TV View: Cork freed from desire as they put an end to Limerick’s Munster reign

Normal time, extra-time, cramp, penalties, despondency, rapture: all we were missing was a wink and it might have felt like Durban all over again.

As Brendan Cummins put it, “it’s the kind of game where you’d want to be in the full of your health”, him probably fretting about Marty Morrissey’s wellbeing at that stage. “My heart! My heart! My heart,” Marty had hollered, the Munster hurling final giving him palpitations.

It was glorious stuff, and you’d imagine even those sport-a-phobes who’d set their machines to record Women Under Hitler’s Flag for later viewing might have quite enjoyed the shoot-out at the Gaelic Grounds that popped up on their screens instead.

They also got to see Dónal Óg Cusack’s mind and senses being purified by a few thousand rebels trampolining on the pitch under the RTÉ gantry to the strains of Freed from Desire, Joanne Cantwell lucky to get more than a “na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na” out of the fella, so exhilarated was he.

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And Dónal Óg hadn’t been too happy with the game going to extra-time, never mind penalties, reckoning it “disfigured” the occasion. He had a point, of course: when even the ref’s body could take no more, you knew it was all a bit too gruelling. And, need it be said, penalties are no way to decide a monumental tussle of such a kind; a replay would have been highly preferable. But still, some drama.

If you’d watched the first half of Andorra v England before switching over for the hurling, there’s a fair chance you would have appreciated the latter spectacle immensely more.

“The players looked bored,” said Roy Keane on ITV, but that was nothing compared to how those of us watching felt.

The England fans ended up having to entertain themselves by incessantly chanting “Starmer is a c***”, giving the occasion the feel of a Reform rally, while Lee Dixon had to row back a touch on his notion that England would score as often as Leinster did at the Aviva Stadium.

And that was on a regular enough basis, six tries helping them see off the challenge of Glasgow Warriors in their URC semi-final. But only 15,762 turned up to witness it all, which is somewhat adding to the notion that Leinster rugby fans are as enthusiastic about the URC as they would be about, say, having a colonoscopy.

Leinster's Ross Byrne and Joe McCarthy celebrate Leinster's URC semi-final win over Glasgow Warriors. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho

Not that Joe McCarthy was bothered. “We know everyone loves to hate Leinster, that definitely drives us on,” he said to the RTÉ panel after the game. “We’ve a great fan base and we don’t really care about the outside noise.”

“If that’s what drives them on to win it, deadly – but I don’t think it’s true,” said Fiona Coghlan, but sure look, that “no one likes us, we don’t care” approach to sporting life often works a treat.

Kilkenny would have experienced a bit of it when they couldn’t stop winning All-Irelands, but it’s a whole 10 years since their last triumph, so you’d imagine the feeling has worn off.

And they had to contend with even more empty seats at Croke Park than Leinster had at the Aviva when they took on Galway on Sunday. Which might have led you to think that next time around they should stage Leinster URC semi-finals and Leinster hurling finals as double-headers at the Gaelic grounds, and take the Munster decider to Croke Park.

According to the Google, the biggest sports stadium in the world is North Korea’s Rungrado, with a capacity of 114,000. Not even that would have been enough to cater for those wishing to attend Limerick v Cork: The 2025 Sequel. It would, though, have left 80,000-ish vacant seats at the Leinster final.

“It’s been a non-event,” Jackie Tyrell sighed at half-time, himself and Joe Canning agreeing that the game should have been played in, well, a more compact venue. “Should Leinster finals really be in here?” asked Jackie. “I know the game isn’t great, but any time it threatens to spark into life, the lack of atmosphere has just sucked the life out it.”

Kilkenny won’t be complaining, though, the six-in-a-row complete. But in ecstasy terms, no one partied harder than Cork and their faithful after their one-in-a-row. They had, at last, been freed from the desire of ending Limerick’s unrelenting Munster reign.