Of course, we wouldn’t dream of attributing luck to the penalty finish of Patrick Horgan. Cork’s season on the line, Horgan’s strike was confident and pure.

The strike delivered Cork a first championship win in six and only the second of Ryan’s tenure.

“Sure look, I am sick of coming into ye here and talking about hollow victories and not being able to get over the line,” said the Cork manager.

“We have had a lot of those games over the last two years. It showed great heart from ourselves to get over the line against an absolute savage team that never says die.

“We got a bit of luck today that got us over the line that we haven't got in the past.” 

As the thousands out on the field continued to pipe red smoke into the night sky, Ryan had already moved on and up the road to Thurles.

“It matters nought if we don't get some sort of a result against Tipp,” he declared.

Victory here saved their season. Victory next Sunday in Thurles can extend their season, give or take a favourable result elsewhere.

“It took a herculean effort from our fellas to get over the line. That will give us great confidence going forward. But waste of time beating Limerick here today and not being able to win next weekend. [A win] might not even get us through then, but look we need victories and that was a vital victory today for us.” 

The victory had so much to do with Patrick Collins. The same Patrick Collins that was reddened publicly in the aftermath of the Clare defeat.

2-7 was the total Clare mined from his puckouts two weeks ago. Here, Cork had 2-6 fashioned off their own restart by half-time. As the thousands streamed through all available gates little under an hour later, that figure had risen to 3-12, including the last long puckout towards Shane Kingston. And we all know how spectacularly that ended.

Ryan addressed the commentary regarding Collins and his puckouts post-Clare. There was no change in strategy because there didn’t need to be.

“I think if fellas actually analyse the puckouts properly, Patrick was absolutely excellent in the first part of the game against Clare. But if you are down to 14 men, it gives you a fierce hard thing to get your puckouts off. Fellas push up on you, they play with a spare man. If you looked at our puckouts in the Clare game for the first 50 minutes, they were superb.

“Patrick showed great bottle today. In fairness, puckouts is a team thing, it is not just goalkeepers. You are trying to push balls into tight areas against big men. He was fantastic today. Delighted with that. Tipp is going to be another day. He has to be good again.” 

Not to present only one side of the story, it can’t be overlooked that two short restarts to Seán O’Donoghue ended in two Seamus Flanagan goals. The second brought the champions within three on 52 minutes. The champions subsequently surged four clear. Ryan knew the surge would come.

“Against these teams, you are not going to dominate for 70 minutes. Our problem all along is that we are probably going out of the game too much. We had a good head start. Limerick went up by two points max in the second half. We managed to keep that to that, and then they went up four. But we got the scores back.

“Our subs gave us great legs when they came on, kept driving on, kept driving on, and created the scores. We got a bit of luck, we were probably due that.” 

The manager clarified that it was Eoin Downey’s yellow card that prompted his withdrawal after only 22 minutes. Management were not willing to risk a potential third full-back line member being dismissed in as many matches.

“Devastated for Eoin. He was devastated himself. But look, we have been down to 14 men twice inside in the full-back line, you just can't take that chance. A young man that's making his way. That was tough for him. But it was the best thing for the team.” 

The team are still alive in this glorious Munster championship.