BEFORE I go into the match analysis, I want to comment on the admission price to get into Semple Stadium yesterday — €20.
THIS was a day that highlighted the beauty of the club championship.
This was the first time in my long association with the Irish Examiner I had predicted a draw in a game, and, for a while, as the game was coming to a conclusion, it was beginning to look like I might be proved right.
THE greatest sign of any game is when you see people hanging around long after the final whistle, talking about what they had just witnessed.
I HEARD a conversation in Croke Park yesterday between a Dublin fan and a Kilkenny man.
APART from being close friends, Anthony Daly and Davy Fitzgerald have much in common this weekend. Both are managing teams (Dublin and Waterford respectively) attempting to get their championship challenge back on track after heavy defeats in their respective provincial finals.
WITH two crucial games in the qualifiers this evening and the Leinster final tomorrow, it has the makings of a great weekend for hurling.
BEFORE the game in Tullamore I met Michael Daly, Anthony’s brother, and he had the typical Daly confident smile.
WE have three hurling games this weekend with Cork, Laois, Dublin, Galway, Tipperary and Clare in championship action.
A FEW weeks ago we had the US president here, Barack Obama, and he left us with a new catch-cry — Is Féidir Linn.
Tony Considine analyses the Cork lineup ahead of tomorrow’s Munster SHC showdown with Tipperary
I HEARD a lot of complaints in recent weeks from Clare and Limerick about being in Division 2; on the basis of what I saw in Ennis on Saturday, both counties were where they deserved to be this year.
FROM Biddy Early to Biddy Mulligan — this is a story of Dublin but it’s also a story of Anthony Daly.
EVERYONE in hurling, no matter what county you follow, must congratulate Dublin’s hurlers on reaching their first league final since 1946.
FOR the thousands who went to Galway yesterday in hopes of a hurling contest there was one consolation – it was a beautiful day in scenic Salthill.
BEFORE I say anything about the games yesterday, I want to pay tribute to a great Kilkenny hurling man, from a great Kilkenny hurling family –Eamon Hennessey.
APART from the two teams — Wexford and Offaly — in the relegation battle this Sunday in Division 1, which itself is a huge game for both counties, every other team has a chance of making the league final.
I DON’T think I have ever seen a Kilkenny team go 2-3 to no score ahead, after less than four minutes, and lose the game.
THERE’S a day in golf, the third day, that they call ‘moving day’, fellas getting into position for the final push on the last day; this is ‘moving weekend’ in the Allianz Hurling League.
I’D like to start by going back to Saturday, andnot to the inter-county scene either.
I WAS left disappointed by the glamour games in the top two visions on the opening weekend of the Allianz Hurling League.
I AM probably an exception to the rule but I’m not a lover of hurling under lights.
AFTER so many months of doom and gloom, of recession and depression, it is great to see the real hurling season starting again with the Allianz Hurling League this weekend.
WHAT a difference two weeks makes. A couple of Sundays ago, in the semi-final, the Tipperary champions put their bodies on the line, gave everything possible to get the win over Kilmallock, in Kilmallock.
THE most striking difference between Thurles Sars and De La Salle is the number of county titles won — Sars have 31 in Tipperary and are top of the class, De La Salle have only two in Waterford.
THERE were 21,110 people in Thurles on Saturday night for the All-Ireland U21 final and they came for a night of celebration.
THERE was a song sung by Tipperary substitute Pat Kerwick at the end of the game yesterday, The Galtee Mountain Boy – I think it was about the famous Tipperary revolutionary, Dan Breen.
TALKING to a very neutral individual early in the second half of this All-Ireland semi-final yesterday, at a time when Waterford were mounting a comeback, he said to me, “I hope this doesn’t last, because if it does we won’t have an All-Ireland final.”
DUE to circumstances beyond my control – and beyond my understanding, because why any hurling county would schedule its own championships on a day when the All-Ireland semi-final was taking place is baffling – I wasn’t in Croke Park yesterday.
IF people had believed what I wrote on Saturday we might have had a real crowd in Croke Park yesterday for the meeting of Tipperary and Galway, the kind of crowd a game like this deserved.
ANOTHER weekend of hurling, but with all due respect to Cork and Antrim, everyone is talking about Tipperary and Galway.
Munster SHC Final Replay
Cork v Waterford, Tonight 7pm (Thurles)
IT is unusual to have a Munster SHC hurling final replay at 7pm on a Saturday evening; it would have been much better surely to have played the game on a Sunday and at a prime time.
A FANTASTIC Munster hurling final on Sunday, and yet all the talk yesterday and today, and probably all this week, is about yet another terrible call by a referee.
The replay? I’m really looking forward to that, though I doubt we’ll see the same two starting line-ups the next day.
LAST weekend, and not for the first time this year, you’d have to say the football outshone the hurling, big-time – a bad Leinster final in Croke Park.
I started my hurling weekend in Semple Stadium on Saturday, and it was torture.
ONE thing Galway can’t complain about going into this Leinster final is a lack of games – in fact they have more big matches played than Kilkenny, three to one.
ANOTHER brilliant game, just as I had forecast, and I can’t understand how anyone could have expected otherwise.
FAIR play to both Offaly and Galway for producing the game of the championships in Croke Park last weekend.
IT’S funny the things you overhear at matches.
FOR the first time that I can recall, there’s been more talk this year about the Leinster hurling semi-finals than about Munster.
On the way into Semple Stadium yesterday I met three fine Waterford men, Tony Wright, Michael O’Donnell and a man with a great Clare name but who assured me he was all Waterford, Paddy McNamara.
