Little jeopardy as Limerick breeze past Clare on a flat beer night

Limerick 1-27 Clare 2-18

A couple of minutes after the final whistle, with a couple of thousand Limerick supporters traipsing all over their beautiful new pitch, chatting and pucking around and hunting autographs, it was announced over the public address that the water sprinklers were about to be turned on.

It didn’t sound like an idle threat, but there was very little movement from the Limerick crowd, who, to their credit, have dealt with far greater hardships in their long hurling lives than a sharp dousing from a loaded sprinkler.

About a minute later the announcement was repeated, with escalated firmness, but the crowd was still going about its business, as if daring the sprinklers to do their worst. All of a sudden, it had turned into a game of chicken. In an unexpected twist, about an hour and a half after the ball was thrown in, the Gaelic Grounds was gripped in suspense.

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The game had no such pretensions. It was a dud: emotionless, frictionless. If you drink stout at home you will know that sinking feeling when halfway through the pour you can tell that there won’t be a decent head on the pint. In the hurling league, the risk of a sour, flat pint is always present.

Early in last year’s league Clare produced a passive performance like this against Cork and it had dissolved into an irrelevance long before the league was over. The problem was that the teams were moving at different speeds: Clare at a trot, Limerick at a canter.

In the end there were just six points in it, but the final score bore no relation to the run of play. Midway through the second half Limerick were 14 points clear and started to empty their bench. Clare rattled off 1-9 in the last quarter of an hour, which was the same as they had managed in the previous 55 minutes.

John Kiely was irritated afterwards about Limerick’s looseness in the closing stages, saying: “If we could control the game for 60 minutes, why couldn’t we control it for 70?”. But they had also targeted a strong third quarter after fainting in Páirc Uí Chaoimh last week, and that mission was accomplished. Cork had outscored them by 2-3 to 0-2 in that period; on Saturday night, Limerick blitzed Clare by 0-8 to 0-1.

Even in the context of a game such as this there is always something to see. In Limerick’s ongoing search for greater competition in their forward line, Michael Houlihan made his first really significant pitch. The opportunity wasn’t lost on him.

He made a sensational start, prowling across the half-forward line, mostly unaccompanied, and within just seven minutes he had landed three points, all from play. In the continuing absence of Aaron Gillane, and with David Reidy leaving the field early with an injury, Houlihan was suddenly given responsibility for dead balls too. A couple of his early frees were tentative but he soon found his range and finished the game with a dozen scores.

“If he’s going to earn his place on the team he’s going to have to do that on a regular basis,” said Kiely afterwards, doing the job of a sprinkler. “Well done to him tonight, but it’s got to be backed up as we go forward.”

Cian Lynch made his first start of the year and he looked incredibly sharp, especially in the first half, scoring an early point and setting up two others. He moved with all his customary nippiness, but he looked more powerful too. With an hour in his legs they called him ashore.

For Clare, even small mercies were scarce. Having missed last year with a serious injury Aidan McCarthy continued his rehabilitation with a terrific performance, finishing up with 13 points, four of them from play. He rattled a shot off Nickie Quaid’s crossbar too with a goal at his mercy, early in the first half, at a time in the game when it just might have made a difference.

But until David Reidy came off the bench in the middle of the second half, McCarthy didn’t have a productive accomplice. Reidy rattled off 1-2 in six minutes, taking some of the gruesome look off the scoreline.

The crowd had dispersed from the pitch by nine o’clock. By half nine there was still no sign of the sprinklers. The league is full of harmless deception.

LIMERICK: N Quaid; S Finn, R English, F O’Connor; C Barry, D Morrissey, K Hayes (0-3); D O’Donovan, D Reidy; G Hegarty (0-2), C Lynch (0-1), M Houlihan (0-12, eight frees), S O’Brien (0-2), S Flanagan, P Casey (0-3).

Subs: A English (0-2) for Reidy (8 mins), A Costello for F O’Connor (31), D O’Dalaigh (1-0) for O’Brien (52), T Morrissey (0-2) for Hegarty (53), G Mulcahy for Lynch (61), J Quilty for Hayes (66).

CLARE: E Quilligan; R Hayes, C Cleary, S Morey (0-1); D Ryan (0-1), D McInerney, A Fitzgerald; C Malone, P Donnellan; D Fitzgerald (0-1), D Conroy, I Galvin (1-0); M Rodgers, P Duggan, A McCarthy (0-13, nine frees).

Subs: R Mounsey for Donnellan (30 mins); C Galvin for A Fitzgerald, A Shanagher for Galvin (all 50); D Reidy (1-2) for Rodgers (56), C Leen for D Fitzgerald (58).

Referee: James Owens (Wexford).