The Imitation Game

Sunshine, Semple, and a start. The healing had to begin somewhere, and like a tuberculosis patient once sent to the rural pastures for recovery, Cork supporters made the journey to hurling’s spiritual home to bask in the clean air of new campaign, the warmth of an April sun, and the restorative tonic of two points and a performance. A performance that, while far from spectacular, was exactly what the doctor ordered. But much in the same way as those rural retreats never truly cured the ghastly TB, Sunday provided no remedy. Instead, it offered something just as vital in the moment. A brief reprieve, enough to carry us into the weeks ahead and just a hint that better days might lie ahead.

From the Town End veranda of Semple’s sanatorium, we watched the All-Ireland champions fall on their own patch on opening day. Irrespective of everything else, that’s not nothing. And as we watched the ground turn red once again, we were reminded of a similar outcome nine years previous, when the reigning champs were upended by a young and unfancied Cork team, a third of which were making their first championship starts. The Thurles turf was claimed that day too, the eruption of joy speaking to its weight and meaning. A rebirth. This was no rebirth, but maybe the first quiet stirrings of regeneration. Tweaks rather than an overhaul, a shift in emphasis more than identity. Cork 2.0. Cork, competent and controlled. Cork, the steady hand on the tiller.

Last week, this blog made clear that we’d had our fill of the other stuff – the thrillers, the epics, laying those classics on the altar as sacrificial offerings to the hurling gods in exchange for coronation in July. So far, so good. But as sad and desperate as those gestures may be, there’s a certain logic underpinning it all too. A sense that the frenzied, edge-of-your-seat theatre of recent seasons was never the surest path to ultimate success. Perhaps Ben, newly in the director’s chair, recognises that a more restrained production is what is needed going forward. Maybe 0-29 to 1-22 is just the unremarkable, job-well-done kind of scoreline from which he gets his kicks, the kind that quietly gets a team over the line in the end. And without wishing to denigrate the aesthetic of a team that has actually got over the line, not once but five times, it was all a bit Limericky wasn’t it?

And maybe it’s about time for that too. We still obsess over Limerick. Fixate on them. Like a diffident teenager scrolling the Instagram of the cooler, fully formed peer that has everything he wants, who is everything he hopes to become. Every game, every result, every performance is filtered through that green prism, to such an extent that even the good days aren’t allowed stand alone. “Ah sure that won’t cut it against Limerick.” “I tell you it’ll be a different story next day out against Limerick.” For Christ’s sake, even games against Limerick can’t be discussed without some nod to what might be held back, or kept in reserve, for any hypothetical future clash that might come about against, you know, Limerick. So if it’s true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness, maybe it’s about time that the team with no Celtic Crosses takes something from the team that has horded them with gluttonous excess.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not suggesting for even a moment that Cork’s four-point win over Tipperary wipes the slate clean and suddenly elevates them to anything like the level Kiely’s boys reached at their peak, however tempting it is to draw the parallel. All I’m saying is that some comparisons are worth teasing out, as premature and all that it is for such carry on. Think back over Limerick’s runs to All-Ireland titles and there aren’t too many stonewall classics that spring to mind. For all their brilliance, their victories often followed a familiar script, a script from which we borrowed a few lines last Sunday. The contemptuous disregard for goals, the steady drip of points from everywhere and anywhere and of course the decisive third-quarter surge. Opponents meticulously and assuredly paralysed and who, like the proverbial frog in a boiling pot, only recognised the peril when it was already too late. The All-Ireland finals of ’20 and ’23 that bookended Limerick’s four-in-a row were cases in point. If you can remember them, that is.

What we are certain to remember is the only All-Ireland final of the four in which Limerick scored more than one goal, the day Cork, almost relishing the role of the frog, hurled themselves headlong into the danger and thrashed about with scant regard for their own survival. The amphibious epitaph read sixteen points in the end. Since then, Cork have endured two further heavy championship defeats to Limerick, pointing to an uneasy truth; when this side loses its grip, it tends to slip entirely. And in a hurry. In interviews either side of last year’s decider, Pat Ryan spoke of the difficulty in getting messages onto the pitch once things began to unravel. It’s a point Ben O’Connor echoed earlier in the year: “In training all week you can tell fellas this and tell them that, then you go into a match and can’t get information in. They have to figure it out themselves inside.” And maybe that’s just it. The next step. Because sooner rather than later, those within the white lines will have to start figuring it out for themselves. Just as Limerick have done in the past and just as they will continue to do, even without Hannon. Because make no mistake, at some point this season, the storm will come again.

At least, if any storm does sweep down the Páirc on Sunday, it should arrive somewhat weakened by the absence of Aaron Gillane. News of his injury was likely met with the kind of quiet relief familiar to a Leaving Cert student hearing that their Irish Oral has been postponed. It will come at some stage, but for now at least, O’Donoghue (or Joyce?) and the rest of us will gladly take the reprieve. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. This year, more than ever, the focus narrows to what’s immediately ahead; the next week, the next game, the next half. We’ve been burned so many times now looking too far down the road.

And next up is Limerick. The team we yearn to beat. The team we yearn to be.

Up the Rebels