18 hours Ago By [email protected] (Pat Nolan)
The five-in-a-row remains elusive in hurling as Limerick finally relinquished their grip on the Liam MacCarthy Cup this year. And while they will still be a force to be reckoned with in 2025 and may well win multiple All-Irelands in the near future, it’s safe to say that such a history-making opportunity will not come the way of this particular group of players again. They still created history by winning a sixth successive Munster title but, in a strange season, they lost to Cork twice, who lost to Clare twice, who Limerick beat twice.
Read more: Who'll be in charge in 2025? We examine the managerial state of play in Ulster Read more: GAA stars to watch: Six Ulster Club heroes who could make an impact on the county scene in 2025 It underlines just how competitive it is between the cream of Munster, but Leinster continues to flag with no player from the province or Galway included in the All Star team, which was made up entirely of Clare, Limerick and Cork players. Galway and Tipperary dipped this year and while Waterford improved, they still couldn’t break out of the Munster group for the first time. Carlow scored a notable draw against Kilkenny in the Leinster Championship but it wasn’t enough to avoid immediate relegation to the Joe McDonagh Cup.
An emerging Offaly team will replace them in the top tier 2025. 1 Clare (3 last year) Having built steadily, albeit not spectacularly, for four years under Brian Lohan, Clare finally put some silverware on the sideboard this year, firstly with a breakthrough League title and then that elusive All-Ireland, having finally rediscovered winning ways in Croke Park. There is something of an oddity about their success however, in that while they deservedly beat Cork twice, they lost twice to Limerick and, indeed, were a distant second best to them in the Munster final.
So it’s difficult to make a compelling argument as to whether they would have beaten them in the All-Ireland final if John Kiely’s side had come through, with Clare having only won one of the previous eight Championship meetings. But that’s all conjecture. Clare came through the games that they had to in order to win the All-Ireland and showed a level of resilience and maturity that wasn’t apparent in previous seasons.
And settling a score with Limerick will give them an edge going in as champions next year as they bid to put All-Irelands back-to-back for the first time. It appears as though all of their frontline players are back on board for 2025 and, although key men like John Conlon, Shane O’Donnell and Tony Kelly are on the wrong side of 30, their age profile is reasonably healthy with some good underage talent coming through. 2 Cork (6) Nobody could have quibbled with the prevailing narrative in recent years that the team that stops Limerick would win the All-Ireland.
Cork, to their credit, beat the champions twice but still ended the year empty-handed. Their semi-final win gave them huge momentum going into the final, which they surfed early on to build a decent lead. But the game was largely played on Clare’s terms from around the 20-minute mark on, even if Cork battled manfully right to the very end and wouldn’t have been flattered by a replay after extra time.
Pat Ryan said when he came into the job in 2022 that his reign would be a failure if he didn’t deliver an All-Ireland in his three years. Despite the undoubted progress that the team has made under him, that puts pressure on Ryan going into the final year of his current term. A Cork All-Ireland seems inevitable in the not too distant future but you’d have to wonder if they’ll get a better chance in 2025 than they had in 2024.
3 Limerick (1) It would be foolish to jump to conclusions about the end of an era with Limerick after they lost a knockout Championship game for the first time since 2019. Indeed, they were beaten twice in this year’s Championship, by Cork on both occasions, and they might well have won either or both of those games. Injuries to key players were a feature of Limerick’s four-in-a-row run, something that they managed to cope with if not make light of.
But it was always likely that they’d catch up on them at some stage and in a tight semi-final, would Barry Nash, Darragh O’Donovan and/or Peter Casey have been the difference? Quite possibly. They’ve already suffered a potentially crippling blow ahead of the 2025 season with goalkeeper Nickie Quaid ruled out having suffered a cruciate ligament rupture. Some of the aura has been stripped from Limerick now and they may be in the early stages of decline.
But it’s still hard to argue with their current status as favourites for the 2025 All-Ireland. 4 Kilkenny (2) After the most successful era in their, and indeed the game’s, history as they won 11 All-Irelands in 16 seasons, Kilkenny are now on the brink of their most barren spell ever. Already, by failing to win this year’s All-Ireland, it means that their longest gap between All-Irelands has now been equalled (1947-57) and they’ll set a new mark if they don’t reclaim the Liam MacCarthy Cup in 2025.
They’ve dominated Leinster in recent years and will be favourites to make it six-in-a-row in the province, but it’s hard to build a compelling case around them beating two Munster teams at the back end of the Championship just now. For all that, they won’t be too far away either. 5 Waterford (7) Got so much right in their first three Championship games but three match points was a poor return for that.
