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\nBen O’Connor has brought a gruff confidence to the Cork set-up<\/p>\n
The first Munster hurling final at the new P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh provides us with the same match-up as the first Munster final at the old one.<\/p>\n
And, indeed, the last Munster final at the old one.<\/p>\n
This site hasn’t hosted a Munster SHC decider since the 2014 final, the last big match at the old ground.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t the only sense in which that provincial final represents a throwback. Jimmy Barry-Murphy was in charge of Cork and embraced Frank Murphy after the game.<\/p>\n
Seamus Harnedy – still knocking around – and Paudie O’Sullivan buried the goals as Cork claimed their first Munster title in eight years.<\/p>\n
Not long afterwards, “the oddly appropriate Soviet silo of the 70s”, as RT\u00c9’s Daire O’Brien described it, was retired and the diggers rolled in.<\/p>\n
Cork have won all three of their home Munster finals against Limerick in the television era. In addition to 2014, there was ’76, which came midway through the first year of a Cork three-in-a-row.<\/p>\n
And there was the 1992 Munster final, which marked – though we weren’t to know it – the end of an era for the Cork hurlers, who embarked on a barren run after that campaign and made a series of early summer exits during the revolution years. That game is mainly remembered for Tom\u00e1s Mulcahy’s bizarre and comically illegal goal, where the Cork centre-forward lost his hurl and then proceeded to handpass the ball up to himself before kicking to the net.<\/p>\n
This year’s Munster round robin received a rare thumbs down from the hurling public and was arguably the first one to be marred by a serious degree of competitive imbalance. (Ironically, occurring at the very moment when the Leinster hurling championship became more competitive and unpredictable than ever, culminating in Kilkenny’s shock exit.)<\/p>\n
Clare qualified in third place despite shipping two frightful hammerings against the top two. Waterford were competitive in all of their games but luckless at key moments and still lacking forward depth. Tipperary’s season was almost a carbon copy of their wretched 2024 campaign and has rendered last summer’s journey all the more mysterious in retrospect.<\/p>\n
Tellingly, it was only the Cork-Limerick clash in Round 2 which came close to being labelled a ‘classic’, a term which is usually thrown around liberally at this time of year.<\/p>\n
The Clare-Waterford game on the opening weekend was a free-scoring rollercoaster. Waterford mustered a comeback to snatch a draw at home to Tipp, while the D\u00e9ise’s home game against Cork was an engrossing tit-for-tat. Outside of that, the 2026 Munster SHC was fairly humdrum and increasingly so as the campaign wore on.<\/p>\n
The chief driver of the imbalance in most people’s perception is the extreme strength of both Cork and Limerick, the pair having conclusively separated themselves from the pack in this campaign.<\/p>\n
The sense that the All-Ireland championship would culminate in a face-off between this pair was also present last year until Limerick’s startling under-performance in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin.<\/p>\n
The widely-held belief that this is a Federer-Nadal style rivalry is at odds with the fact that they haven’t contested an All-Ireland final since 2021. On form, it’s hard to see either missing out on the ’26 decider.<\/p>\n
Both teams have freshened up in striking ways since last summer.<\/p>\n
The biggest change for Cork is on the sideline. Ben O’Connor’s early declaration that he was intent on winning every game may not have survived the league, though they’ve given it a good rattle all the same.<\/p>\n
Cork in 2026 became only the second team to register a 100% record in the Munster round robin after Liam Sheedy’s Tipp side in 2019 (oddly, four of Tipperary’s seven Munster SHC round robin wins occurred in that single year).<\/p>\n
There is a sense that O’Connor’s hard-edged, gruff persona, combined with his legacy as a key player on the last Cork team to win All-Irelands, has been beneficial to a team who collapsed mentally in last July’s decider.<\/p>\n
\nBen O’Connor has brought a gruff confidence to the Cork set-up<\/p>\n
Certainly, the general perception is that the physicality has been dialled up. O’Connor’s Cork Under-20 side had won the 2023 All-Ireland title in slightly controversial fashion, with Offaly manager Leo O’Connor complaining about a high hit on Cormac Egan afterwards, alongside an Eoin Downey rugby tackle on Dan Bourke.<\/p>\n
