Streetwise Portumna to make experience count

IT’S a lazy but understandable perception . . . that this year’s All-Ireland Club hurling title won’t take much winning! 

After all, two of the remaining four contenders come from the minnow counties of Antrim and Carlow, with a relatively inexperienced team from Limerick and another one from Galway supposedly a light of former years, completing this weekend’s semi-final line up.

No wonder some famed clubs up and down the country must be wondering how they let a golden opportunity pass them by so badly, but that’s how the cards have fallen over recent months and Loughgiel, Mount Leinster Rangers, Na Piarsaigh and three-time champions Portumna will make no apologies for being the last teams standing in the pursuit of the Tommy Moore Cup.

Anyway, appearances can be deceptive. Loughgiel, for instance, are formidable adversaries at this level, being crowned All-Ireland champions in March of 2012 and taking St. Thomas’ to a replay last year, while there was no fluke about Mount Leinster Rangers’ historic triumph in Leinster after giving Carlow hurling a huge boost with deserved big day wins over Ballyboden of Dublin and the nearly men of Oulart-The-Ballagh.

These two teams clash in the first of the All-Ireland semi-finals on Saturday, but the big interest will be on the Thurles floodlit meeting – starting this game at 5pm on a likely hostile February night is hard to justify under any circumstances – of Portumna and Na Piarsaigh, a team which may possess a stack of Limerick county players but one still to convince that they have temperament and consistency to emerge as the next powerful force on the national club hurling scene.

For all that, Sean Stack’s men have proven their resilience in coming out on top in a number of tight contests. Na Piarsaigh just survived a late surge by reigning title holders Kilmallock in the Limerick semi-final before having two points to spare over Adare to claim the club’s second county championship in three years. Subsequently, their opening two matches in the Munster campaign proved wildly fluctuating affairs.

They may have finished in whirlwind fashion to edge out Loughmore of Tipperary (3-17 to 2-18) in Thurles having trailed by ten points at one stage, but their opponents carelessly lost defender Derek Bourke to a red card after only four minutes, while Loughmore also had Willie Eviston sent off in the second-half. Against that background, you’d have to assume that the Tipperary title holders were desperately unlucky.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.