Coughing up 1-1 in injury time to draw with Tipperary was extremely damaging, though they were still most unfortunate to emerge from Ennis with nothing before hitting the wall against Limerick. After some discontent locally earlier in the season, it was surprising that Davy Fitzgerald opted to stand down after drawing out encouraging performances, but he’s since been replaced by his right-hand man Peter Queally. Waterford can certainly be competitive again next season but Munster is so competitive and they seem to lack fresh blood.
6 Dublin (8) All things being equal, are Dublin the sixth best team in the country? Almost certainly not, as there are up to three teams below them here that, if they had their house in order, would start as favourites to beat them. The only county in Leinster to beat them in this year’s Championship was Kilkenny, though the nature of that defeat raised fresh doubts about Dublin’s ability to seriously challenge for top honours. They’ve lost key man Eoghan O’Donnell to the footballers while Niall Ó Ceallacháin succeeds Micheál Donoghue on the back of a great run with Na Fianna, but Dublin have effectively flatlined over the last decade and it’s likely to be more of the same in 2025.
7 Wexford (9) Keith Rossiter got a sweeter tune out of them in his first year at the helm, but old failings were still apparent. They produced big performances when they were most needed but the fact that they had to be summoned so early in the campaign underlines why Wexford have failed to push on from the breakthrough 2019 season. And given the age profile of their key players, it’s almost certainly too late now.
Another quarter-final in 2025 is probably their glass ceiling. 8 Galway (4) The reign of Henry Shefflin promised much but petered out disappointingly in the end. Given the level that Limerick have been at, winning an All-Ireland was always going to be a tall order but failing to win a Leinster title in an era where Kilkenny are well short of the standards set in his own playing days was the most critical failure, while this year they couldn’t even emerge from the group.
Micheál Donoghue, who was partly responsible for that as Dublin manager, has returned and is in a position to make gains in Leinster that will be far more difficult for the likes of Waterford and Tipperary in Munster. 9 Tipperary (5) Having ticked most of the boxes in his first season at the helm, Tipperary fell back badly under Liam Cahill and 2025 will be a make or break year for him and his management team. Losing their final round robin game to already-eliminated Waterford in 2023 when a Munster final spot was at their mercy was a blow from which they have failed to recover, winning only one of six Championship games since, a preliminary quarter-final against a then tier two Offaly.
Some long-serving stalwarts have stepped aside and Tipp will have it all to do to break into the top three in Munster in 2025. 10 Antrim (10) Beating Wexford this year marked Antrim’s most significant win since the shock victory over Dublin in 2010 and put them in with a shot of a top three finish but their tendency to implode manifested again as they were well beaten by Dublin in the crunch game at Parnell Park. The arrival of Davy Fitzgerald as manager will fuel optimism in the county that they can develop greater consistency and Fitzgerald has already identified making them more competitive on the road as a priority.
If he can guide Antrim into the knockout stages of the Championship, it will rival any of his managerial achievements - but the threat is relegation is also very real. 11 Offaly (13) Offaly hurling continues on an upward trajectory, with 2024 their most successful year since their last All-Ireland in 1998 as they finally emerged from the Joe McDonagh Cup, six years after they were relegated from the top tier, as well as claiming the under-20 All-Ireland on a glorious evening against Tippeary at Nowlan Park last June. Most of that side are eligible for the under-20 grade again in 2025 though senior manager Johnny Kelly has already spoken of the need to prioritise consolidation in the Leinster Championship ahead of chasing more underage titles.
It will take a while for their emerging talent to truly blossom at senior level, and there is low-hanging fruit in Leinster for them to potentially pick off, but they must hang in in the Liam MacCarthy Cup in the meantime. 12 Carlow (12) Drawing with Kilkenny was a hugely noteworthy result for Carlow but it was all they could muster from a Leinster Championship campaign that ultimately resulted in immediate relegation to the Joe McDonagh Cup following a final day loss to Antrim. They last time they made the drop it took them four years to win promotion and manager Tom Mullally has a sizeable task on his hands to rejuvenate them in the coming season.
13 Laois (-) Put themselves in a position to win the Joe McDonagh Cup but Offaly edged them out in the end, with manager Willie Maher departing soon after. His successor Darren Gleeson had to quickly vacate the role due to illness and Tommy Fitzgerald has now taken the reins at short notice. With some replenishment required in a squad that is ageing in places, perhaps the Joe McDonagh Cup is the best environment for Fitzgerald to go about his work in 2025.
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