As a member of the last Limerick team to win the All-Ireland, Eamonn Cregan has become used to being a reference point over the past 45 years. The more familiar experience has been answering questions about what has gone wrong but more recently the news has been better.
Sunday’s championship defeat of Kilkenny was the first since that All-Ireland final in 1973 and all of the promise discernible in underage successes in the past few years finally edges closer to fruition.
“People are talking about the 1973 team but that’s in the past and these are going to make their own history.
"Listening to the radio, there was a lot of celebration and talk but from tomorrow on, that has to go out the door. We have a great capacity in Limerick that when we do well in a match, say win a Munster championship, people want players to go out and open pubs.
"Now, at the moment we've won nothing. There's no point in beating Kilkenny at the weekend and then losing to Cork the next day or to Galway or Clare in the All-Ireland final.
"John Kiely is doing a good job at keeping the lid on things. I watched Tom Morrissey's interview and he kept calm and treated it like any other match. There was no bravado."
Morrissey’s interview was interesting in another respect and that was how he described the calm on the field after Richie Hogan’s late goal had posed a serious question about Limerick’s ability to deal with adversity. Manager Kiely said his team had expected that Kilkenny would come at them with a goal at some point and his wing forward echoed that.
“I think when they got the goal, there was five minutes on the clock,” said Morrissey afterwards, “and every Limerick supporter was thinking, ‘we can’t beat Kilkenny,’ but it was a different feel on the pitch.
“We regained control straight away after the goal and there was no looking back. We prevailed in the end and it just shows the character in this team, we never panicked, we stayed doing what we do to the last minute and it paid off for us.”
The win confirmed an upwards trajectory for Limerick this year after securing a long-awaited promotion to the top division of the league and having impressed greatly in the new, round-robin Munster championship up until the last round against Clare in Ennis where they fell prey to the ‘third week’ syndrome, which saw teams playing three weeks in a row struggling – only Galway managed to win on a third successive weekend.
Condensed season
Cregan likes the new format and believes it greatly benefited Limerick but equally, feels that without reorganising, it is unsustainable in the future, short of the game going professional.
“The Munster championship was exciting. It brought on our players because they were inexperienced and coming through from Division 1B and playing matches at a slower pace. Suddenly now we’re at a level where the pace is faster and it’s going to get even faster.
“It’s also suited us because the more condensed season has meant there wasn’t the same hullabaloo about the matches as there would have been in the past and they wouldn’t have been used to that.
“So this system has worked for Limerick but it’s a strain playing three Sundays on the trot.
“These are amateur players. If they want them playing every Sunday, they’ll have to pay them so they won’t have to work. Look at rugby players. They go to bed during the day when training to catch up on sleep but we’re in a situation where players are thrown headlong into it and have to adapt.”
Cregan has seen a great deal of the rising cohort in Limerick hurling, having been involved with the minors and development squads. He believes that the current panel – “we’ve 35 players and we’ve never had that before” – represents the county’s best shot at an All-Ireland in decades.
"I've always felt that. Looking at them as a group, it's been 10 years of academy and colleges' wins that have combined to bring this team forward and younger players. Kyle Hayes from Kildimo-Pallaskenry, for instance, is an exceptional player and I was delighted to see Séamus Flanagan show the form he's capable of.
“Two years ago he was a hit-and-miss type of player but then he went to UCD and played Fitzgibbon and matured. He’s magnificent when he puts his mind to it.”
Flanagan’s biggest performance was in the draw against Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in June. With Limerick reduced to 14 for most of the match after Aaron Gillane’s red card, they coped heroically and none more so than Flanagan, who scored five points from play.
“Do you know how many kilometres he ran that day?” asks Cregan, “12.8 and 2.8 at full pace. He did enormous work in Páirc Uí Chaoimh that day and it brought him on a ton. He has to go back and calm down a little bit because he was a little jittery on Sunday but these things happen and you learn from the experience. They’re all playing at far higher level than last year.
“The average age is 23, very young, and if they keep their minds right they can get there – maybe not this year. These days you need a strong panel. It’s all about your last player and how they’re handled.”
As a manager he famously led Offaly to an All-Ireland in a final against Limerick in 1994 before returning to take over his own county but he’s not feeling envious when he looks at John Kiely’s task in the weeks ahead.
“I’m glad I’m not involved. I wouldn’t be smoking but I’d be climbing trees! It’s so intense.”
