Club Championships 2023/24

Is anyone seeing anything other than Ballygunner and O'Laughlin's making the hurling final?

I think Cushendall have a fighting chance to make it to the final, but Ballygunner's name is on it this year again.

Ballygunner to win it outright for me. They would be competitive at Inter county level their that good.

Clubs are obviously the pick of a local community playing against the pick of another local community. A county team should be the best from all the clubs. Limerick started the AI Final with 10 clubs represented, plus 5 more in the subs.

Some game here.

Absolute classic. Such a pity to finish it on penos here.

Marvellous entertainment. Two great teams.

Advantage BG in penos with goalkeeper.

Congrats to St Thomas. I didn't think they could beat them.

Watched a lot of sport today…..that game bet them all…….

One of the classics. Thomas’s are a remarkable club - less than 300 houses in the club area.

Sometimes things don't go as to plan.

Ref was dreadful. Let everything go early doors and then gave Thomas's some very soft frees late on. I've never seen so many rucks in a game that I can remember. BG really have underachieved for all their talent. Their obsession with the short game is mind boggling at times. They pass the ball to a colleague in a worse position than they are. Brain dead stuff. I'm afraid they've paid the price again. Well done to Thomas's. Hope they win it now.

In fairness the GAA are damned either way, they brought in penalties to deal with fixture congestion from replays, but also there was always this suspicion that refs were engineering draws to force replays for extra pay days for the association. So when they bring in something that allows you to settle the result on the day then everyone's up in arms about that.

Would agree totally with this. Ref let Thomas’s away with an awful lot I thought for the first 55 minutes and then towards the end every time BG got in front he seemed to give Thomas’s a soft free to level it up.

Also agree that Ballygunner were over playing the short game. They got turned over a lot due to this and especially given the ferocity Thomas’s were tackling with (much of it very borderline I thought) it made BGs obsession with playing short passes all the more dangerous.

Also given how dangerous Dessie Hutchinson is I think they’d be better to go direct to him more often. They got plenty of good ball into him to be fair but a guy like that should be constantly fed for the full hour. Also if they went long to him more often it would force the opposition to probably sit a little deeper which would then give them more space for their shorter game to thrive anyway.

Id agree. Like others I thought the ref got very fussy towards the latter stages of the game and free taking became huge.

But most of the time he was technically correct for hands left in, or high hands and BG really didnt help themselves with some silly unnecessary fouls against a Thomas that really didnt have the same scoring power.

Some heart from them in the 2nd half of ET alright. Looked all over with BG taking 2 point lead and the wind.

Once again Ballygunner miss out at the final stages having walked through Munster. Through their Munster campaign great praise was heaped on the team and management. Nobody seemed to have a problem with their style of play or with management's tactics. In fact it was suggested that this team could take on intercounty teams! That the management team should be long offered the county job!

And then up pops a non Munster team and bang, Ballygunner are gone and suddenly all the flaws are rolled out.

Well done St. Thomas.