2-10, was the same as two of their most celebrated triumphs against Cork, the All-Ireland final of four years ago and the Munster opener of 1996.
Limerick were transformed from the listless and ragged crew of the league into the powerful collective, recognisable from their pomp of a couple of years ago. Kyle Hayes drove them on from centre back and from an early dispossession of Shane Barrett to a kamikaze block on Brian Hayes in injury-time, he well deserved his Man of the Match award.
There was plenty of competition though, even in defence. The whole full-back line was utterly dominant. At centre forward, Cian Lynch’s wizardry was in full Gandalf flow for a couple of assists and his apparent ability to snap the ball out of thin air and connect the mosaic of short passes inspired the team’s forward flow.
Limerick’s 28th-minute goal was a case in point, a great pickup combined with the presence of mind to register Adam English in space and get the ball into him. Within seconds Lynch added a spectacular point of his own.
None of the bold Cork strategies that helped to upend Limerick were on display, as they failed to counter either the physicality or the precision of the winners’ attacks.
Other things didn’t help. Declan Dalton, one of the avatars of Cork’s greater physical capacity last year, had to go off injured after eight minutes. Patrick Horgan’s free taking went on the blink, each of his five misses amplifying the voices in Cork’s head that this was not their day.
They tweaked their half-back line. Rob Downey switched with Ciarán Joyce so that they were marking Tom Morrissey and Cian Lynch respectively. Neither ended up an advertisement for the tactical manoeuvre. Morrissey had shot two points within two minutes.
“I think Cian got the thing off to a really great start with his presence of mind in that first two minutes,” said manager John Kiely. “He could see it and when the first couple get going, it encourages everybody to follow suit. Our use of the ball was very, very good.”
In the third minute Aaron Gillane ran past Niall O’Leary – who, emblematic of Cork’s suffering on the day, slipped – for a third-minute goal and although Cork rallied with three unanswered points, the match simply ran away from them.
For every frantic scratch Cork could inflict, back came Limerick with deep wounding thrusts: a point for Barrett, 1-2 for Limerick; a free for Horgan, three points for Limerick. And so on for a cliff face of a half-time deficit, 2-18 to 0-9.
The champions throttled back in the third quarter and were outscored 0-3 to 0-7, as Cork competed far harder than in the first half but Limerick rectified that in the final quarter, as Cork managed just one score, a Horgan free, whereas Limerick shot 1-5, the goal a penalty from Gillane after he was fouled by Eoin Downey.
Kiely was encouraged by how firmly his team put the lacklustre third quarter behind them. “Sometimes, that can get ingrained in you and you almost sense things are sliding if you like and our response to that was super and we won the last quarter.
“For us to do that, it’s a huge takeaway. The last day and the previous day, the fourth quarter was the weakest ... so we’ll take a lot from the final quarter and the impact from the bench. I was delighted with that as well.”
The other dressing-room was subdued. They could well be playing Limerick in the provincial final if they beat Waterford in their last match but there was no cause for celebration.
“I suppose looking at work-rate, it wasn’t high enough,” said Cork manager Pat Ryan afterwards. “I guess that was the thing. We stood off Limerick and left them use the ball as they can. They were at a really, really good pitch; they were really up for it. They got on top of us and we just didn’t fight hard enough to get back into the game.”
LIMERICK: N Quaid; S Finn, D Morrissey, M Casey (0-1); D Byrnes (0-1), K Hayes, B Nash; A English (1-2), W O’Donoghue; G Hegarty (0-3), C Lynch (0-1), T Morrissey (0-5); A Gillane (2-7, 1-0p, 6f), S O’Brien (0-1), D Reidy (0-1).
Subs: S Flanagan for O’Brien, C O’Neill (0-2) for T Morrissey (both 51 mins), P Casey (0-2) for Reidy (59), C Coughlan for M Casey (67), A O’Connor for Byrnes (68), B Murphy for D Morrissey (inj, 71).
CORK: P Collins; S O’Donoghue, E Downey, N O’Leary; R Downey (0-1), C Joyce, M Coleman (0-1); T O’Mahony, E Twomey; S Barrett (0-1), D Fitzgibbon, D Dalton; P Horgan (1-9, 1-0p, 8f), B Hayes (0-1), A Connolly.
Subs: B Roche (0-1) for Dalton (8 mins), C O’Brien for R Downey, S Harnedy (0-2) for Twomey (both h-t), D Cahalane for O’Leary (56), R O’Flynn for Connolly (66).
Referee: L Gordon (Galway).
