When people analyse matches they always work back from the final score. After Limerick won in Ennis last Sunday the narrative was that the All-Ireland champions are brilliant at problem-solving and coming up with in-game solutions. Is that the whole story?
When you’re at a match, rather than watching on TV, there’s always stuff going on off the ball that will catch your eye. Standing on the RTÉ gantry in the corner of Cusack Park last Sunday, I was looking down the sideline in the middle of the second half and John Kiely was panicking. Out on the pitch Cian Lynch was going a bit mad. To me, they didn’t look like a team that could see a way back into the game.
The score that changed the momentum was basically a fluke. Diarmuid Byrnes, probably the best long-range striker in the game, mishit a free that Clare should have dealt with. I don’t want to be too harsh on Conor Cleary and Eibhear Quilligan, because you’re talking about split-second reactions. But in that situation, where a ball is dropping in the square, you expect your full back to tie-up the full forward and leave the ball carry through to the goalkeeper.
That’s what Huw Lawlor does with Eoin Murphy, it’s what Diarmuid O’Sullivan used to do with Donal Óg Cusack. I was often wrapped up by a full back myself when a ball was dropping. Between the full back and the goalkeeper they needed to manage that situation and when they didn’t the whole energy of the game changed.
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What will worry Clare is how the game fell apart for them once the momentum changed. Quilligan should have saved Limerick’s second goal, there’s no question about that. When a shot bounces twice before it reaches the keeper, it must be stopped.
For the third goal there was a complete breakdown in communication or a systems breakdown. Cian Lynch went deep for possession, John Conlon let him off, but nobody else picked up Limerick’s most creative player. David McInerney had been marking Gearóid Hegarty but Limerick switched Hegarty inside, McInerney completely lost him, and Hegarty wasn’t passed on to another Clare defender.
I don’t think Clare realised that Hegarty had been moved. When Lynch looked up Hegarty was completely unmarked. That kind of defending was kamikaze.
This is a huge week for Clare. I would say the defeat last Sunday ranks alongside the two All-Ireland semi-final defeats to Kilkenny in terms of psychological damage. If they don’t process properly this week it could haunt their season. With such a quick turnaround they’ll have to come up with enforceable solutions and move on. Clare will also need to focus on all the reasons why they were nine points in front and in control for three quarters of the match. They can’t afford to forget that.
One thing in Clare’s favour is that they’re meeting Cork this weekend, a team that I would say have even more questions to answer. Throughout my Galway career we always regarded Cork as fragile. Nice hurlers and all that, but not a team to be afraid of in a close game, going down the stretch. I think I lost one championship game to Cork – and I’m talking about U16, minor, U21, senior.
Davy Fitzgerald couldn’t have dreamed up a better scenario than the one Waterford faced last Sunday. Cork were hot favourites, Waterford were being written off after a terrible league. Davy was being doubted all over the place, there was talk that the Waterford crowd weren’t going to turn up and all of it fed into a siege mentality.
Over the years Waterford have struggled when they were favourites but they were complete underdogs against Cork and that was perfect for the kind of bite and aggression they needed to bring.
I’m also conscious that for a lot of my Galway career we would have been labelled along the same lines that I’m talking about Cork now. Kilkenny always thought that we might stick with them for 50 minutes but then we’d fade away. I’m sure other teams had that opinion of us too.
The only way to change that perception is to deliver in high-pressure situations and in pressure games. That’s the challenge facing Cork on Sunday. They will have a massive home crowd, all of them hugely frustrated by the performance last Sunday and wanting to see a different version of Cork out on the field. Not just changes in personnel but in attitude and work rate. I don’t know if that’s in them.
Galway against Kilkenny is the other big game of the weekend. I hear people saying that it doesn’t really matter, both teams are going to qualify from Leinster and they’re almost certainly going to be meeting again in the Leinster final.
I don’t buy that. Wexford have beaten Kilkenny for the last two years. Galway only drew with Dublin last year and were 12 points behind at one stage. I don’t think Galway and Kilkenny are so far ahead of the other teams that they can afford to take anything for granted.
Kilkenny coming to Pearse Stadium is a big game, regardless of what happens over the next few weeks. Neither team will want to take a backward step. Kilkenny have been one of the top three teams in the country for the last couple of years and there’s never really any mystery about them.
Nobody knows where Galway are yet. The team that started against Carlow won’t be the team that lines up on Sunday, but I couldn’t tell you what their championship team is right now. This game will help with that question. This is Henry Shefflin’s third year in charge and he’s under pressure to win something. There’s no point in saying otherwise.
The championship is only a week old and already you can feel the heat.
