McCarthy rates Moran as doubtful for Tipperary clash

LIMERICK senior hurling manager Justin McCarthy rates Ahane’s Niall Moran as “doubtful” for Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final clash with Tipperary in Croke Park.
The Ahane attacked suffered a broken finger earlier this summer and it is not clear whether Moran will recover in time for this Sunday’s game.
The Limerick team will be named after training tonight.


Justin McCarthy is eagerly looking forward to the game and told Leader Sport last evening that “we are expecting a tremendous challenge from Tipperary.
“We know that they are one of the best teams in the country and we realise that we will have to be at our very best to keep up with them.
“We’re looking forward to the game. Every weekend you get to play hurling is a great weekend.”
The bookies have made Tipperary, led by Liam Sheedy, hot favourites (1/5) to overcome Limerick.
Tipperary won a successive Munster hurling championship when they beat Waterford (4-14 to 2-16) on July 12 while the Premier County beat Cork in the first round (1-19 to 0-19) and Clare at the semi-final stage (3-18 to 1-22) in the Gaelic Grounds.
In three championship outings thus far Tipp have scored 8-51 and averaged an accumulation of 25 points per game and required just 12 points from placed balls in all - in five games Limerick have scored 4-76, but only average an accumulation of 17 points.
The Premier County have already beaten Cork by three points, Clare by two and Waterford by four.
In all three games however Tipperary have surrendered considerable leads and it’s a tempting to suggest that such a pattern will count against them at some stage. Against Cork Tipp only managed 0-5 in 33 minutes, against Clare they fired 0-3 in 22 minutes and against Waterford in the Munster final Liam Sheedy’s men scored just three points in 30 minutes.
Tipp and Limerick have clashed 64 times with Tipperary winning on 33 occasions, Limerick winning 21 times while these arch-rivals have fought to a stalemate ten times - in 16 of those 64 games a goal or less has separated the sides.
Tipperary and Limerick last met when the sides clashed in the dramatic 2007 Munster hurling semi-final.
That three-game saga eventually saw Limerick victorious on the back of a three-point margin in the second replay hosted by the Gaelic Grounds.
That was the first time since 1926 that a Munster senior hurling championship game required three games to produce a winner.
In the most recent meeting between the sides, during the National Hurling League on April 19 last, Limerick suffered a six-point defeat (1-17 to 1-11) in Thurles.
The last competitive meeting between Tipperary and Limerick at Croke Park took place on April 25, 1971 when the Shannonsiders won a league play-off (2-15 to 1-15) and subsequently beat Tipp by a point in the league final in Cork on May 23. The teams had also met in a round-robin match earlier in that campaign, a game which Limerick also won by 0-13 to 1-8.
Tipperary will announce their starting team this Thursday, August 13.

Brian McDonnell