The man in the camper van outside Fraher Field on Sunday was flying the flag for Limerick. At least his son was, a toddler decked out in green and white, lost among the tall girls in Déise blue collecting for the Waterford ladies football team.
It was easy to see little signs and portents like that yesterday in Dungarvan, maybe a little too easy. Despite the huffing and puffing we all go on with in the fourth estate, it’s still only the league. And Limerick-Dungarvan isn’t a direct route at the best of times.
Consequently, it’d be difficult to gauge what effect the Shannonside shenanigans are having on attendances and followers setting out from the Treaty City this weather – though if the conversation we overheard in the Park Hotel before the game was anything to go by, the Limerick footballers’ surprise defeat by Waterford the night before was a greater disincentive to travel than the long-running stand-off among the county’s hurling folk.
It would hardly be stop-the-presses news, then, to hear Waterford had the more vocal support during the game. There were a few Limerick supporters in the 3,000 or so present in Fraher Field, and they were the people will plenty to cheer early on.
Limerick goaled within twenty seconds, which brought a rousing reception from the faithful in green and white; when they got a second minutes later it was barely celebrated.
Not through disbelief, but maybe because it wasn’t noticed, hopping as it did into a corner of the net.
Davy Fitzgerald was correct after the game when he said he diagnosed some nervousness in the Waterford support at that stage. Limerick have been notably reticent about playing their allotted role as lambs to the slaughter and didn’t bother adhering to the script either.
However, the lengthy break in play which followed Tadhg Flynn’s injury didn’t help their cause. It looked a relatively innocuous clash with Eoin McGrath but Flynn didn’t move when he hit the deck, and we had to wait quarter of an hour for him to be taken away by ambulance.
It’s worth recording that because it seemed unduly long to have to wait – referee Johnny Ryan signalled fairly quickly for a stretcher, which took some time to materialise, and Flynn remained on the ground while the ambulance was guided onto the field of play.
In our match report we point out that Waterford got back to optimum output quicker than Limerick after Flynn’s injury, but that’s hardly surprising. Anyone who has ever seen a teammate at any level removed from the field of play by ambulance is not likely to have their concentration levels improved.
Finally, it was fitting that tributes were paid to former GAA President Pat Fanning. The Mount Sion man helped guide through one of the most contentious changes in the GAA’s history, the abolition of the ‘Ban’ on foreign sports. If you thought the opening of Croke Park was a touchy subject, you should have been around in the late sixties and early seventies, when this was a live topic.
But it was resolved, and the sky didn’t fall on anybody’s heads. There’s a lesson there for Limerick and for their supporters, including the little boy in the green and white jersey who was dwarfed by the Waterford girls outside Fraher Field. He’ll have better days too.
