Ger Hegarty: ‘I always thought he had athletic potential but I never saw this hurling ability’

You could have forgiven Ger Hegarty for being particularly anxious in the closing minutes of Sunday’s hurling final.

As one of the loyal troops, who soldiered for Limerick during the 45-year drought in All-Ireland fortunes, he also had the experience of watching one of the five lost finals that stretched out like a broken bridge between the successes in 1973 and 2018 on the field of play.

In 1994, he was centre back on the team that lost a five-point lead to Offaly in under five minutes. An All-Ireland winner at both minor and under-21, he never completed the set of medals.

At the weekend he hadn’t been rendered any more detached by the passage of time, as his son Gearóid was tearing it up for Limerick – striking a late and surely successful contender for goal of the season as well as hitting points from everywhere.

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With 1-5 to his name, Gearóid wouldn’t have been sweating over the identity of the Man of the Match award – his second, by the way – that evening.

For the world at large, the younger Hegarty had made his first moves as a footballer, playing Sigerson for UL and the county seniors – only landing in with the under-21 hurlers late in the day in his last year and not having been on the county minors.

His father is candid when asked did he see his son, 6ft 5in and built in proportion, breaking into the top level of hurling.

“I always thought he had athletic potential,” says Ger Hegarty, “but I never saw this hurling ability. I could see the footballer and watched him playing for UL and he was a powerful footballer. Did I see ability? I saw loads of it but hurling ability? No. True answer is I did not. Those sublime hands, the vision and the movement and the running off the ball – it’s been phenomenal to watch that developing over the last couple of years.

“He only emerged as a 21-year-old, which is amazing. I never saw this coming. I never saw the ability and didn’t even think he’d make it as an under-21. He only played one year at the grade and never played minor or junior.”

Sunday was a day of days for all associated with Limerick hurling, let alone the families of those making history as the first team from outside the big three of Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary to win three successive All-Irelands.

To achieve that in a tightly-wound final against Kilkenny conferred status and affirmation after the annihilation of Cork a year previously; a narrow win against the masters of pressure.

With four of the last five All-Irelands in the bag since 2018, Limerick won finals well in 2020 and ‘21 and narrowly in the breakthrough year of 2018. Ger Hegarty contrasts the stops on the journey.

“That relief in 2018 was after 45 years of failing to get there but Sunday was pure exhilaration, those five points at the end in particular.

“The 90s was a decade that promised so much for Limerick and yet ended with so much disappointment. We had so many chances to close out big matches and not just All-Irelands but Munster finals as well and we didn’t take them.

“I don’t look on this as making up for it. We had our opportunities. That was the 90s. This is now and the game has moved on. It’s a much, much better game now than what it was. This team have their own era and are writing their own history.

“We were knocking on the door in the 90s and late 80s. If we could have won a Munster, anything was possible for a young team. In 2018 another young side won the All-Ireland and Limerick have just gone to a different level since. It’s simply that winning the first is the hard one and that’s one we couldn’t do in the 90s but these guys broke that duck.”

When the team were emerging he felt reluctant to assume too much about the future. False dawns were a permanent feature of the county landscape at no time more pronounced than when a three-in-a-row at under-21 level at the turn of the century appeared to guarantee senior success – all other counties to have hit that mark at U21 went on to add senior.

“I was wary because I had seen so many false dawns but I also saw the work being done with clubs at ground level and fabulous work with development squads. One of the really big factors was the Harty Cup wins for Ardscoil Rís. That was a starting point just like the wins for [CBS] Sexton Street had been in the 1960s.

“But I had to ask myself is it really going to happen this time.”

He needn’t have worried. The planets were aligning with schools success, Na Piarsaigh winning Limerick’s first club All-Ireland and the domination of the Fitzgibbon Cup by the three Limerick colleges.

Ger Hegarty also believes the current players don’t settle for the limitations of the past.

“I remember when Majella, my wife, invited a few of them over after winning the 2018 All-Ireland. The lads were having a few beers in the back room with Gearóid and I asked a stupid question. I said to Seán Finn, ‘is there another one in ye?’.

“His response: ‘you mean only one more?”

“They think differently, this generation.”