Morrissey: We have regrets but it’s the same as any loss
Dan Morrissey hasn’t missed an All-Ireland since 1999. He was six then, when his Dad, Donal, brought him to Croke Park for the first time for hurling’s biggest feast day.
Cork and Kilkenny. Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s young and thrusting team announcing themselves on a scoreline smuggled from hurling’s stone age: 0-13 to 0-12. It became a tradition.
By the end of last year, he had been at 28 finals in a row – including replays. The only asterisks being that Morrissey played, and won, in five of those.
So the question after Cork beat Limerick in this year’s All-Ireland semi-final, to end their five-in-a-row odyssey, was whether he had the stomach to make it 29.
“I was humming and hawing whether I would go to the final,” Morrissey admits now. “I just said I wanted to keep that record going. Especially the fact that 2020 was behind closed doors so there are very few people who could have said they were here in 2020.
Intensity
“I’d say I’m one of the few people in the country who have been to .... I think this was my 25th or 26th in a row, plus replays, so probably been to around 29 hurling All-Irelands in a row.”
An enjoyable afternoon? Or one watched like a jilted lover at a wedding?
“Look, it was a great game as a neutral. The scores, the intensity, the free-flowing nature of the game was brilliant to watch. Fair play to Clare.”
Fair play to Clare. These are not words that come out easily in Limerick. It’s not just proximity or historic rivalry either.
When you beat a team twice in a championship, by three points in Ennis and six in Thurles in the Munster final, you might retain some right to feel a sense of missed opportunity when they go and win the All-Ireland.
“It was and it wasn’t. Between the top five or six teams, there’s very little between them,” Morrissey stresses. “I know we’ve probably been on top for a few years, but at the same time some of the games we’ve played have been very, very close.
“It’s a game of such small margins. With the new structure, how many games did Clare play this year? Eight games to win an All-Ireland, whereas Kilkenny even in their prime in the 2000s were maybe only playing four. To play eight games at a consistent level is very hard.
“There are going to be dips. Clare maybe had a bit of a dip against us in the Munster final so it’s really just about timing your run, I suppose. The way Munster is so competitive, you just want to get out of Munster and hopefully your peak performances come then in the Munster final and All-Ireland stages.”
Morrissey is 31. Such was his own form in 2024, and the residual strength of the Limerick squad, it’s a brave hurling analyst who predicts he is done winning All-Irelands.
But there’s no way around or through it. Limerick’s shot at five-in-a-row, the achievement that would have put undeniable separation between them and every other hurling team in history, went up in smoke on that firecracker day they lost to Cork.
“You’d always have some regrets,” he stresses. “No matter what year you lose or you don’t win an All-Ireland you’re going to have some regrets. We still look back to 2019 with regrets.
“You’d always have regrets that we didn’t win this year. Just because it was a five-in-a-row… the regret isn’t because we didn’t win a five-in-a-row, it’s because we didn’t win an All-Ireland. You want to win an All-Ireland every year, whether it’s going for one in a row, three in a row, or five in a row.
“I didn’t think the five-in-a-row got to us in any way. We did approach every game as it came. We never looked too far ahead or too far down the road. We have regrets but it’s the same any year.
“Only one team can win it at the end of the year. There’s going to be seven, eight, nine other teams who are going to go home disappointed.”