Thunderstruck Banner have no answer as Kiely and Co turn on power

The game should have been 20 minutes old when the PA system in FBD Semple Stadium gave us a little bit of heavy metal retro to calm the nerves. ‘Thunderstruck’ – by those well-known hurling diehards, AC/DC – reverberated around the old ground. You wondered, for a second, if it might be enough to knock out the electricity in Thurles for a second time that afternoon.

Fast-forward two hours, it’s 6.20pm and Limerick are six-in-a-row champions of Munster. The first side in history to achieve that landmark; a team of relentless winners showing not the merest hint of tiring of such occasions.

This latest coronation, by 1-26 to 1-20, was the most emphatic of what has been an epic trilogy with the Banner. There will be some regret in Clare over presentable goal chances at pivotal moments that slipped through their grasp.

Gold

What if Aidan McCarthy, bearing down on goal in the 17th minute, had beaten Nickie Quaid? What if, in the 58th minute, Mark Rodgers had struck gold instead of Quaid’s left upright?

“Crucial,” Brian Lohan later lamented of the latter miss. “Against Limerick, those breaks are massive.”

Overall, though, this is not a day for ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’ – Limerick led by five at the time. They were in control, dictating the tempo and agenda. And for the most part, especially in the second half when their attacking game-plan started to unravel against a stiffening breeze and their remorseless neighbours, Clare had no answer.

They were, in a word, thunderstruck. And so the onward climb towards previously unconquered peaks continues. Limerick are now just two wins away from doing what Brian Cody’s Kilkenny failed to complete in 2010.

Time to pump up the volume on the ‘drive for five’ narrative. “Ah listen, the conversation has been there a long time,” Kiely mused. “They’re numbers at the end of the day. They weren’t important coming in today; they’re not going to be important after today.

“What’s important for us is what we go after ourselves. We know that. Internally, those are the drivers, those are the motivating factors … and we’ll keep going after those relentlessly.

“We’re thrilled to have won it. It’s the end of that chapter for 2024, the Munster Championship. We’re thrilled to have come out the right side of it. It means a huge amount to us,” he stressed.

The imponderable for Lohan and Clare is how they will react to this latest devastating setback. This is the manager’s fifth year; the only silver reward, thus far, is that league title back in April.

But it is 26 years since Anthony Daly last lifted the Mick Mackey Cup; and if they can’t beat Limerick within their own provincial fiefdom, what chance of doing it in Croke Park? That’s presuming they would even make it to a final.

When Peter Duggan squeezed home their equalising goal in the last play of the first half – from an angle that might have confounded Pythagoras – there was a renewed glimmer of hope that this might finally be their day. But then you pondered Limerick’s uncanny knack for turning up the third-quarter temperature – even before they rattled off the next four points within six minutes of the restart. Clare mustered 10 points after half-time (Limerick hit 1-13) but only 0-5 came from open play. The scoring threat carried by David Fitzgerald and Tony Kelly (0-3 each in the first half ) was reduced to a one-point Fitzgerald trickle, while Shane O’Donnell, so typically influential in the opening quarter especially, was shunted to the periphery.

Éibhear Quilligan’s fatal second of hesitation, leaving him stranded for Gearóid Hegarty’s arrowed groundstroke to the Clare net, left Limerick six up by the 46th minute. Even without that goal, they probably would have found a way. When you see each member of their famed half-back line of Byrnes, Hannon and Hayes scoring 0-2 from play, you know that Limerick are moving ominously into form when it really matters.

Ditto when you see Hegarty (1-2) and Tom Morrissey (0-4, three from play) bolstering their stats just as the business end approaches. Or even when you see Shane O’Brien, on his first SHC start, play like a five-year veteran.

Best performance of the year? “I don’t know,” Kiely demurred. “I haven’t seen the numbers … I’ll have to wait and see. I think we held our nerve well. There were times in the second half for maybe eight or so minutes, 10 minutes, when we just got a little bit ragged.

“But we got on top of it again, we got re-set, we got a bit of structure.”

On this unflappable evidence, not even a power cut is likely to derail his team. Time will tell if it’s lights out for Lohan.

“Those are the drivers … and we’ll keep going after those relentlessly” John Kiely