It started with the parade. Now, when you’re watching great teams ascend to an ever-higher plane, the temptation is to invest innocent moments with more weight than they deserve. Call it the set-dancing fallacy – Tomás Ó Sé said one time about northern teams that if people heard they did set-dancing before training, everyone would assume they should be set-dancing too. So let’s be careful here. To be clear, the parade had no bearing on anything. Not on the game, on the result, on the margin of victory, none of that. Not on the six All-Irelands in eight years, or the way Limerick people walk a little taller today and every day they’re around this team. The parade didn’t win Liam MacCarthy, nor anything like it. But all the same, there was a small thing to see as the two teams walked around after the Artane Band. On a sweltering afternoon, when pitch temperatures pinged up to hit the mid-20s and the crowds in the Cusack Stand had to shield their eyes with their match programmes, Limerick had four of their backroom staff on the pitch during the parade. They had a cooler box on 65 towards the Davin End and for the few minutes it took to see the two teams around the circumference of the pitch, the Limerick backroom staff were taking bottles and quietly shadowing their players, ready with a drink for anyone who wanted it. When the teams broke, all but one of them cleared the field for the anthem. But the one who stayed lined up alongside the players with the cooler box beside her and only gathered it up to go when the crowd was roaring and the last notes of Amhrán na bhFiann were tailing off. She was the last non-player from either side on the pitch as referee Colm Lyons was preparing to throw in the ball.The Limerick and Galway teams parade behind the Artane Band ahead of the All-Ireland final. Photograph: Tom O’Hanlon/Inpho Again, let’s not make more of this than we need to. It’s not like Galway weren’t hydrating their players at the same time – they were handing in bottles from their hurley carriers stationed along both sidelines. But there was something about Limerick taking ownership of the pitch at that moment, something even in the way the players’ helmets were lined up perfectly in a row beside the cooler box, something about the whole scene just exuded the champions’ general excellence.This was no stone-unturned, turned up to 11. Somewhere along the way, someone in the Limerick set-up had war-gamed the parade in event of a hot day. Four people were assigned to the task, one of them told to stay on the pitch until the very last second possible before the whistle was blown. Maybe it will be the new set-dancing.“There is no day that you are going to get anything easy,” said Limerick manager John Kiely afterwards. “That might have shown a margin of difference between the two teams, but it was one we earned through sheer application and quality in what we did. It wasn’t anything to do with Galway.”It wasn’t anything to do with Galway. Limerick may as well write it on the side of their team bus. When they’ve been in their pomp throughout this incredible era, very few of their victories had anything to do with the opposition. Waterford in 2020, Cork in ’21, Kilkenny in ’23, Galway here – the colours change but the song remains the same. Limerick in this mood are curtailed only by the limits of their own agenda. “For the players, they have worked tirelessly since the 15th of November last, when we got together,” said Kiely. “There has never been an occasion where I was unhappy with the level of application in training. It has been incessant. “We took five days off over Christmas and, outside of that, I don’t think we took anything more than two or three days at a time when we took a break. And they were after huge efforts, maybe in a Munster championship match or a Munster final – those type of situations.“So they have been relentless in their application and their work ... There is an incredible sense of unity and togetherness within the group. An indomitable one, I would have described it as, to be quite honest with you.”Limerick manager John Kiely with his wife Louise after the game. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho We don’t know if it’s the last tango. Kiely wouldn’t be drawn on whether he’ll be back next year, but he did reference a meeting in 2015 when he had some of these players as under-21s, a reminder that they’ve been on the road together a long, long time. There are more young kids being lifted out of the stands and on to the pitch after these finals now. A few of these players will remember 2026 as the year they got married, as well as winning their sixth All-Ireland. Life is going to come for them all pretty soon.So if this does turn out to be the last time the core group of Limerick’s greatest team punch their clock, they go out knowing they honoured their own sense of who they are. Kiely made sure to reference Caroline Currid and Adrian O’Brien and the S&C team and the medical team and all the other backroom folk who threw into the pot as well. In the end though, he came back to the men in the arena, the tip of the spear. All the work and planning and war-gaming goes into giving them the canvas. But nobody can paint like they do. Otherwise, everyone would.“Most of all, to the players,” said Kiely. “The manner in which they tackled every obstacle that has come in front of them this year. The calmness, the composure, the execution, the change in application from game to game In terms of the tactical approach. The energy that they’ve shown. “And, like, we weren’t accurate all the time – 52 per cent in the All-Ireland semi-final, and we still managed to find a way of creating an opportunity. The contribution of the overall group has been just massive.”