Munster champions Limerick tipped to find a way against Premier County
Three years ago, the Munster championship opened with a rerun of the previous year’s All-Ireland final. Limerick went to Cork and showed that the relative hierarchies hadn’t really changed. This weekend, the reunion of All-Ireland champions Clare with the side they edged aside in last year’s final is however expected to signal a decisive shift in fortunes.
The loss is all too calculable. O’Donnell’s terrifying amalgam of strength, movement and finishing was indispensable to Clare’s recovery in both matches against Cork last year. The problem with that as a solution to O’Donnell’s absence is that Duggan was another significant element in the team’s successes against Cork when he played on the wing and he doesn’t have powers of bilocation.
The defending provincial champions have been very low-key and it’s a long time since they entered the championship so under the radar. Their league was extremely uneven between big wins over Galway and Tipperary and a near coup in Cork on one hand and losing without distinction against Kilkenny and Wexford.
Since the league final, Liam Cahill has disputed the view that his team lack physicality but it has been the story of many of the last few matches against Limerick. He also hinted that Tipp might bring something new, which had been held back, for the championship. This should be a box-office event for Leinster every year but low levels of jeopardy given expectations that both will progress, have tended to anaesthetise the spectacle even if the matches have been entertaining.
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