By John Harrington

If a sports team is dominant over a considerable period of time they don’t just have very good players, the probability is that they’re also tactical innovators who break from the peloton and force their rivals to play catch-up.

This has been the case in Gaelic Games for the past couple of decades.

The Tyrone football team that won three All-Irelands in the noughties were the first real pioneers of the concertina system of play that is now so common at the highest level where you compress your half of the pitch with bodies when you don’t have the ball and then break with numbers high up the pitch when you do.

This strategy was damned with faint praise when it was labelled a ‘blanket defence’, but Tyrone attacked as much as team as they defended as one.

The Dublin team that won six All-Irelands in a row took this blueprint and refined it even further by putting a bigger emphasis on retention of possession and not taking on shooting chances that had less than an 80% chance of conversion.

Hurling too has had its innovators. The Cork team that won back to back All-Irelands in 2004 and 2005 were pioneers of a short-puck out strategy and married that with the short-passing/hard-running style of play the Newtownshandrum club had previously developed so potently.

Their success with this strategy forced Kilkenny to respond by bringing in their own version of the concertina system of play that was already proving so successful in Gaelic Football.

Mick Dempsey, a Laois native with a background in Gaelic Football rather than hurling, joined Brian Cody’s coaching team in 2005 and it’s likely he had a big role to play in developing the style of play that would ultimately help Kilkenny to win eight All-Irelands in 10 years.

The 2006 All-Ireland Final between Kilkenny and Cork was a real cross-roads moment in the history of hurling tactics as Kilkenny surrendered the short-puck out to Cork by pulling their inside-forwards to the half-forward line their half-forwards to midfield, their midfielders inside their own half, and their half-backs just in front of their full-back line.

Cork were able to retain possession from the puck-out by hitting it short to their full-back line, but now there was no space to puck the ball into from there and the short-passing/hard-running gameplan that had previously worked so well now broke down in a cluttered middle third where Kilkenny tackled with ferocious but controlled aggression.

That Cats were able to combine that defending in numbers style of play with a direct, long-ball attacking approach when they turned possession over because they were blessed with so many natural ball winners in attack.

Kilkenny might have found a way to stifle Cork’s gameplan, but the passing of time has validated much of what the Rebels were trying to do in the mid-noughties.

In the same way that the Dublin footballers refined what Tyrone did, the Limerick hurlers evolved a style of play based in no small part on the Cork blueprint.

Retention of possession and working the ball through the lines with short-passing and support runners until you can hit angled deliveries to your inside forwards from the middle third of the field has been a staple of Limerick’s dominance of the game in the last five years.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and we’ve seen every other team try to emulate this style of play, even Brian Cody’s Kilkenny.

Limerick are still ahead of the rest though because they continue to innovate, most obviously by transforming Barry Nash from a forward to a play-making corner-back.

The fact that Nash is being talked about as a leading candidate for hurler of the year tells you just how important he is to the Limerick game-plan now.

A player like Nash gives a real tactical headache to opposition managers.

Declan Hannon, sitting in a deep role in front of his full-back line, was previously Limerick’s most obvious out-ball from defence.

And when he won possession his ability to pick out laser-guided passes and even get forward himself to shoot from the middle third made him a very effective offensive weapon too.

Opposition managers tried to reduce Hannon’s influence by encouraging their centre-forward to stay high up the pitch and within close proximity of the Limerick centre-back, but this created more space in the middle third which Limerick are so adept at exploiting.

So what teams instead did was to detail one of their corner-forwards to ‘mark’ Hannon as much as possible which released their centre-forward to a deeper position where he could help his midfield and half-backs when Limerick had the ball.

This left a Limerick corner-back free, but the thinking would have been that whoever that might be wouldn’t be nearly as effective a creative force as Hannon.

This is where Nash entered the picture. He was taken aside by Limerick coach Paul Kinnerk before the Allianz Hurling League match against Waterford on March 7 2020 and drilled on what they wanted from him in the position.

If opposition teams played with a two-man full-forward line and pushed up on Hannon, then Nash was to be the spare-man sweeper with a licence to also get forward and initiate attacks at his discretion.

Fast-forward two years, and it’s a role he has mastered. The four points from play he’s scored in this year’s championship is just the tip of the ice-berg in terms of what he does for this Limerick team, there are countless other examples of him being the launch-pad for attacks that end with someone else’s name on the score-sheet.

