Guest Blog: Expect the ground to shake with Enda McEvoy

 By Enda McEvoy

 

Limerick pulling off the summer’s first surprise, if surprise it was, at the Gaelic Grounds. Michael Ryan, that most gregarious of men, refusing to talk to the media afterwards before having the sense to change mind and tack the following day. Cork finishing the better to see off a wasteful Clare. Pat Gilroy’s Dublin caught in injury time for the second Sunday in a row.

 

Week Two of the hurling championship didn’t lack for action. Week Three, with Tipp and Cork meeting in Thurles and Salthill playing host to the collision of the All Ireland and National League champions, may spoil us altogether.

 

The team most in need of a win? Easy one. Tipperary. They were dismal against Limerick: there is no other way of putting it. Ryan’s charges were flattered to come up only six points short; a ten-point margin would have been a more accurate gauge of the winners’ superiority on an afternoon where it was hard to avoid the conclusion that one of these sides has its best hurling to come whereas the other has its best hurling done.

 

Thus the Munster championship round robin began with precisely the kind of explosion guaranteed to blow it wide open. Whatever becomes of Limerick from here on, this was their first significant championship victory for four years and one that will have given their long suffering supporters a sneak preview of better days to come.

 

Is it overdoing it to expect John Kiely’s young team, with their raft of All Ireland-winning under-21 starlets from 2015 and ’17, to lift the MacCarthy Cup this season? Yes. Is it overdoing it to expect them to be there or thereabouts in two years’ time? Not in the least. 

 

The hosts at the Gaelic Grounds landed 14 points from play, their opponents five. That tells a story. Limerick were by a distance the more cohesive, better coached outfit, playing with their heads up and always striving to link the play and find a colleague. Tipperary’s gameplan, inasmuch as it existed, was contradictory in the extreme, a series of long balls to a bunch of forwards whose inability to quarry their own possession has long been among hurling’s foremost articles of faith.

 

Brendan Maher and Seamus Callanan were introduced during the second half in a vain attempt to bail out a leaking boat. The pair will surely start against Cork next Sunday. That said, Callanan’s cameo marked his first appearance following a long injury-induced layoff. Tipperary supporters will do well to avoid relying on him to wave a magic wand against Cork and make everything right.

 

Not that Cork teams tend to need much in the way of a confidence boost at any time, clearly, but the memory of their scintillating victory at Semple Stadium 12 months ago against the then All Ireland champions won’t exactly harm the self-belief of John Meyler’s men either. Any team containing Pat Horgan, as classy a forward as there is in the sport, will always be in with a shout.

 

Later in the afternoon comes Galway’s first-ever home fixture in the Leinster championship. It couldn’t be a more glamorous one, with Kilkenny their guests. At this stage the men in maroon are well overdue a championship victory against the wearers of the stripes. The 2012 Leinster final is a long time ago now.

 

Kilkenny were adequate, nothing more, against Offaly last weekend, driving as many wides as they did scores. But Walter Walsh was missing and missed. He’ll be needed in Salthill, particularly as this Kilkenny iteration lacks size and heft – qualities the All Ireland champions emphatically do not.

 

No county has entered the championship as far below the radar as Waterford, who travel to Ennis to take on Clare. If you fancy calling this one, fire away; you’re a braver human being than me. Yet if there isn’t at least one draw over the course of the Munster round robin it’ll be a surprise. As for the pairing of Offaly and Wexford in Tullamore, Davy Fitz got off to a winning start against Dublin. Lining out for the third weekend in a row, this may prove too much of a stretch for Offaly.

 

Weekend Three, then. Expect the ground to shake.