AFTER all the excitement of last Sunday’s game between Cork and Tipperary – and fair dues to both teams for that – I’m beginning to wonder if there is any game at all on this weekend in Munster?
I was one of the many who would have liked to have seen one or two more changes to the Cork starting 15, but I did wonder if those players were out there, if Cork did in fact have anything better.
WHAT were the Leinster Council thinking when they fixed this game for 7pm on a Saturday evening in Kilkenny?
A FANTASTIC league final in Thurles yesterday, and great credit to the players on both teams for that, but the first people I want to talk about here are the Galway management team of John McIntyre, John Moylan, John Hardiman and Joe Connolly.
IT’S always been said that the National League is a secondary competition; well now we know that is true.
FOR the second year in a row we end up with a situation where the last round of the league is more or less meaningless, everything decided bar who is to be relegated.
I WAS in Páirc Uí Chaoim hearly for this match yester-day, and as the music played, a rich selection of Cork songs, the thought struck me – is this the only county in Ireland where the people are homesick even when they’re at home?
THE most significant thing for me about this year’s league is the high scoring.
THE two most important games this weekend, as far as the final stages of the league is concerned, are Kilkenny against Galway and Tipperary’s clash with Waterford.
THERE are a number of interesting games again this week. Offaly and Galway is a big one for both counties, Dublin and Kilkenny likewise, since both have lost twice; Tipp and Limerick is an interesting tie but only for the latter, and we all know why.
HOW did Portumna change so much from their last three appearances in Croke Park?
AT this time of year, most clubs in the country, whatever their grade, are in serious training for their upcoming county championships. But any of those worth their salt are also thinking of All-Ireland finals.
BEFORE I go into any preview of this weekend’s action, I’d like to get one thing off my chest. Why don’t the GAA return to the system where you had quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final, with the two top teams in Division Two brought in at quarter-final stage?
WHAT an outstanding advert for the National Hurling League this was.
I MET a few people on the way into the Gaelic Grounds on Saturday evening, mostly Limerick supporters, and I remarked that it was a pity all this trouble was happening.
Tony Considine (TC): “You two have both been involved with Clare teams at various levels over the years, how does this team compare with those?”
BEFORE I go into the match analysis, I’d like to compliment everyone involved in Semple Stadium for the state of the pitch yesterday.
IT was celebration time in the GAA on Sunday on the exact date of that famous meeting in Hayes Hotel in Thurles 125 years ago.
THE FIRST thing to say was how fantastic to see Plan B going up in lights at Croke Park again yesterday.
THERE have been three outstanding hurling games this year.
I WANT to compliment whoever made the following decisions at Croke Park yesterday: (1) the band playing the national anthem, the voices coming only from the crowd; (2) the common sense that prevailed at the end of the game, when the crowd broke the cordon on Hill 16 and the decision was made to move the presentation back to the Hogan Stand, thus allowing the Kilkenny supporters to do what has always been done traditionally on All-Ireland final day in Croke Park and mix with the players; (3) and this one is crucial – the appointment of Diarmuid Kirwan as referee.
AS usual before an All-Ireland final, I travelled to both competing counties this past week, to Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles and to the equally renowned Langton’s in Kilkenny.
IN these final few days before the All-Ireland decider, all the talk is about the players from both teams. Henry, Eoin Kelly, Eoin Larkin, Lar Corbett – these are the stars, these are the guys you pay to see, and the pressure is on them to produce.
JOHN F Kennedy produced a line for the ages in his inauguration speech as US President when he told his audience to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
AS I made my way from Croke Park yesterday I met a number of people, from different counties, and all were saying more or less the same thing – “shocking match, you won’t have much to write about.”
CROKE PARK yesterday was a marvellous place to be, two hugely entertaining hurling games and a fine football game between Meath and Mayo.
I’M DOWN in Cork for a few days this week, took in a game, a senior hurling relegation match between Midleton and Carrigtwohill. It was a replay, went to extra-time, and all I can say is this – if I see anything tomorrow in Croke Park like I saw in Castlemartyr, the quality of the hurling, the play, the players, I’ll be a happy man. I met a man on the way out, and typical Cork, he thinks I won’t — “Hey boy,” he said to me, “you won’t see anything like that on Sunday.”
IN all the years I’ve been doing this column, the one major disappointment for me is that I’ve never been in a position to analyse a big win for Clare.
I WAS down around the square in Thurles yesterday, and five or six Dublin lads passed me talking loudly.
GOING through the records, we have two very unusual situations tomorrow in Thurles, two games in which two teams have never beaten their opposition in championship – I’m talking about Galway and Dublin.
I WAS talking to four fairly shrewd Corkmen in the press box before throw-in against Galway on Saturday evening and asked them who they thought would win.
I’M going to start this analysis not with the senior final – by which I wasn’t at all impressed, and more on that later – but with the minor game.
BEFORE we get into the match analysis, I thought it was nice light touch by the announcer at the end of proceedings in Croke Park yesterday, when he thanked the Kilkenny supporters for staying off the pitch.
THE TWO games I saw this weekend – Tullamore on Saturday and Tipperary against Clare in Limerick yesterday – have restored my faith in hurling.
COMING into Tullamore on Saturday, you knew something special was going to happen; there was magic in the air.
BEFORE we get into any details, I want to address something here in general terms, namely the lack of buzz around the championship this year.
OVER the last few months I feel there’s been a lot of begrudgery directed towards this Kilkenny team and their fantastic achievements, growing criticism over their style of play and so on.
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