Anthony Daly: When hurling is this good, more is never enough
Stephen O'Keeffe claims a high ball above Ian Kenny and Ryan Taylor of Clare. Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo
Throughout Saturday afternoon, my phone nearly melted with messages, as it always does during hurling games.
The chats go into overdrive when the quality goes through the roof. And on days like Saturday, you’d nearly need a secretary to answer all the messages.
Alan Cawley, the former soccer player, is in one of those WhatsApp groups with us, alongside Hughie Hourigan from the Boars Head pub in Dublin, John Mullane, and a host of other characters. ‘Caw’ spent some time with Leeds United and Sheffield United before returning to the League of Ireland to play with UCD, Shelbourne, Longford Town, Waterford United, and Dundalk.
‘Caw’ might not have much experience of hurling but he fully understands elite sport. And he certainly appreciates the aesthetic qualities and rich beauty of the game. ‘In fairness to ye,’ he texted on Saturday evening ‘what a day for hurling.’
Earlier in the year, ‘Caw’ originally had a loose agreement with Mullane and myself to come to the Clare-Waterford Munster Round Robin championship game in Ennis in June. Mullane was going to travel from Waterford and I had planned to put the two lads up for the weekend. The new reality has deprived us all of those eternal summer Sundays but, while we still crave those days to return, hurling people everywhere are just so grateful for the breath-taking drama we were treated to on Saturday.
After missing out on so much during 2020, it’s almost painful to realise that we’re down to the last four already. The time is going faster now too, and that yearning to hang on to what we have for as long as we can, is increasing even more because the quality is rising with each passing week. You kind of want to press pause, but then you also want to fast-forward to the weekend. Because when hurling is this good, more is never enough.
In one of our podcasts a few weeks back, I expressed disappointment with the quality in the earlier provincial rounds. Ken Hogan countered by saying that the knockout element would completely change the tone and complexion of the championship, and Ken has certainly been proven right. The shadow boxing is over now. And the 2019 champions have already been counted out.
Despite all the epic rivalries we have now in the game, Galway-Tipperary proved again on Saturday that’s it’s nearly the ultimate heavyweight bout. It was another classic. The match had it all. Again.
I got my prediction wrong on Saturday but trying to select the winner of Galway and Tipp over the last five years has been like trying to predict what the government and NPHET will do next.
When Cathal Barrett was sent off, it looked like Galway would take over and win the match by three or four points. Tipp had experience of grinding it out from last year’s All-Ireland semi-final and, only for Aidan Harte’s goal, They might have toughed it out and defied the odds.
It was a great finish by Harte, down low and into the corner. You could see that he played in the forwards in the past but Harte has always been very flexible and a very effective player for Galway, especially as a sweeper.
Yet when Galway had the extra man, and Padraic Mannion was behind him as the sweeper, Harte and Galway were able to push forward and go after Tipp.
Cathal Mannion can’t have been far behind Harte in being selected for the man-of-the-match award because he was immense, especially when Galway’s need was greatest. We’ve seen great displays from Cathal in the past but he showed a level of leadership I hadn’t seen from him before, especially when Joe Canning wasn’t firing from open play early on. His goal was superb but Mannion’s form was laced with grit and genius.
There were some unbelievable battles all over the field, particularly the duels between Ronan Maher and Conor Whelan, and Dan McCormack and Joseph Cooney. With a sweeper behind him, Cooney was constantly bombing forward, but McCormack got on enough ball too, and did plenty of damage with that possession. That duel was nearly a metaphor for the match – nobody was taking a step backwards.
Tipp will have regrets. They coughed up some cheap scores. They conceded a couple of big frees when there was no need to lunge in, or put the hand on the back. The two Galway goals in the first half were a tad soft, when you consider how easily they breached the Tipp cover. Niall O’Meara plays centre-back for his club but he showed his defensive inexperience at this level with the way Cathal Mannion turned inside him for Galway’s second goal.
Tipp will be disappointed too by being on the wrong end of a couple of big marginal calls. I’m sure Richie Hogan might have had a wry smile after the events of last year’s All-Ireland final but I felt Cathal Barrett’s first yellow card was harmless. Maybe a high-behind camera angle might show otherwise but I couldn’t see how it was even a free.
Barrett does play on the edge, which is always a risk. I saw it with Ryan O’Dwyer in Dublin that refs watch fellas with a name for operating on the edge. Dwyer was often booked for absolutely nothing. I’d be shouting out at referees to ref the game on what they see today, not what they saw, or heard, before.
It will be another winter of recrimination and soul-searching in Tipp, another year when the back-to-back couldn’t be achieved. That will be harder again to square when this team has so much mileage up on the clock. Then again, they lost to Galway by two points. And there certainly isn’t any shame in that considering how little there has been between those two teams in recent years.
Their big players did their stuff, while we finally got to see the threat Dessie Hutchinson can pose.
I would have thought all along that a winter championship wouldn’t suit Dessie but, then again, Dessie has been waiting since the Waterford county final to play on a surface like Páirc Uí Chaoimh. He’ll be a handful for any defender now in Croke Park.
Clare-Waterford was another brilliant contest but – and I’m sure Waterford people would even admit as much – it’s just a pity that Tony Kelly couldn’t really be a factor in the match after rolling his ankle so early. Anyone else would have been hauled off but Tony is just irreplaceable. He manfully played on but Tony was clearly curtailed, which was always going to derail Clare’s chances.
You’d also wonder how the shape of Clare’s attack would have looked with Tony fit. If Waterford had to deal with that fluid roaming threat, it could have opened up huge space for the other forwards. Their defence did go AWOL for Aidan McCarthy’s goal but it was still easier for Waterford to close down space when Tony was so restricted.
On the other hand, Clare always had a goal threat. Coughing up seven goal chances will be the biggest concern for Liam Cahill, especially against Kilkenny. Stephen O’Keeffe made a brilliant save from Aaron Cunningham when a goal would have reduced the deficit to two points with ten minutes remaining. Conor Prunty eventually got to grips with the excellent Aron Shanagher but Brian Cody will have noted the bother Shanagher caused in the first half. And Cody has the variety of hardware to go after Prunty, both in the air and on the ground – TJ, Richie, Colin, Walter.
McCarthy’s goal did put some gloss on the result for Clare because they did lose their shape late on and were just dependent on Shanagher catching one and sticking it. Their tank may have been running dry too late on with their third game in-a-row while – even after a tough game six days earlier – Waterford’s incredible fitness levels were fully evident in that last quarter. Hutchinson was their best player but Jamie Barron, Kevin Moran, Tadgh de Burca, and the Bennett brothers put in massive shifts. Austin Gleeson was also much better than he was against Limerick.
It was always going to be a tough year for Brian Lohan, having lost so many big-name players. We all thought that the season could go up in smoke after the Limerick game but Clare rallied and there is something to build on now. Some of those players should be back next year while others have clearly stepped up in their absence, especially the excellent Cathal Malone.
Suddenly, we’re left with four teams and Waterford are certainly worth their place in that group. They have a great chance now to make the final, and so have Galway. I wondered at the outset of the championship if the condensed season would be a struggle for new managers in their first season.
But Liam Cahill and Shane O’Neill have certainly disproved that theory.
Then again, 2020 has already shown that nobody really knows what might happen next.
