We sometimes stand accused of using over­blown lan­guage to describe what is a pas­time.

Sport isn’t a mat­ter of life and death. The alleg­a­tion can seem reduct­ive at times. But in other con­texts, the only pos­sible plea is guilty. To describe a hurl­ing final as a battle, or to por­tray two teams going to war, is espe­cially over­wrought when actual war has inter­vened in the play­ing of a hurl­ing final.

The 1923 All-Ireland final between Gal­way and Lim­er­ick was the first of three pre­vi­ous meet­ings between Sunday’s com­batants (see, there we go again). That final wasn’t played until Septem­ber 1924 on account of the Civil War. It was due to be played in June of ’24, but the Lim­er­ick play­ers refused to ful­fil the fix­ture.

They were protest­ing the ongo­ing intern­ment of anti-Treaty IRA mem­bers, a pun­gent reminder that sport and polit­ics have been mix­ing in this coun­try for many gen­er­a­tions.

The dis­rup­tion to the run­ning of the GAA provides a use­ful, highly loc­al­ised example of how the Civil War dis­rup­ted every­day life: Lim­er­ick had won the 1921 All-Ire­land and became the first team to be awar­ded the Mac­Carthy Cup — but the final was played in March 1923.

When the 1923 final was even­tu­ally played, The Tribesmen won on a 7-3 to 4-5 sco­reline, record­ing the first of their five All-Ire­land vic­tor­ies.

The other two final meet­ings between them and Lim­er­ick were much less con­vuls­ive but were enorm­ously sig­ni­fic­ant within sport­ing para­met­ers. Gal­way would wait 57 years for a second All-Ire­land title, and it arrived on a fam­ous Septem­ber day in 1980 against a fan­cied Treaty team.

Lim­er­ick were an exper­i­enced group, with a hand­ful of sur­viv­ors from the side that had won the 1973 All-Ire­land. But their status as favour­ites was also a res­ult of the record that clanked behind Gal­way into that decider.

They had lost nine finals since the win in 1923, the most recent com­ing in 1979. Before there was Mayo foot­ball as a sor­row­ful saga of want and unful­filled expect­a­tions, there was Gal­way hurl­ing.

That is what made the break­through on that soft day in early autumn so mem­or­able — that, and the tre­mend­ous scenes on the steps of the Hogan Stand. The Tribesmen were cap­tained by the mighty Joe Con­nolly, just 24 but asked to cap­tain the side by Cyril Far­rell, who was wowed by his lead­er­ship.

The rest of the coun­try and the wider world got a fair idea of what had impressed Far­rell when Con­nolly took the micro­phone for his accept­ance speech. He delivered it almost entirely in Irish, his first lan­guage, an emo­tional ode to his county and the Gal­way dia­spora scattered across the world.

In con­clu­sion, he declared, para­phras­ing a fam­ous line delivered by Pope John Paul II on his visit to Ire­land a year earlier, ‘People of Gal­way, we love you!’

The day con­cluded on a note of almost per­fect poignancy with the late Joe McDon­agh, a mem­ber of the panel, deliv­er­ing a verse of The West’s Awake.

Con­nolly remains a remark­able man, one of the out­stand­ing fig­ures in GAA his­tory, and his memor­ies of the day delivered 40 years on were almost as stir­ring as the events them­selves. ‘There was a bit of the risen people about it,’ he told GAA.ie in 2020.

‘I always think of Gal­way in rela­tion to that. The way that a people, who had been defeated dec­ade after dec­ade with extraordin­ary hard luck stor­ies through a lot of the 1940s and 1950s espe­cially, that finally our day had come.

‘It was com­pletely about win­ning an All-Ire­land and fin­ish­ing the fam­ine.’ And the fam­ine was defin­it­ively over: Gal­way would con­test a fur­ther five finals in the 1980s, win­ning two more. They became one of the stor­ies of the dec­ade, not just in sport but in what they rep­res­en­ted in a coun­try riven by emig­ra­tion.

Gerry McIn­er­ney would fam­ously return from work­ing in the US to star in Croke Park, wear­ing white boots that were like a state­ment from another galaxy. ‘It still res­on­ates, abso­lutely, being of the west,’ said Con­nolly all those dec­ades on, ‘basic­ally and utterly in what we’re about.

‘Being the men of the west, I think we are unique that we are the only county in Con­nacht that can take on the oth­ers and I think it’s a huge thing.’

They con­tinue to carry the hurl­ing fire west of the Shan­non, and in 2017 they ended a 29-year wait with the county’s fifth win. But a year later it was their turn to come out the wrong side of a decider laden with his­toric sig­ni­fic­ance.

The Connacht side were defend­ing their title, and it was Lim­er­ick wad­ing through the tides of his­tory.

John Kiely was in his second sea­son and the tim­ing of a driven man­ager, a bril­liant coach in Paul Kin­nerk and an uncom­monly tal­en­ted gen­er­a­tion of play­ers com­ing together prom­ised to bear the richest fruit.

And with three minutes remain­ing in that final, they looked good to deliver it. They led by eight points after sur­viv­ing a scare at the start of the fourth quarter, and when Shane Dowl­ing scored Lim­er­ick’s third goal in the 68th minute, the game looked done. Then came a rapid response from a des­per­ate Gal­way, with Conor Whelan get­ting their first goal of the match a minute into time added on.

After Nickie Quaid fouled the ball on the ground, Joe Can­ning stood over a free and des­pite five Treaty men on the line, he whizzed the slio­thar into the roof of the net from just out­side the 20m line.

The gap was down to two as the clock ran into its 75th minute; eight addi­tional minutes had been sig­nalled. Niall Burke and Graeme Mul­cahy swopped points before Can­ning landed a 65.

The umpire waved the flag and the clock read 78.08. There was time for one more play, and when des­per­ate Lim­er­ick defence gave up a foul just out­side the 45, Can­ning addressed the ball.

He had a free to tie the game, but his shot from over 80 metres fell short of the tar­get. Lim­er­ick cleared the danger, the last whistle soun­ded and it her­al­ded the start of an empire.

The county have won four since, that bril­liant run of con­sec­ut­ive vic­tor­ies between 2020 and 2023. They couldn’t man­age hurl­ing’s unat­tain­able dream of five on the trot, and they come to Croke Park on Sunday much nearer the end than the begin­ning.

It’s that belief that this is their last hur­rah that makes many con­vinced they will not be denied in this final. Win and they deepen their legend. A Gal­way vic­tory will con­firm another emo­tional tri­umph for the men of the west.

This is a fix­ture steeped in his­tor­ical import­ance. That com­pel­ling tra­di­tion is sure to be main­tained.