By John Harrington

A penny for the thoughts of the 15 Limerick hurlers on the pitch in those tumultuous ten minutes of extra-time in yesterday’s All-Ireland SHC Final.

As a fairly straightforward victory threatened to veer off the road, did they allow themselves to think about what the consequences might be if they crashed into the ditch?

Losing yesterday’s All-Ireland final would have put the 1994 Final collapse against Offaly in the shade, and, God knows, enough has been written and said about that match ever since.

Perhaps in those harum scarum final few minutes they didn’t have the time to appreciate the gaping chasm beneath the tight-rope they were just about still balancing on.

The same couldn’t be said though for manager John Kiely who watched on pale-faced as Galway threatened to come back from the dead.

“I know I felt, 'Oh crap, this isn't going to happen, is it?” said the Limerick manager after the match.

“And you're just imploring the players to win those last few vital balls.

“It's such a difficult thing to do, like. Can you imagine the pressure they felt under in those last 10 to 15 minutes? Just incredible.

“And we couldn't make any more substitutions, we had five already made and still had Tom Morrissey going around on a leg and a half, he still had to play out on the wing, he couldn't sit in on the edge of the square.

“Peter Casey came into the game with a bad injury, you probably copped that with his ankle strapped, and we got him as right as we could but he got hurt on Friday night in training.

“He still managed to win a couple of vital balls when he came on, really top class guy now, the amount of stuff he's been through in the last 48 hours was just incredible.”

In the end, the physical and mental bravery that the Limerick players had displayed throughout the match once again rose to the surface in the final, defining play of the contest.

As soon as it became obvious, mid-flight, that Joe Canning’s last-gasp free wasn’t going to go over the bar, your eyes immediately turned to the straining scrum of players in the penalty area waiting for it to drop.

Jonathan Glynn’s big paw seemed the mostly likely destination, and you wouldn’t have been surprised either to see a Galway hurley somehow divert it to the net.

The ball landed into a thicket of clashing hurleys but in the midst of the mayhem Tom Condon kept his cool to somehow snap the sliotar in his hand and take it away from the danger-zone as the final whistle blew.

Condon was the oldest Limerick player on the field at that moment and has probably suffered more bad days than good ones in the line of duty.

But at that most pressurised of moments he backed himself to make the biggest play of his life, and in doing so washed away years of unlimited heartbreak for Limerick.

It was certainly no more than they deserved. Until those final hectic ten minutes of extra-time they bossed Galway.

The sight of a Galway player being surrounded by a pack of ravenous Limerick tacklers and being stripped of possession or forced backwards was one of the themes of the match.

All of Limerick’s goals came from turnovers forced by their forwards, which is a testament to the work ethic they brought to bear on the game.

“Oh massive, yeah. Massive. Delighted with that one,” said Kiely.

“We knew that our forwards would have to tackle really, really hard, really in high numbers if we were going to have a chance.

“That's the hardest part to being a forward, that you have to waste so much energy defending and yet you need so much energy to win those vital balls to attack.

“And that's why we don't want them taking too much time on the ball, when they get a chance, get it off, take the shot, reset and go again.”

Galway were outfought and outthought for most of the match, but they displayed the heart of champions by coming with that late charge that very nearly delivered the most incredible comeback in the history of All-Ireland Finals.

And as much as their manager Micheal Donoghue was disappointed to have come out on the wrong side of the result, he was still rightly proud of the character his players had shown in the face of adversity.

“I couldn’t be prouder of them,” he said. “Anything we’ve asked of these lads since we came in, they’ve been top notch.

“They’ve been one of the top teams, they’ve been knocking on the door for so long. Obviously last year we made the breakthrough, which was massive and there was a lot of learnings we’ll take from the year as well in terms of…particularly early on and how we prepared for the year but they’re a great bunch to work with.

“As I said, there’s a huge understanding of the responsibility that goes with being involved in Galway and some massive leaders in there and all we can do any day is ask them to go out and give it 100% and they did and I’m really proud of them.”

Credit to Galway for their fightback, but what will be remembered long after the dust has settled was the bravery that this young Limerick team played with from start to finish.

They seemed utterly unburdened by the weight of 45 years of failure, which is a testament to just how confident and driven this group is.

They’ve bene fuelled by a powerful collective unity all year. Unlike most counties, Limerick didn’t seek challenge matches against other teams, instead they honed and hardened their minds and bodies with ferocious in-house games involving the extended panel.

So when Darragh O’Donovan was asked after the match to explain what drove he and his team-mates to the ultimate glory this year, he didn’t have to pause for thought before answering.

“I remember going into the boxing ring with this man (Kyle Hayes) in St Francis' last October, the end of October and we were going in, literally bating the heads off each other.

“John (Kiely) has been saying it all year, we have to fight with ourselves before we fight with anyone else. We have to respect ourselves.

“John is always saying that about training, if you were to come up to some of our training sessions you would think lads wouldn't be talking to each other.”

This Limerick team is very much a self-made one, forged into steel by a heat they’ve generated themselves with their own raw desire to be the best.

It was always going to take that to finally break free from the shackles binding them after years of underachievement.

As John Kiely said when interviewed on the pitch a minute or two after the final whistle blew, Limerick are no longer second-class citizens, no longer the bridesmaids.

It’s going to be very interesting to see what this young team can achieve in the coming years now they've finally thrown off the chains of history.