Newly Promoted Limerick Heavy Favorites Going Into Their Munster Senior Football Championship Clash With Waterford
By Daire Walsh
Limerick v Waterford
For the first time since the summer of 2012, this Saturday night will see Waterford and Limerick coming face-to-face in the Munster Senior Football Championship.
Fraher Field, Dungarvan is the venue for this quarter-final clash (throw-in 7pm), with the winners earning the right to face either Tipperary or Clare – who meet in Thurles on Sunday – in the penultimate round of the southern provincial series.
When the sides squared off at the same stage eight years ago, Ian Ryan contributed an impressive 1-7 haul to steer Limerick towards an emphatic 2-12 to 0-7 victory on their home patch of the Gaelic Grounds. There has been a significant changing of the guard during the intervening period, with Seamus O’Carroll the only surviving Treaty starter for the league meeting between the two sides back in January.
O’Carroll now plays his club football for Castleknock in Dublin, lining out alongside six-time All-Ireland champion Ciarán Kilkenny. Iain Corbett of Newcastle West appeared as a substitute in that 2012 Championship encounter and was in excellent form last weekend as Limerick wrapped up the NFL Division Four title with a 1-16 to 1-14 win at the expense of Sligo in Markievicz Park.
On the other hand, Waterford have a completely changed side to their last Munster meeting with the green and white men. Their Division Four campaign ended last Saturday in a 2-14 to 0-13 defeat to Antrim at the neutral venue of Dundalk.
After the Waterford squad expressed concerns about travelling across the border to Portglenone, the Ulster men agreed to switch the game to Geraldines Louth GFC. Despite the best efforts of Jason Curry and Conor Murray, the Déise couldn’t finish their much-delayed campaign on a high.
Dungarvan was also the port of call for that league showdown at the beginning of the year, when an Adrian Enright goal handed Limerick a 1-10 to 0-10 triumph. That success, coupled with their promotion to Division Three for the 2021 season, ensures Billy Lee’s side will be the more confidence team heading into their latest tussle.
It may seem like a long time ago now, but Limerick pulled off one of the more impressive victories of the 2019 championship. Having reached the All-Ireland semi-final less than three years earlier, Tipperary were firm favourites to overcome their neighbours in Semple Stadium, Thurles.
Yet the underdogs tore up the script, with Corbett, Cillian Fahy and Peter Nash rattling the net to secure a deserved 3-11 to 1-10 victory for Limerick. Their season may well have ended in back-to-back reversals at the hands of Cork and Westmeath, but there was greater cause for optimism when Lee re-assembled his troops for 2020.
Being on the opposite side of the draw to both Kerry and Cork raises hopes within the county of Limerick reaching a first provincial decider in 10 years.
Nevertheless, the challenge of Waterford shouldn’t be discounted. It is a decade since they last registered a win in the Munster Championship – a narrow quarter-final defeat of Clare – but it hasn’t been for the want of trying in recent times.
They were on the brink of sending Cork to the first round qualifiers in 2017, only to suffer an agonising one-point reversal to the Leesiders (1-12 to 1-11). Just last year, they held Clare scoreless for the final 31 minutes of their quarter-final meeting at Cusack Park, Ennis but once again fell short by the slenderest of margins (0-9 to 0-8).
During Colm Collins’ first season in charge of the Banner County back in 2014, they required a replay to overcome Waterford and Ger Walsh’s outfit are certainly a hard nut to crack on their day.
Of course, this game is significantly heightened by the absence of a backdoor for the team that comes out on the wrong side of the result. Having only just returned to competitive inter-county action after a gap of more than seven months, one of these teams will see their season drawing to a close.
You have to go all the way back to 1991 for the last time either county won a knockout provincial championship contest. Thanks to consecutive wins over Tipperary and Waterford themselves, Limerick progressed to that year’s Munster final – which they lost by just two points to Kerry.
For Waterford, their last provincial win in the pre-qualifier era was a 3-9 to 1-11 victory over Tipperary on May 8, 1988.
Given the draw has thrown them together in 2020, something will have to give when the sides cross the white line in Fraher’s Field.