Opposition teams have tried keeping three inside forwards high up the pitch to keep Nash defensively busy, but this is a robbing Peter to pay Paul approach because it brings Hannon back into the picture and opens up that middle third Limerick love to run through.

When Kinnerk told him they saw him as a corner-back you can only presume Nash had his doubts, but no-one doubts him now, least of all himself.

“I suppose I have just so much trust and faith in Paul and John and the lads and when they made that decision I was just happy to give it a go and see how things went,” said Nash.

“I’ve learned from lots of guys around me, we’ve a great group of lads. I’ve been picking the brains of the players and backroom team and having Caroline (Currid) there has been massive.

“But I suppose I’ve also matured over the last number of years. Starting out in 2016 I was playing in the forwards and then eventually switched back into the backs.

“When John and Paul brought that challenge to me I think I tried to meet it head on and use all the resources around me to help improve my game and get to where I am today.

“The way teams set up against us, Paul gave me that freedom to get forward a bit more. It seems to suit me a bit better and I enjoy playing there at the moment.

“It’s a position I’ve grown to really like and hopefully we can keep it going now.”

Nash’s point in the All-Ireland SHC semi-final against Galway was the perfect distillation of just how effective he is as a play-making corner-back.

Picking up possession on his own 21-yard line he popped a hand-pass to Dan Morrissey and immediately sprinted forward to create an overlap and take a return hand-pass from Morrissey.

He kept his foot on the gas until he reached the middle of the pitch from where he struck an incredible point off his left-side while running at full pelt.

The problem for opposition teams isn’t just that Nash attacking from those deep positions is very difficult to stop, perhaps just as pressing an issue is that it won’t be very easy to copy this page from the Limerick play-book themselves.

There aren’t many players out there who are capable of transitioning from being a free-scoring forward for most of their career to a corner-back who can attack from deep but also defend competently.

Brian Ryan, who has coached Nash since he was a kid in South Liberties, was also his manager when Limerick won Munster minor titles in 2013 and 2013, and now manages him again at senior club level with South Liberties, so knows him better than most.

And he reckons Nash has been able to reinvent the corner-back position because of a skillset and mindset he brings to it that isn’t easy to replicate.

“He was a forward before but he was such a versatile player that it's easy enough for a player like him to be able to make the switch to the backs,” Ryan told GAA.ie

“He brings great athleticism to the position. He's 6' 2'', very mobile, very athletic. He's an attacking corner-back, he's certainly not your traditional corner-back.

“He’s always had that athleticism. He did the Community Games locally in the parish and then he was a member of Emerald AC.

“His mother Mary would be very much into athletics as well so he has that influence from that side of the family, and then obviously there’s great pedigree on the other side with his father Mike and Uncle Declan both having hurled for Limerick in the full-back line.

“Barry comes across as a very pleasant chap which he is off the field, but there's a bit of steel in him. The Nashes were all tough men as hurlers and Barry also has that bit of steel in him too. He wouldn't shirk a tackle or not do whatever needs to be done.

“He definitely brings an extra dimension to this Limerick team. And this year when they might have been struggling in certain areas, Barry has excelled. He has definitely matured and grown in stature in that position.”

Hurling once demanded specific skillsets for specific positions. Those in the defensive third were stoppers, those in the middle third were hurlers, and those in the final third were finishers.

Nowadays, a mastery of all skills, both with and without the ball, is required regardless of where you play on the pitch.

But even in this era of Total Hurling, Nash’s transformation from free-scoring forward to play-making corner-back has been something special.

“I think what he's done is unbelievable,” says his first cousin and former Cork goalkeeper, Anthony Nash.

“To start as a corner-forward/wing-forward and end up getting an All-Star corner-back last year is just phenomenal.

“We talk about the likes of Tommy Walsh in Kilkenny who could play everywhere and JJ Delaney who could play anywhere in the backline. But Barry going from being a corner-forward to winning an All-Star at corner-back is an unbelievable achievement. I'm immensely proud of him.”

Barry Nash is definitely a sporting outlier, which is a problem for other teams because replicating Limerick’s success with a play-making corner-back will be a tall task.

They’ve little option other than to try though, because if you don’t react to innovation then you’ll be left behind.