The 2022 All-Ireland Championships are up and running with eight games across both codes on Saturday and Sunday last.
Here are the main talking points from the opening weekend.
Build it and they will come
There may have been more of a nip in the air than would normally be associated with the opening weekend of the Championship but for all the talk about the repositioning of the competition with an April start and July finish and the potential impacts it may have, it didn’t appear to diminish attendances.
On a damp and blustery afternoon, there were around 40,000 at Páirc Uí Chaoimh for Cork-Limerick, some 6,000 more than attended their last meeting at the ground in the Munster round robin in 2018, a game that was played on a glorious Saturday evening in June.
Walsh Park was always going to be sold out given for Waterford-Tipperary given the limited capacity but there was a decent crowd at Wexford-Galway (10,200), while there were close to 8,000 spectators in Brewster Park for Fermanagh-Tyrone, a decent turnout for a fixture that the home side hasn’t won in 40 years.
Limerick are back
Limerick started the defence of their 2018 All-Ireland hurling title with a seven-point defeat to Cork the following year. Their next defence began with an eight-point dismissal of the Rebels last year.
This time it was 11 points and it hardly flattered them.
While nobody took Limerick’s League form as a reliable guide and an improvement was always inevitable, such a decisive victory hardly was.
Having that performance in the bank is a boon to their confidence and yet there is room for improvement as despite hitting 2-25 they also had 16 wides and there were other sloppy elements to their play too.
They still have Seamus Flanagan and Peter Casey to throw into the attacking mix as well.
Where now for Cork?
If their League final loss to Waterford raised more questions than answers, then this latest reverse to Limerick visits more head-scratching for Kieran Kingston.
It’s 17 years now since Cork last won the All-Ireland, a record for the county, and while their glut of underage success over the last year or so suggests that the drought won’t drag on indefinitely, they don’t appear to be making significant progress towards ending it in the short or even medium term.
The good news is that they won’t have to play Limerick, their serial tormentors now, any time soon but if they have any ambitions of scaling the summit they’re going to have to, for a start, figure out a way of becoming more competitive against them at the very least.
Tipp may have a say yet
Given that Waterford’s victory over Tipperary was their first against them in the Munster Championship since 2004, it would hardly have been the shock of the century had the result gone the other way.
But it would have been a surprise, all the same, given where both teams are coming from of late though Tipperary showed enough to suggest that they can upset many pre-Championship predictions that had them bottom of the pile in Munster.
Given that they’ve a trip to Limerick in round three, Saturday’s home tie with Clare is effectively a must-win if they are to progress from the group. And Thurles may well be the place to be in the final round when Cork come to town.
Leinster sub-standard
Galway were the last team from the Leinster Championship to win the All-Ireland in 2017 and there was little from the weekend to suggest that that particular statistic will be amended come July.
Wexford-Galway may have provided some excitement coming down the stretch but the fare was not of a standard that is likely to have the big guns in Munster quaking.
Meanwhile, Dublin fell over the line against Laois and Kilkenny made hard work of Westmeath for much of the evening in Mullingar.
The main protagonists will likely be more formidable later in the campaign but you wouldn’t bank on any of them toppling Limerick or Waterford at their best.
Tyrone need McKenna impact
Following the well-documented withdrawal of seven members of their squad since last year’s All-Ireland win, there was a certain irony in Conor McKenna driving Tyrone to victory off the bench against Fermanagh at the weekend.
It was arguably McKenna’s best showing for the county since he took to senior inter-county football seamlessly after arriving back from Australia in late 2020.
But having got that impact off the bench just when that source appeared to have been ravaged, Tyrone can ill-afford to be depleted any further with a dangerous tie against Derry approaching.
They have signalled their intent to challenge McKenna’s red card and if contributing to a melee, which appears to be why he was dismissed, is to be penalised more regularly then there will likely be a glut of further sendings off in the coming weeks before the penny drops with players.
Fermanagh first into Tailteann Cup - but face a long wait
Following their defeat to Tyrone on Saturday evening, Fermanagh became the first county to have their place in the inaugural Tailteann Cup confirmed, followed by London and New York on Sunday.
However, the competition doesn’t get underway until the weekend of May 21/22 with the preliminary round, which will only involve a maximum of four teams.
“It’s something we hadn’t even thought about to be honest,” said Fermanagh boss Kieran Donnelly after Saturday’s defeat. “It’s five weeks down the line, which is a massive gap for us. That takes managing.
“This is a young squad. I go back to my own playing days, the All-Ireland B was something we built on, that’s something we have to sell to our players, that it’s something we can win and push on with, and gain experience from playing more championship games. We have to take it like that.”
A glaring weakness of the Tailteann Cup is the fact that, unlike the Joe McDonagh Cup, the winners aren’t offered a route back into the All-Ireland race in the same year and the benefits of winning it aren’t particularly tangible.
Surely the competition could get underway in the next couple of weeks with the already confirmed participants, with a view to getting it wrapped up in time for an All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final.
The marketing gimmicks that are repeatedly being called for to spruce it up would quickly become redundant.
New York no soft touch
Granted, they weren’t playing frontline All-Ireland contenders in Sligo, but in their first outing in three years New York certainly did themselves proud.
Between FBD League and Allianz League, it was Sligo’s 10th competitive fixture of 2022 alone and the sides were level entering the closing stages.
New York will take part in this year’s Tailteann Cup, entering the competition at the quarter-final stage, and if they can build on that performance and get a favourable draw, that long-awaited first victory in a competitive inter-county fixture since the 1967 League final against Galway may be at hand.
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