PM O'Sullivan: Tony Kelly's backhand roll the masterpiece of a hollow weekend's hurling

Clare’s Tony Kelly converts a penalty against Waterford
Picture: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Summer hurling came home to an empty house.

Not in the sense, alas, of someone arriving too early for a party, everyone else still down the pub. Even for the people who watched last weekend’s action in a beer garden, this experience proved a sobering one. Commentators kept referencing a sense of emptiness, one literal in the grounds, metaphorical in various heads.

Absence dominated the main games. Competitiveness levels, first off. Saturday saw Dublin destroy Antrim, 18 points the margin, and Wexford destroy Laois, 20 points the margin. Only two teams, in any sense that counts, turned up.

Destroy… Harsh but no other word is appropriate. This strange time’s opening lesson for 2021 is that the gap between hurling’s haves and have nots has become a gulf. Encouraging signs in league performances by Antrim and Laois frittered.

Sunday saw another version of lack, injury trumped by wit. Fair play to Clare for twisting a GAA proverb to advantage. They arrived not to hammer the hammer but to hammer the vacuum. Full back Conor Prunty’s unavailability meant a hole in Waterford’s defence. There was something refreshing about seeing, after so much chatter around systems and gameplans and data analysis, an old-fashioned tactical coup.

Brainpower severs many chains. Clare’s management sent Tony Kelly to full forward, scattering anticipation, spinning Waterford out of shape. Brian Lohan thereby won both ends of an each way bet.

As Kelly shimmered with menace, Calum Lyons got tethered, as marker, to square’s edge. Removing his energy, his ability to break past opponents from wing back, cramped Déise operations. Beside Kelly, Aron Shanagher provided mortal threat in the right corner, incisive but scoreless. He did his bit and might now, enhanced in confidence, achieve more.

Even so, yesterday in Semple Stadium satisfied no one except Banner supporters. The occasion never flexed as a contest. Clare took control from the opening minutes but kept thinning momentum with silly wides, 14 in the first half alone.

Total contrast at half forward framed the leaders’ superiority. Aidan McCarthy, David Reidy and Ryan Taylor bossed exchanges in middle third. By half-time, this trio had contributed six points from play. Their counterparts (Peter Hogan, Jack Fagan and Jack Prendergast) owned not a score.

But and therefore. Heedless wides grant whatever opposition a puncher’s chance at the death. Ian Galvin, shortly before the second half’s waterbreak, slotted for a ten-point Clare lead, 1-18 to 0-11. Yet Waterford were behind but three points, 1-21 to 0-21, after Austin Gleeson lanced over from midfield, mere minutes to run. Then Tony Kelly’s insurance score, the ribbon around a 1-12 haul.

The portable masterpiece from so lacklustre an afternoon? Kelly’s penalty strike, near half-time. Referee Colm Lyons’ decision got questioned. Kelly’s sublime finish brooked absolutely no debate.

Not enough is remarked on top hurlers’ technique. The Ballyea native possesses a distinct style: righthanded to write, right hand on top and markedly left side orientated. Jimmy Smyth, Clare’s great forward between the late 1940s and the late 1960s, hurled in the same backhand style.

A few years back, Kelly experimented with taking frees off his right side. I would love to ask him about thought processes at the time. Limerick’s Shane Dowling, another backhander, spoke about Éamonn Cregan urging him to switch from left side striking to right side striking for frees. The classical idea is that a forehand style offers best control of body weight and therefore more accuracy from distance.

Which or whether, backhand striking does offer an advantage with penalties. Going low is ever a deadly option, with going low off a backhand strike easier, technically, than off a forehand strike. A backhander can strike, with venom, from a slightly overhand position, as Kelly did, forcing the sliotar down.

Joe Canning and TJ Reid, both a forehand striker, are lethal penalty takers. The reason is that both men can roll their wrists, getting over the sliotar so as to dispatch low off forehand side. But rolling your wrists is a technique too far for most forehand-orientated hurlers.

Meanwhile Waterford roll back to being an enigma. Can the county hurl as favourite? Is leadership an issue? The two steps forward taken in that recovery against Kilkenny in last year’s All Ireland semi-final ended up a fair step back, injuries or no injuries.

Liam Cahill’s verdict on his charges (“flat as pancakes”) dictates serious work over the next three weeks. They will get a handy qualifier tie but have landed themselves in a tricky place. The townland named Morale can be a Brigadoon, disappearing into the mists of underperformance.

For now, we live with hollowness in the old game’s house. What to do? Next weekend’s four big contests badly need to spark. Hurling should not be vaccinated against itself.

No one did strangeness and frustration like Lewis Carroll in his upside down wonderland, mad hats and whatever else. Although hurling helmets as party headgear would be a new one, we will take anything at this stage.

I recall Carroll’s Cheshire Cat as a tease, appearing and disappearing as he likes. “You may have noticed I’m not all there myself,” the feline states. Disappearance into a grin is what one manager achieves each year on the season’s last day. Hats off to that kind of departure. But us all fading, early doors, into mere grimace?

This prospect, to invert a wonderful phrase, seems colder than July.