Rory Hayes deserved to be sent off, by the letter of the law, and if Seamus Flanagan went down, then he probably would have been.
If you’re from Clare then look – it goes without saying – you probably have steam coming out of your ears after reading that but the fact of the matter is that Peter Duggan was a lucky boy as well. Duggan got away with one on Sean Finn but the man he’s really indebted to is William O’Donoghue.
It’s fair to say that O’Donoghue is no shrinking violet – he’s on first name terms with what we’ll call the rough and tumble – but on Sunday, in the toughest rumble of all, we learned one more thing about the Na Piarsaigh man if we didn’t know it already. The dogs in the street know he can give it but, much more admirable than that, he showed that he can take it just as well.
Duggan gave him a dig in the stomach but, having fallen over at first impact, O’Donoghue took no longer than a second to get back to his feet. And when he stood up, he wasn’t whinging and he wasn’t looking to give a dig back because it was clear, like the warrior that he is, that he was actually revelling in it.
The Clare boys were revelling in it too and that’s why we had one of the best games of hurling we’ve had in years. Both Cathal O’Neill and William O’Donoghue were lucky not to see yellows for strikes on David Reidy’s helmet while, early on in the second half, Kyle Hayes should surely have been penalised for kneeing John Conlon in the back under a high ball. The reason he wasn’t, and he can thank John Conlon for this, is probably because the Clonlara man bounced up as if he wasn’t even hit.
Moments like these were a snap-shot into the attitude of these great players – from both sides – and if you wanted a better one, there’s no doubt that you’d get it by watching Hayes’ tussle with Flanagan. The Limerick man was always going to get some sort of jolt, as the clip below shows, for holding the Clare man back but what he got was a not-too-friendly smack with the edge of the hurl.
It was a complete loss of discipline from the corner back and, lucky and all as he was, even he must have been rattled by what happened next. Because the smack of his hurl made about as much of an impact on Flanagan as a beach ball hitting a dinosaur.
Flanagan didn’t even flinch and, just as O’Donoghue had seen to earlier, John Keenan didn’t have a decision to make because Seamus Flanagan didn’t give him a decision to make.
https://twitter.com/TheSundayGame/status/1533556029941743618
There has been a lot of talk about the Limerick team’s discipline, or lack of it, so far this year but there’s an honour in how they play the game that, whoever you are and wherever you’re from, you just have to admire. Because while they’re clearly no angels, you’d have to give them their dues and say that they’re no babies either.
And the most admirable thing of all is that, rather than a conscious effort, it seems that their will to carry on without fuss is down to an ingrained toughness that this team, from one to 15, most certainly has.
It may stray over the edge at times but, for the most part, it’s all in the spirit of the game and that spirit is what makes them the champions that they so clearly are.
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