Hegarty in the form of his career

IT’S on the back of a Player of the Match performance against Clare that Gearóid Hegarty will run onto the dance floor of Croke Park for Sunday’s All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship showdown with Galway. The St Patrick’s veteran was awesome a fortnight ago, and he typified the amazing character of this remarkable Limerick side, one which looked like a beaten docket in the closing quarter. “Well, if you’ve asked me that 10 minutes ago I don’t know what I’d have said to you,” he acknowledged. “That’s the beauty of sport, was it two points in it in the end? It could have easily been the other way, and there would have been a lot of different talk about this Limerick team. “So look, we’re back in the final, and it’s a huge, huge honour for us to be back in the final. We’re looking forward to it, I can’t wait.” Ironically, it was in football that Hegarty made his inter-county senior debut. On the hurling front, the four-time All-Star has represented his county in 115 competitive fixtures, and his medal haul is spread across All-Ireland (5), Munster (7), and League (4) platforms. Teacher Hegarty’s first outing to Croke Park was as a toddler in the arms of his Offaly mother, Majella, to watch dad, Ger, line out with Limerick in the 1994 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final against the Faithful County. Other current father-and-son links to that enjoyable spell in the ‘90s include Mike/Barry Nash, Tommy/Nickie Quaid and Seán/Brian Finn. 2026 marks the 140th anniversary of the founding of St Patrick’s, a club based around Rhebogue and who provided Limerick’s 1958 All-Ireland winning minor captain Paddy Cobbe, whose brother Vivian, John McDonogh and Paddy Cunneen were other notable past county representatives. The post Hegarty in the form of his career appeared first on Limerick Post.