Super 8s Step Aside, It's Hurling Time
By: Enda McEvoy
One can complain about the logic, such as it was, behind the fixture-making. Hurling has so few red-letter days that the All Ireland semi-finals should always be played on successive weekends in order to maximise publicity.
But no matter. For what we do have, may the Lord make us truly thankful. As the weekend gets ever closer, the anticipation grows. Galway versus Clare on Saturday followed by Cork against Limerick on Sunday. Croke Park will be the only place to be.
Although the reigning champions take the sacred sod on Saturday evening, it’s no slight on either them or their opponents to declare that the following day’s feature event is the big one. The indications in midweek were that the clash of the Munster rivals would attract upwards of 70,000 spectators and perhaps even surpass the 72,022 who attended last year’s rollicking semi-final collision of Waterford and Cork.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Cork at the business end of the championship, especially a Cork team coming in as provincial champions, are like a huge red and white magnet, drawing supporters in their tens of thousands. Those supporters are garrulous, confident and have a race memory which programmes them to anticipate success.
Some counties enter an All Ireland semi-final hoping to win. Cork enter All Ireland semi-finals expecting to win. That isn’t a burden to them. It’s an advantage.
And look who they’re meeting here. Limerick. Another sports-mad county with a big population, in this case one yearning to see the end to a famine that stretches back 45 years. Limerick won the 1973 All Ireland by beating Kilkenny (with a young and hirsute Brian Cody involved) in the rain. Last week they won their All Ireland quarter-final by beating Kilkenny (with a rather older and considerably less hirsute Brian Cody involved) in the rain.
An omen? Almost certainly not, and in any case to indulge in such mumbo-jumbo misses the point. The victory over Cody’s team, and in what proved to be the match of the summer to date, matters alright. It matters not because of the attendant historical echoes but because of what it says about this Limerick outfit.
That they’re now a proper championship side. That they’ve still lost only the one match in normal time all season. That they’ve demonstrated they’re better than a Kilkenny outfit that may not be among the top three teams in the country but is certainly among the top five.
Where does that leave Limerick? Among the top three? Surely. Possibly even the second-best side in the land? Very much so. All summer it’s been clear that Galway were a cut above everyone else, with little more than the width of a cigarette paper separating Limerick and Cork. Come to think of it, even the width of a cigarette paper failed to split the pair when they met in Páirc Uí Chaoimh during the Munster round robin.
In betting parlance it’s evens the pair. To put it another way, try tossing a coin.
Talking of coins, Cork and Limerick are two sides of the same coin. Limerick are physically bigger and Cork may have the slightly niftier forwards, but otherwise Sunday’s clash is a tale of like versus like.
Not so Saturday’s showpiece. It pits heavy armour against light cavalry, a maroon Humvee against a saffron and blue sports car. These are two very different coins.
The Humvee has thundered through everything in its path this summer, its Croke Park spin versus Kilkenny apart. Clare cannot afford to be caught in the headlights here. Otherwise they’ll be rolled over.
So how does one even begin to go about coping with this Galway team? Avoiding a physical battle will be a start. Clare won’t win one of those, though at the same time they must find a way of getting John Conlon, their most imposing attacker, into the game.
They’ll also have to score goals. White flags on their own will not suffice. Clare will not outpoint Galway – nobody outpoints Galway – so they’ll have to find a method of making up the leeway. Going for the net when within range, as opposed to opting for a point, has to be the mantra.
Christmas comes early for hurling folk this weekend. Strap in.