The Magic of Munster Returns

This Sunday Limerick and Tipperary will old renew rivalries and in doing so light the touch paper under another season of Munster Championship Hurling. Power, passion, intensity, the list of superlatives is endless. The Munster Championship remains perhaps the greatest and purest contest of the age old game. Limerick will enter the game as big underdogs, Tipperary with renewed optimism of another successful campaign following a relatively arduous Spring.

In June 2007 these two counties wrote yet another epic chapter in their combined history, battling out a three game saga before the Shannonsiders eventually prevailed. No doubt the catalyst to a burgeoning love of the game in another generation of youngsters, it proved the magic of  the Munster Championship burned as brightly as ever. Now that the summer is upon us again the cool air of the National League subsides and the furnace of Championship hurling is ready to erupt once again. Since 2007 the two counties could hardly have trodden less similar paths. The concluding stanza in that particular ode to hurling remains Limerick's last victory in Munster, and their sole victory in their last 16 games in the province. Tipp meanwhile have won seven of their last eight Munster championship matches dating back to 2008 and have claimed three out of four Munster titles in that same period. Along with Kilkenny, Tipperary have elevated the game to a level thus far beyond the reach of any other county in the land. Hurling is crying out for another county to emerge as a force, yet if the Treaty have aspirations of doing so their first task is considerable indeed. Regardless, such is the magic of this competition anything is possible and their fans will travel in their droves in the eternal optimism of upsetting the old enemy.

Semple Stadium- the home of hurling- will again provide the backdrop for the intrepid players of both sides to do battle . Being amongst the some 54,000 supporters on days like this is something special. The roar of the crowd reaching a crescendo and one of the great institutions of this country shifting back into gear reawakens something innate in all that have grown up with such experiences. Come throw-in and the new season's first reacquaintance of ash, an excitement that lies dormant for most of the year will once again course through the veins of young and old, promising a prolonged campaign into the dead of summer. There is something truly primal about it. For 70 minutes the established order is up for renegotiation and only at the end is it reinstated; the dominant party having reaffirmed its position in the hierarchy or the previously subservient having risen above the odds. 

Come Sunday we will once again compel the sun to permeate the depths of hurling's greatest theatre and illuminate this most hellacious of spectacles. After all, exhibiting the early summer burn the Irish alone are assured of and the ensuing hours of discomfort is the closest most of us get to a personal mark of sufferance in allegiance to the county. So pack the ham sandwiches, prepare the flasks of tea, don your colours and once again prepare to be enveloped in the din of Semple and the supreme artistry of the action. This, is going to be special....