Limerick’s current predominance has come as a relief to the team of 1973, no longer the county’s only players since 1940 to have won an All-Ireland. It has also eased the regrets of those teams in between, good enough to win Munster but not quite able to take it all the way.
Damien Quigley is an exemplar. A corner forward with 2-3 from play in the 1994 All-Ireland – by consensus the most traumatic of the final defeats, with its late, late meltdown – he remembers current captain Declan Hannon in 2018 paying tribute to the generations who had gone before without success.
“It kind of passed me by but [goalkeeper] Joe Quaid took unbelievable solace from it. Those words brought him closure. There’s no point saying otherwise but 1994 left a scar. There’s no reason for it. I’m not someone who dwells on things and am a kind of happy-go-lucky individual but every now and then it flutters back into the room.
“If we had won the game in ‘94, there’d be no big drama about 45 years [the time between 1973 and the current team’s first title in 2018] because it wouldn’t have happened,” he says. “There would have been 20-odd years since the last one. The longer it went, the worse it got but now after the last few years, the 1990s are irrelevant.
“This crowd have rewritten Limerick GAA history forever.”
A former selector with the county, he was confident at half-time on Sunday that Limerick would win because of the strength of the wind they would have behind them.
“It was savage and had the effect of reducing the scoring zone into the Hill to the point where it was just too small, whereas at the other end it was simply massive.
“Peter Casey struck two points from under the Hogan. He’s a magnificent hurler but his range isn’t usually from out around there. And he was only stroking the ball but sent it flying over the bar.
“I’d love to see a heat map of where the scores came from. I imagine it’s a big U – apart from a couple they were all from beyond the 45. Darragh O’Donovan got one from the middle and Barry Nash another but most were on the side-line or miles out the field.
“The shot efficiency was magic.”
He is thrilled with the current run of success although not entirely sure what exactly are the strongest impulses. He has so many to choose from: friendship with the manager, the presence of so many of his club Na Piarsaigh’s players or the sense of completion as a former player.
“I’m not sure why I’m so invested in it or get such a kick from it or why it gets me so emotionally involved. Obviously John [Kiely] is there and one of my best buddies all my adult life, so that’s a close connection.
“Having played and lost a couple is another aspect but to what extent I’m not sure. Once you stop playing you become fan. You do. The Limerick jersey – any county jersey – is a constant. It’s always there. Someone has it for a while and then it moves on to the next player.
“You go from being a fan to being a player to being a fan. There’s no doubt that 2018 exorcised an awful lot of the nightmares of losing two for a lot of the guys I played with. You could see it in their eyes afterwards.”
He points out that Na Piarsaigh was part of the rising tide that lifted Limerick hurling: schools success, third-level dominance, under-21 championships and, in 2016, the club All-Ireland.
In 2018, they had Mike Casey starting and three off the bench, including the now retired Shane Dowling but at the weekend, there were three very influential starters:Mike Casey at corner back, shadowing Kilkenny danger man Eoin Cody, Will O’Donoghue, stepping back to anchor the defence in the absence of injured captain Hannon, and Peter Casey shooting 0-5 from play in the second half.
He makes special mention of another, who came in as a replacement.
“Conor Boylan actually represents what’s best in the Limerick panel. He’s a really good fella who’s prepared to put his head down and work really hard for the group even when he doesn’t get huge game time.
“We’re still a young club and All-Ireland medals haven’t been commonplace anywhere in Limerick and there’s a heap of them now in Na Piarsaigh when just a few years ago we had none.”
