'For Limerick's Gaelic football fans, the dream never dies'

WHEN Limerick brought Liam MacCarthy home in 2018, forty-five years of throwing away finals, semi-finals and generations of underage talent finally ended for its long-suffering supporters.

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Six seasons and another four titles later, that record of under-achievement stretching back to the start of the Second World War is almost beyond comprehension to the thousands who have followed the John Kiely revolution to unprecedented success.
However, that has not been the case with the county's ‘Cinderella code’. Ever since Limerick's second All-Ireland football title in 1896 was immediately followed by its first hurling victory the following year, football has been relegated to the shadows.

And once two particular teams, one spanning the War of Independence and the early days of the State and the other powered by swashbuckling Ahane team of the 1930s, found their place in the national sporting folklore, the big ball was coralled out to the border fringes of the county.

In fact, such was the indifference at official level that Limerick didn't even enter a senior championship team for much of the 1950s and 1960s. But unlike in Kilkenny where emasculating football was considered by many as a pre-requisite for hurling success, the game refused to die out.

In 1965, when the county returned to the Munster Championship after an absence of thirteen years, they not only beat Tipperary and qualified for only their second final since Independence by ambushing Cork in the upset of the decade but then led Kerry by five points at half-time before Mick O'Connell produced one of his greatest ever performances to lead the Kingdom to a record eighth provincial title in a row.

I was at that game, one of a group of youngsters a club official took to the Gaelic Grounds where he was working on the scoreboard, and I never felt so important as when he asked me to pass him the number “1” slate after we scored our first goal.
Even though the result turned out to be a disappointment, it was the moment when my fascination with Limerick football began.

Sure, it had its ups and downs as there were other interests during my teens and early twenties, when the hurlers won an isolated All-Ireland in 1973.

The Limerick soccer team was winning the League of Ireland and FAI Cup as well as putting it up to Real Madrid both home and away in the European Cup and they continued on into the following decade when the Jack Charlton era brought Ireland from nowhere to the last eight in Europe and in the the World Cup.

But Limerick football still retained its allure, forever fighting against the odds, as far from success as always but never once lying down.

More than anything else, it was the familiarity. Go to a hurling match and you'd be part of a movement, a sea of green-clad supporters, some of whom you'd know, more of whom you'd have a vague idea of which club or parish they came from.

But most with that same connection as you'd have with the clientele of a big pub on a busy Saturday night. But as part of the diehards witnessing the footballers just failing to make it out of Division Three South of the league or coming up short once again in the Munster championship, you'd be on first name terms with just about everyone on the grass bank before they put the cover over it in Askeaton or and you'd meet them all again afterwards for pints in Maureen's or in the Woodfield to resuscitate lost hopes of the breakthrough.

Even though the numbers were rarely more than what a big hurling club would draw to the county championship, you were still aware of the countywide appeal.

The odd carloads out for their Sunday entertainment would arrive from areas like Ballylanders, Athea, Oola, Foynes and Galbally and, as they huddled together overlooking the sideline, were aware that despite up fifty miles separating them they were bound together forever by their support for the team on the field.

When that loyalty was rewarded, like when the team returned to the Munster final in 1991 after a twenty-four year absence, they would be swamped by the thousands who had just discovered that the county fielded teams at football as well as hurling but they'd savour the day and the moments in the sunshine despite pulling up agonisingly short of the stairway to glory.

Yet, no matter how far they'd tumble back to the basement whenever age caught up with the once-in-a-generation team, the diehards never lost hope.

A decade after the side of 1991, the crowds returned to an All-Ireland under-21 final appearance in 2000, a string of Munster finals in the eleven seasons under Liam Kearns and Mickey Ned O'Sullivan including missing two last-minute frees in the drawn 2004 decider.

There was a two-point semi-final defeat to Kerry in the 2004 National League Division One and crashing out in extra-time to eventual All-Ireland champions Cork in 2010.

But despite remaining a serious force in football for over a dozen years, the reward never came and, once that team broke up, the county plummeted all the way down to the bottom of Division Four.

Seven years later, the wheel has turned full circle. In an unprecedented third appearance in Croke Park this season, Limerick are contesting their first national football final in 129 years, hoping to add the Tailteann Cup to their Division Four triumph last March when tackling Kildare. For some, the dream never dies.