IT’S A BIT PREMATURE to call it a curse, and it’s a tricky terminology to get around. Indulge us though.
Being the last team out in the round robin Munster hurling championship hasn’t been a poisoned chalice, nor a barrier to success either.
Ok. Fine. The sample size is only four. But only once has a team not played on the opening weekend of the Munster championship and gone on to win the tournament.
And no team that was left licking ice cream in the stands on the first weekend has won the All-Ireland.
Surely there’s something in that?
Regardless of all that, Tipperary are out this weekend, in Limerick, against Limerick. Another step on the road for the Treatymen. More bugs to be wiped off the windscreen as they proceed down the dusty five-in-a-row highway, having taken all that Clare could throw at them before coming back with the big slaps right on the nose.
You have to go back to 2019, the last year that Tipperary won Liam MacCarthy, succeeding Limerick as champions, to find the last time they beat John Kiely’s men. In as much as Clare have occasionally bothered Limerick, there is no such fear of Tipperary.
That win came in the last round of the regulation games. A dead rubber. Tipperary were already home and hosed in the Munster final and the rest were hoping for the breaks to fall in their way.
While Clare gazumped Cork, Limerick fell to a four-point loss in front of a packed Semple Stadium.
Despite that loss and an earlier one to Cork, Limerick had posted massive days out in Round 3 (20 points better than Waterford) and Round 4 (18 point win over Clare).
Just four points from four games, but back into the Munster final nonetheless. And they crushed Tipperary by a dozen points.
Around two-thirds of this Tipperary team have not experienced beating Limerick. The unfortunate thing for them, if they read too much into it, is their manager’s record against Kiely’s side.
This is his fifth season as the gaffer in a county job, three years with Waterford followed by this appointment. And in the championship he has met Limerick five times, yielding a single draw and four defeats.
He has a league win to show for his time, but also three defeats in that competition.
The last two were in this league and last year which carried a huge amount of damage.
For that was Cahill’s first year as manager. In the past he had made big capital out of putting down solid league campaigns when in charge of Waterford.
Last year he went after the same principles. They won all five games, and the margins were handsome: Laois by 20 points, Waterford by 10, and Antrim by 18. Snacking on the small fry, and his former side Waterford, but also comfortable against Kilkenny (6) and Dublin (5).
They lost the league semi final to Limerick. Kiely and his side put their boot on Tipp’s throat.
Given their geographical proximity and that Kiely works in the Abbey CBS in Tipperary, there is that strange interplay that you get along county boundaries.
People rub up against each other all day and get on very well. But behind it all, they despise losing to each other. As a young man, Kiely’s fire-breathing in his playing days was most molten in the days leading up to a Tipperary game.
You wouldn’t imagine much has changed in that regard.
Strip back the emotion. Do the match-ups and the strategy combinations. Factor in Colm Lyons and the way he might referee it; if it’s a day for blowing or a day for swallowing the whistle. Add in the weather and subtract the effort Limerick expended in the final 15 minutes in Ennis a week before, or if Tipperary have been sitting primed to explode.
And still, there are the host of unknowns. Tipperary were decent in the league, their only loss coming against Limerick by a point. In the semi-final against Clare in Portlaoise, they were putrid and had a freetaking meltdown with four candidates having a go at various stages.
The issue for Tipp is that they still can find themselves bailing water for 15-minute spells against Limerick, only to find that they are holed under the plimsoll.
You can’t say Cahill hasn’t tried, but some ploys and positions were hastily discarded. Bonner Maher at full-forward in the league semi-final was curious when many would have felt this stage of his career was about coming on and steadying the ship for the last quarter.
Robert Byrne, once tried by Liam Sheehy, has had another spin at it but many would question if he is the right option at the pivotal number 6 jersey.
Seamus Kennedy (pictured) is out injured, depriving them of serious leadership. Cathal Barrett might be back in time. Might not.
Throughout it all, Liam Cahill has tried to find balance. You’d name at least 13 of the Limerick starting 15 off the top of your head by now but nobody feels that about Tipp.
Is this an unsettled team or just good competition for places? Either way, it doesn’t allow for chemistry to flow.
They can lie back on the Limerick puckout and let Nickie Quaid pick his man and play through the Tipp defence, or go aggressive instead and take the risk of the half-back line being exposed against Hegarty, Lynch and Morrissey.
There are no right answers. There are no clever gambles. When teams play Limerick, they just have to go with feel.
