Limerick's coming team arrives early

Gaelic Games: Unhindered, the crowds push into Limerick's dressing-room in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. These epochal victories always end in anarchy. The Limerick footballers presumably don't appoint a crowd control officer for their post-match arrangements and the delirious throng packs in.

Among them are the players who have defeated Cork.

Some are wearing swapped red jerseys; others have their historic green ones, mementoes of the extraordinary. A roar goes up above the tumult: "This is only the beginning . . ."

One player is sitting there yelling away at no one and everyone. "Lads, I'm going to have one hell of a hangover but I'll be up at seven tomorrow morning to look at the papers." Sure he will.

Kerryman Liam Kearns has managed many of these players to a Munster under-21 title and, beyond that, to a position of senior self-respect almost unparalleled in the annals of Limerick football.

"I thought last week (NFL Division Two final, lost to Westmeath by a late goal) might affect us, but we talked during the week about no more moral victories. I was sick of being clapped on the back all week for losing by two points in Croke Park.

"I did think Cork would be better than that, but they were beaten all over the field. We were on top everywhere. They got nothing in the middle in the first half, won no ball and won no breaks. It's a massive win for us but it's no more than a win. Clare would be given no chance if Cork were going to play them. Now we're going to Ennis and Clare will be more confident playing us."

But back to the start: here's what history says. Until yesterday Cork and Limerick had met 17 times in the football championship and Limerick had won once - all of 38 years ago. Limerick's history is so wacky that they've won more All-Irelands than Munster titles.

Fast forward to the present and Cork are the defending Munster champions. Limerick are a coming team but few expected them to arrive so soon.

A miserable attendance was in situ for the throw-in. Posterity may come across 100,000 who claim to have been present but the reality was about 6,000.

The afternoon kept plunging through some awful climatic portal back to the sort of weather we know and fear from February League matches. Bad news for underdogs who prefer it quick and slick rather than hard and heavy.

Good news for the underdogs was that the champions were dreadful. Never raising a gallop, they lost sequentially the initiative, the first half, the chance of a comeback and finally their respectability as their opponents painstakingly stuffed them by 10 points.

Muiris Gavin is displaying the same presence of mind he showed on the field. About to speak for the RTÉ cameras, he remembers to swap the Cork trophy jersey for something more appropriate to the Limerick captain. Gavin was immense, kicking eight frees and one point from play as well as competing hard on the 40 to disrupt Cork attempts to build from the back.

He pinpoints where it went right and acknowledges the previous week's experience and the debt owed to their manager.

"We didn't panic. We knew that Liam was deflated, because he has total belief in this team and just didn't expect the last five minutes last week. So we had to back up his belief in the team, rather than the other way around.

"I thought we went out and dictated to them, put them under relentless pressure. The ultimate goal of these players has been to beat Cork or Kerry, but five minutes afterwards and now we want to move on. But we couldn't have faced one more moral victory."

He also paid tribute to the team's longest serving member, a survivor of those far-off days when Limerick last blinked in the pale daylight.

"We wanted to do it for John Quane. He finally has a team around him after all the years of having to do it himself and we knew he's near his last chance."

And finally a statement of intent, of the desire to be more than a team that makes history on just one afternoon: "People have to remember that if Cork or Kerry had beaten us there'd be no celebrations. But this group of players - whatever about the Limerick public - will be very focused on where we go from here."

Match report: Page 2