John Kiely’s side put on a phenomenal second-half display to turn a nicely-poised final into a nine-point beating
Kilkenny goalkeeper Eoin Murphy and Limerick's Aaron Gillane in the All-Ireland senior hurling final at Croke Park. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho,Limerick have made a habit of turning whodunits into no-further-questions-m’luds. An All-Ireland hurling final that looked to be nicely poised early in the second half turned into a rout long before the end and sent John Kiely’s team back down the road as only the third team in history to win four of these in a row.
Though they have eaten the sport whole in the past half-decade, this must go down as the most satisfying feed of them all. Struggling for rhythm in the first half, they made it look like they were playing downhill after the break to ultimately run out winners by 0-30 to 2-15. Hurling swaddles its history, tending to it through the generations to keep it living and breathing. What Limerick have done here will outlast them, as surely as it did the Cork team of the 1940s and the Kilkenny side of the 2000s. Kiely, a man of supreme non-faff, doesn’t tend to have much time for that kind of chat. Onwards, always onwards.
“We really do put a lot of effort into trying to live in the here and now,” Kiely said afterwards. “If you don’t in sport you’ll take your eye off the ball. So we hadn’t really had any engagement in reflection. We’ve had too much on our plate, quite frankly, all along, to deal with.
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