Donal O’Grady admits that he sensed what lay ahead when he heard the news that his namesake and former Limerick coach had returned to the Cork hurling set-up. “Return of the Master” ran the headline in the Examiner on Friday January 15th. O’Grady was the low-key, smiling principle behind Cork’s bright years of the early 00s: persuading him back was an enlightened move by manager Kieran Kingston. In Limerick, Donal O’Grady knew it would only mean good things for Cork as he remembered the Cork man’s training sessions from a decade ago.
“Definitely,” he said on a balmy day in the Gaelic Grounds, looking out at the pristine pitch as though recalling O’Grady’s sessions during his years with the county.
“Yeah. It’s amazing, we’re nearly 10 years now, 2011 to 2021. It’s amazing how the game has evolved since but then the fundamentals are the same: primary possession, that real will to win that contested ball on the ground and then you can have your platform to move forward. And he was a firm believer of that in us. It was amazing the little tweaks he made back then with us, even the running game and he instilled that in us in 2011 and even persistence in training, we did see the fruition of that to a certain extent. And obviously if he’d had another couple of years with us we might have seen a bit more but that’s the way it was.”
O’Grady came into Limerick to try and restore calm in a hyper-flux period as manager and returned in 2014 as co-manager with TJ Ryan. Those sessions and the meticulous preparation offered a glimpse of future Limerick.
“We had a great experience with him and, in fairness to him, he would have set a new standard of what it takes to be tactically and as a person, an intercounty hurler at the top level, and he instilled that fairly quickly into us in 2011. He was a great man, real into his video analysis and that and you can actually see a lot of that in what Cork are doing one, their puckouts and so forth and the way they set up. I do think he has a big influence in that, yes.”
O’Grady retired in 2016 from the county squad after a long and distinguished career. By then, the transformation of the county’s hurling fortunes was underway. He works with John Kiely in an intercounty dressing room that is laden with talent, athleticism and ambition. Two All-Irelands in three years and favourites to retain the Liam McCarthy on Sunday: these are heady days. Limerick held Cork off with relative comfort in the Munster championship but like everyone, O’Grady was impressed by the lightning quality of their attacking game as they rippled through Kilkenny in their semi-final.
“We did and we didn’t,” he says when it’s put to him that Limerick coped well with Cork’s pace in the Munster championship meeting.
“We got our learnings out of it as well. It is a very hard thing to stop, as we saw last weekend. If you get it right, you can be cut open. And playing this Cork side there will be occasions when you are opened up. They are just too good a side not to, and with that pace, it’s not that it is a massive concern: it is a strength of Cork’s. And we will look at it closely and try our best to stop it. Obviously there will be an occasion when they do break that line and how we react to that is the main thing for us.”
It’s a unique final: another Munster-flavoured All-Ireland featuring teams who know each other well. Cork hurling still has reason to feel sore about the summer of 2018 when Limerick, nobody’s favourites at the beginning of the year, staged an outrageous comeback in that year’s All-Ireland semi-final, which finished 3-32 to 2-31 after extra time. A few weeks later Limerick were All-Ireland champions for the first time since 1973.
“In the 2018 one, it was us that came back in near the end and then kicked on in extra time. But look in this year alone we have played them in the league here, we played them in the championship obviously and they got one over us there the year before. Very little between us. The one thing about Cork is: they are a hurling team. Very skillful. A lot of similarities with Limerick. And at the same time a lot of differences in how we set up. So from that side, we have seen enough of each other through this year. A lot of games take their own lease of life and both teams stick to their plans so it will be very interesting to see how it pans out.”
