Some lessons from league and tips for stopping Limerick

That's it for another league. In 20 years you can ask someone who won the league in 2023 and whatever the future version of Google is at that time will have to be used by many to find the answer.

So let’s reverse it, now no googling, who won the league in 2003? A lot of you won’t know without searching but ask who won Liam MacCarthy in 2003 and the majority will know it was Kilkenny who did back-to-back defeating Cork in the final.

The championship is where it’s at in terms of full tilt effort from teams, intensity, passion among the crowds and the memories it creates for years to come. We are in for a humdinger this year, I hope.

I said during the week that it has now become almost boring to watch Limerick dismantle teams. Teams are trying systems, styles of play against them, mainly in the form of extra defenders, but none of it seems to matter as this Limerick group will chew up whatever you throw at them and spit it back out at you in terms of intensity, work-rate and use of the ball.

Many have tried to break them down but few if any have succeeded. This is a team that has not lost a knockout championship game since August 2019. Since that day they have played 16 championship games, won 14 drew 2 (they won last year's Munster final after extra time) and six of those were knockout championship games, which they haven’t lost in almost four years when the need was most.

So teams are going to have to try something different again now to try and defeat this Green Machine, because the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result.

This is leftfield now but instead of playing so many back will some team play more forward? Keep the play-making and scoring threat of Barry Nash and