For Limerick, the storm has passed and the summer rolls on hurling away in a cloudless sky. Another Munster final, another championship that will end in Croke Park regardless of how Sunday goes. The memory of spring's managerial push-and-pull receding into the distance, whatever poison existed drawn out by the win over Tipperary.
"I suppose it has been, to a certain degree," says selector Paul Beary. "From a management perspective we were very conscious of continuity when all that happened. The players were excellent and Donal O'Grady, the captain, was excellent in so far that we had a very important week when all that broke. It was a very important week of training because we had one week of training and then two weeks of club matches.
“The first thing we did on that Monday morning was get the text out to say training goes ahead. We were very conscious that there was a quality to training that week. There was always quality but we needed to make sure that everything continued.”
Thriving
They came out the other side of it not just intact but thriving. Now the turn their faces to Páirc Uí Chaoimh and set about coming up with an approach to search out the chinks in Cork’s armour. It’s a challenge Beary obviously enjoys, having done so with Na Piarsaigh in their run to the All-Ireland semi-final this year.
“Really the standard bearers in term of tactics and game plans have been Clare, especially in the last 12 months or so. I suppose Cork have that conventional basis to their game, which does makes it easier from a management point of view but then again you never know.
“The one thing I have learned from the club is that you have to wear many different hats in terms of a game plan – you need a few gameplans. You have to be quite fluid.”
The analysis goes deep. On top of whatever TV pictures are available, they use footage of their own, shot by their own people at all matches from challenge to championship.
“There’s a lot there. We have our statisticians, video analysis and all that but what I like to do maybe a couple of nights after a game is to look at the full game very slowly in my own time and draw my own conclusions. What I’m looking for more than anything else is something I can take from the match, take a few layers backwards and convert it to something I can do on the training pitch.
“Like every other team we have our own philosophy on how the game should be played but we’d tailor it or amend it bearing in mind the opposition. Where intercounty is different to club level is the gap between the matches, four/five/six weeks – you have to do opposition analysis in that respect.
“So you have your own overriding principles in terms of how you want to play the game but you’re planning from a long way out how to amend, tweaking it once you know the opposition.”
