KILLINAN END - Talking points from the Hurling Year 2024

Looking back on 2024 you could be scrambling for themes, or at least new ones. Limerick coming up short in their attempt at breaking new historical ground might be the main talking point of the year. Much else was repetition of previous years. Tipperary and Waterford remain among the underachievers of the Munster Championship. Waterford’s championship performance was actually quite good when you strip away the basic reality that they failed to qualify. They were but one puck of a ball away from qualification. It was an unlucky campaign in many respects for a county that has had slim pickings in recent years under-age. Since winning the 2016 Under-21 All-Ireland, Waterford have played fifteen games in the Munster U20/21 Championship and won just one, which was against Kerry. In the same time-frame their Minors have won just four games from twenty-four. It is not the form-line of a county which is bubbling over with potential if you take all that at face value. Tipperary, on the other hand, should be a powerful force. At the very least there is little compelling evidence that, for example, Clare should be much more competitive than Tipperary. After all, Tipp has won Minor titles in 2012, 2016, 2022, and again this year. Then there’s the Under 21/20 successes. The broader value of an All-Ireland under-age title is hard to judge of course, and Galway would be exhibit A in the argument that it is meaningless in the context of prospective Senior achievement. At the same time, it suggests a conveyor belt of some significance churning away in the county’s background. Yet for Tipp the year was hallmarked by a fragility and sense of drift. The League semi-final should be a place of hope and expectation – just a win away from a marquee day out, and a sign of a reasonable group campaign behind you. But for Tipp it was where hope and expectation expired. Stories are legion back the years where teams performed poorly in League semi-finals – Cork 1990, Clare 1998, spring to mind – and came good later to the point that their League form was considered almost suspicious. In the days of Ger Loughnane’s Clare, seeds of conspiracy theories fell on fertile ground. The gap between Clare’s showing against Cork in the 1998 League semi-final in Thurles and their compelling performance against the same opposition at the same venue seven weeks later fuelled all manner of speculation. After Tipp’s performance against Clare in Portlaoise, there was never a sense that this was a team setting up an ambush. After a decent enough group campaign, the nature of the defeat - going 0-8 to 0-0 behind and missing free after free - left little room for optimism for the championship. Scant solace could be taken from apparent Lazarus-like behaviour after poor League semi-finals in the past. After all, back in 1998, Clare were defending All-Ireland champions. A rumour of Tipp doing a secret training session down the road on the morning of the game would hardly get traction as an excuse nearly thirty years later. There was no glossing over that performance, and it did indeed foreshadow what was to come in Munster. If Tipp had nothing optimistic to take from the Munster campaign, Limerick had much positive but a little negative too. When they played in Páirc Uí Chaoimh against Cork they surged from a big deficit to get ahead. Business as usual it seemed. However, a few lapses late on proved more costly that they might have imagined. Cork found a way back into the championship and proved to be they rock on which Limerick ultimately perished. A few elements conspired to keep Cork afloat, but concession of the late penalty was certainly one of them. Clare beating Kilkenny was novel in its way but the feeling that it was a result that should have happened already took a little from it. For many of a Banner persuasion relief must’ve challenged euphoria as the main emotion. For the fourth time an All-Ireland Final featured no provincial winner as had happened when Clare and Cork also met in the 2013 decider (2004 & 2019 were the other years). After Rob Downey’s goal put Cork seven points ahead just twelve minutes in it looked curtains for Clare but their resilience was something to behold. It was a day too when Tony Kelly joined the exalted. Leinster is a conundrum at year’s end. Kilkenny will start 2025 with just two of their starting team from 2015, their last All-Ireland. The manner in which their Minors were turned over on home soil by Tipp will not have lifted hearts on Nore-side either. Wexford continue to blow hot and cold. Dublin look to be going nowhere. Galway look to be starting again – to what extent that can be fast-tracked remains to be seen. One almost-forgotten piece of history made was Limerick winning a sixth consecutive Munster title. It might not have been the historical landmark they most wanted but these Limerick players will comb grey hair before it is matched again.