Going toe to toe with heavyweights Limerick a tall task for Tribesmen

The tale of the tape as Galway face up to Limerick this weekend reads like middleweight versus super heavyweight.

The Tribe are in reboot mode, trying to find a potent mix of hurling and athleticism in the post-Joe Canning era. Losing an arm-wrestle to Kilkenny and falling over the line against Cork has buried them deep in the long grass.

Could we be in for a shock? An ambush? A Kilkenny 2019-esque performance to scramble the green machine's wiring?

Galway will fancy putting it up to Limerick, but it is difficult to see how they can impose their will in the way that the Tribe’s 2015-18 side did to the majority of opposition.

Limerick don’t simply go out and hurl, putting themselves at the mercy of an opposition’s game plan. It’s on their terms, pressing from all angles, and with a hint of Moneyball to how they move through the lines while taking care of the ball.

In knockout hurling at Croke Park at the latter end of the season, this massive cauldron can feel like a small, walled club pitch. Players are at their most intense, are dying for every ball, and any dallying will be met with physical contact. Time and space are endangered luxuries.

No team puts the squeeze on quite like Limerick, has the same power and ability to hunt in packs, or quite as regularly ends a period of playing with their fist pumping in your direction.

They are the biggest beasts in the jungle and play like a team that knows they will come out on top, even in a tight finish. It started against Kilkenny in the 2018 All-Ireland quarter-final, continued against Cork in the semi, once more in the final against Galway, and has been a recurring theme ever since — with the sole blip coming against Kilkenny in 2019.

When their own long famine ended in 2017,