Seán Moran: Limerick’s sluggish start will be of small comfort to their rivals

Round and round it goes. By the time of the All-Ireland final – in, let's remind ourselves, about five months – the two teams will need help off the carousel when it finally stops.

One thing that we probably do know or certainly expect is that Limerick will be there. At the weekend they lost their league opener in Wexford but that's unlikely to move the dial very far.

Last year they started the campaign so sluggishly that they looked hardly fit when playing out the first three league fixtures. Those matches against Tipperary, Galway and Waterford – three counties who had particular reasons for wanting to beat them – yielded an average of 20 points.

The match against Cork, a rehearsal for the Munster semi-final, marked lift-off and they averaged 34 points for the last two fixtures, allowing that bottom team Westmeath were the other opposition.

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Manager John Kiely referred to the wind in Chadwicks Wexford Park and how it might have complicated things but he equally acknowledged that 18 wides had undermined his team's prospects.

Still, for the All-Ireland champions to manage just 0-11 was most unusual. In fact it was the county’s lowest league total since 2010, the season they were in turmoil with a players’ strike and managed 0-8 against Tipperary.

There's no doubt that they'll go up the gears in the weeks to come. During Kiely's years, Limerick have specialised in timing their run so well that they are at their peak for the biggest tests of the season.

There were even signs of it in last year’s championship when a patchy display against Cork in Munster was obscured by a slightly flattering eight-point margin.

Half-time in the provincial final is where many people say Limerick’s championship began in earnest.

It sounds a bit glib and post-hoc rationalising but how else to explain the turnaround against Tipperary? There was tactical adjustment to get their counter-attacking game up to speed plus the introduction of players, including Aaron Gillane, who had been dropped after an underwhelming semi-final and Dan Morrissey, both of whose seasons went from strength to strength.

Varied approach

Limerick won the last five halves of the 2021 championship, the 35 minutes against Tipperary plus the Waterford All-Ireland semi-final and final demolition of Cork by 6-74 to 2-44, a 42-point spread over 2½ matches.

In respect of the Munster final, imagine also the benefits of having a 10-point diagnostic handed to a team at half-time and the confidence gained by solving all of those problems.

Will it be the same this year? There’ll have to be a varied approach. The old system in 2021 allowed Kiely ideal intervals between matches – two weeks, three weeks and two weeks. Sceptics, who saw the scale of improvement necessary after the Munster semi-final as a doomed attempt to fatten pigs for market, had to reconsider.

This season will be different. Even turning it on late in the league will require further planning, as the four-match Munster round-robin timetable is more pressurised than the last two knockout championship when Limerick were careful to avoid the qualifiers.

Even that though has turned out nicely. Munster Council have ensured that no team will play more than two matches in successive weeks and, with three counties from five progressing, any loss of form would need to be catastrophic to eliminate them.

Then there’s the question of personnel. Last year Limerick were by and large unaffected by injuries but that changed with Peter Casey’s serious knee injury in the All-Ireland final.

Casey had to go off before half-time by which stage he had scored five points from play. He had graduated to the point where he had taken over from Graeme Mulcahy in the full forward line. In the words of one experienced observer, "he's a big loss – never wastes a ball and any time he's in possession, something happens".

How Limerick make up for his absence is an unwelcome challenge. Kiely has though stated his intention of broadening options, especially up front.

“There’s going to be a wide selection of players used during the whole course of the league,” he said on Sunday after the Wexford match. “At the minute, we have some lads coming back from injury; we’re trying to manage some lads who are playing Fitzgibbon and Freshers. It’s going to be up and down.

A chance

“The bottom line is every day these lads get a chance it leaves an impression and, while they worked hard today, we’re just going to need more of a return for the amount of ball that we had.”

It's also worth reflecting on how good Limerick were last year. Outside of the household names like Cian Lynch and Kyle Hayes, unsung players had fantastic seasons. One metric is that in more than 30 years selecting All Stars I've never come across All-Ireland champions who had credible claims on all 15 awards. As it was, they reaped a record 12.

Can that level of performance be sustained?

Of course, it may not be necessary. The teams that put it up to the champions in recent years – Cork and Kilkenny who both beat Limerick in 2019, Galway a year later were just three points behind and Tipperary for the famous half last summer – are all in transition.

Waterford have posed the most consistent challenge but in big matches they’ve struggled to come to terms with Limerick’s physicality.

Much may also depend on the champions themselves. How driven will they be to maintain the stratospheric standards of the last four years? Waiting for Limerick to lose their appetite mightn’t be the most reassuring of prospects for any challengers but it might be all there is.

smoran@irishtimes.com