Paudie O’Brien wasn’t long gone from the Limerick squad, cut by new manager John Kiely at just 26, when the Shannonsiders hosted Cork at the start of 2017.
It was a round two Munster Hurling League game and Cork tore Kiely’s crew asunder, striking seven goals and winning by 21 points.
Almost seven years on, O’Brien is a Kerry coach now and, attending the launch of the preseason competition at an outlet of sponsors Co-Op Superstores in Raheen, a couple of next month’s opening round fixtures jump off the page for him.
There is Kerry’s first game for starters, against Davy Fitzgerald’s Waterford in Tralee on January 2nd. The following Sunday, Limerick and Cork will do it all over again too, and with Limerick hosting again.
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A section of the Limerick fans memorably booed Limerick off the pitch that day in early 2017 after the shellacking. Five All-Ireland titles later, we can safely predict that there’ll be no booing this time, even if Cork do go goal crazy again.
But did O’Brien see the golden era coming at that stage and after such an inauspicious start?
“Nobody saw it coming,” he insisted. “And anyone who says they saw it, I wouldn’t buy much of that.”
And what about missing out on all the success, when he was still in his mid-20s and apparently primed for a leading role?
“It is very hard,” he conceded. “It takes a long time to get over it. When you’re travelling up to Croke Park for those big games, watching them, you’d give anything to be below there involved.
“But the other side of it is, it was taken out of my hands, which is easier. I’ve no problem saying that. It would have been a lot worse if I had made a decision to step away and then the following year they go on and win – that’s something that would be a lot tougher for me to take. But when it’s taken out of your hands, you just have to move on.”
O’Brien recalls Kiely breaking the bad news to him at the time.
“Did I agree with it? No, but that doesn’t really matter,” he said. “It was very straight, very direct and it was over and that was it.”
The Kilmallock man is keen to point out that there was no row, no falling out. No lingering bad blood afterwards.
“I made my debut in 2009, finished up in 2017, I had a good run of it,” he said. “We lost two [All-Ireland] semi-finals and three quarter-finals so people in my position can’t have any complaints.”
He was there in the team for the breakthrough Munster win in 2013. A decade on, Limerick have bigger fish to fry as they chase the five-in-a-row in 2024 and no stone will be left unturned in the pursuit of that historic goal.
O’Brien smiled last week when the news broke that billionaire JP McManus had essentially gifted €32 million to the clubs of Ireland. The Limerick hurlers have been benefiting from that sort of largesse for years.
“I wasn’t actually that surprised, to tell you the truth,” he said of the McManus giveaway. “His generosity is unbelievable. I’m only from 10 miles over the road from JP. He would have been very prevalent when I was growing up. We would have watched Istabraq win the Champion Hurdle in primary school when we were younger, we got a day off.
“What the family do is unbelievable. What they’ve done for Limerick is unbelievable. Obviously people will turn around and say it helps [Limerick hurling]. Of course it helps but he has been giving money a long, long time and that didn’t exactly translate to instant success. There is a lot more to it.”
O’Brien counts Kilkenny as the biggest threat to Limerick in 2024. In reality, the biggest threat of all could come from between the players’ own ears as they attempt to make hurling history.
“I think they’ll play it down and they’ll say it won’t be an issue but I don’t see how it won’t bring a little bit of pressure,” said O’Brien of the five-in-a-row charge. “There’s a reason it was never done before, why Kilkenny failed and Cork failed in the 40s.
“The good thing about the Munster championship is there’s such a focus on that, so I think that will distract them from the five-in-a-row because they’ll just be so focused on getting out of it. But if they do get out of it, that’s all people are going to be talking about then.”
Waterford coach Peter Queally also attended the launch and gave an update on the composition of the Déise panel for 2024. Austin Gleeson has already confirmed his exit.
“Calum Lyons is still away,” said Queally, who expects the half back to return ‘in the new year’. “Kieran Bennett came back last week. Shane Bennett will hopefully be back in the new year as well. So you have Austin out, Iarlaith Daly is a bit unsure with study commitments. He’ll make his mind up in the new year.”
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