The week after winning the Allianz Hurling League title with Limerick, Aaron Gillane sat down to review his own performance. He scored 1-9, bringing his league tally to 2-45, a man-of-the-match performance to boot. And he could hardly stop cringing.
“Yeah, watching it back, I had eight or nine wides and I was like, ‘jeez, how did he get man-of-the match in this? It was good from the point of view that after every match you always have stuff to work on. But after I watching it and threw on a pair of shorts and then went straight up to the field and hit a few shots. I’d drive myself mad trying to perfect things but it’s good to have things to work on.”
It further rejects the notion Limerick may be fooled into thinking they’re going too well, a first league title in 22 years, after ending 45 years of pain without an All-Ireland: Gillane is not buying that notion, and doesn’t care much anyway for history anyway.
“Maybe it’s great for people to talk about it but we took no notice of it. Like I keep saying, ‘73, fair play to them, the team that got to the All-Ireland final in 2007, fair play to them like, but they’ve nothing to do with us. I know it sounds bad but we don’t care about them. We want to create our own history. They have nothing to do with us.”
Deft goal
Gillane’s deft goal in that league final win over Waterford drew other historic comparisons, his seemingly invisible flick reminiscent of Jimmy Barry-Murphy, and his goal for Cork in the 1983 All-Ireland semi-final.
“Well, Noel Connors (from Waterford) was out in front of me, I was like, ‘he has this now and he’s going to break it down in front of him’. I was actually going to run out to the side first and then Tom Morrissey was slow lifting his head. I don’t know why he drilled the ball so hard either. It was all a fluke. He never hits the ball in like that, and Noel Connors is never going to miss the ball like that again either. I don’t know, I think it was just instinct and I was lucky, I got a little touch on it.
“Yeah, you’d see JBM’s goal on TG4 and clips and stuff. His goal just pips my one now. But I’ll keep saying this, I don’t think you can be going too well. I think we can’t even look beyond the 19th of May. If we look past Cork we’re going to be upended and they’ll be coming out with the victory. Our focus is firmly fixed on Cork and if we get to a Munster final, great, but we’ll try to get past Cork first.
“Of course when you’re growing up as a child you’ll obviously take inspiration from the likes of Jackie Tyrrell, Henry Shefflin and all of the Kilkenny teams. It would be great to do what they’re doing but you can’t afford to look that far down the line. We’re just going to take every game as it comes. But it would be great to turn out like Kilkenny!”