“You do what you have to do to win,” was O’Connor’s verdict after. We saw early evidence of Cork’s new no-nonsense attitude in Salthill, when both Mark Coleman and Rob Downey were lucky to avoid red cards, after which O’Connor delivered his sermon against the evils of referee assessors.<\/p>\n
Midleton’s Tommy O’Connell, generally a second half arrival during Pat Ryan’s reign, has been a constant starter under O’Connor, usually at midfield alongside Tim O’Mahony.<\/p>\n
More exciting have been the breakthroughs of William Buckley and Barry Walsh in the forward line, replacing the retired great Pat Horgan, with Seamus Harnedy generally held in reserve.<\/p>\n
Buckley, who delivered electric performances against Tipperary and Clare, hit 0-14 from play across the championship thus far. He has tended to come deeper than Horgan, a departure from Cork’s three-man full-forward line of the last two seasons. They have scored fewer goals – just four in four games – but have shown greater solidity overall.<\/p>\n
The big caveat for Cork is the absence of Ciaran Joyce, gone for the season, and Darragh Fitzgibbon, whose appendix operation was assumed to have ruled him out of the remainder of the Munster campaign.<\/p>\n
The old warhorse Damien Cahalane has slotted in well in place of Joyce at full-back, while Fitzgibbon has recovered sufficiently to be included among the standby list for this afternoon.<\/p>\n
If Cork are less besotted with running up goal tallies, then Limerick have increased their interest in that pursuit.<\/p>\n
John Kiely’s team have often forsaken goals in the past and some of their greatest displays – notably the 2023 All-Ireland final – contained not a sniff of a goal chance, never mind an actual goal.<\/p>\n
They hit 10 across Munster this year, including five in the final weekend against Tipperary, in front of JP McManus and the US Ryder Cup captain, Jim Furyk.<\/p>\n
Limerick look rejuvenated after their shocking no-show in last year’s quarters. Aidan O’Connor has gone from bench dweller to heavy scorer. Shane O’Brien is emphatically one of the most dangerous inside forwards in the game, however he is listed among the subs today, with Peter Casey at corner forward. Cian Lynch moves into centre-forward as Darragh O’Donovan is named to start at midfield.<\/p>\n
Adam English, an unused sub in 2023, is now one of the most influential players in the engine room, as is Cathal O’Neill at wing-forward, whose only final appearance was as a sub in ’23.<\/p>\n
![\"24](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/00247864-614.jpg\"\/)
\nAdam English has been a key figure in the Limerick engine room<\/p>\n
There was a slight air of foreboding when Cian Lynch and Aaron Gillane were both absent, through suspension and injury, for the crucial Clare game in Ennis. Their loss against Cork had been their fourth championship defeat on the bounce, albeit one of them was a dead rubber and another came after a penalty shootout.<\/p>\n
They ended that afternoon with their All-Ireland credentials further enhanced, brutalising Clare both physically and on the scoreboard. Always tactically astute, they pulled the Clare defence out of shape at will, drawing them out and exploiting the space in behind.<\/p>\n
By the end, practically every sub was getting on the scoreboard within 30 seconds of rolling off the bench.<\/p>\n
In the Kiely era, Limerick have won 15 of 16 major finals, with the only loss coming after last season’s shootout.<\/p>\n
They have lost their last two away games against Cork, though the defeat in April is caveated slightly by the Lynch red card. Prior to that, Limerick had mostly held the upper hand and looked to be in danger of overwhelming the hosts in a whirlwind first quarter.<\/p>\n
Cork have developed a more dogged winning habit under O’Connor, though the absence of Fitzgibbon potentially tips this one in Limerick’s direction. Either way, it’s likely to be yet another staging post, albeit a significant one, ahead of further battles.<\/p>\n
Watch Cork v Limerick in the Munster Hurling Championship final today from 1.15pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app and listen to Sunday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 GAA Podcast on the RT\u00c9 Radio Player<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>, and email us at sportpodcasts@rte.ie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first Munster hurling final at the new P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh provides us with the same match-up as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-487337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}