Anthony Daly: Croke Park comforts bring best from brilliant Ballyhale
AIB Ulster Club Senior Hurling Championship Final, Croke Park, Dublin 19/12/2021
The symmetry was loud and clear because the message was like an echo. Colin Fennelly mentioned Croke Park in his speech while TJ Reid and James O’Connor both referred to it in their post-match interviews on TG4. The surface and Ballyhale’s familiarity with the place was the obvious reasons, but Ballyhale simply don’t lose in Croke Park.
It was a brilliant treat for Clough-Ballacolla to play at Headquarters yesterday but Leinster finals are for winning. The decision around the fixture was out of their hands but if I was in their corner, I’d nearly have been fighting tooth and nail to get the match to Parnell Park or Dr Cullen Park.
I’m not taking away from St Rynagh’s heroic display in normal time last weekend, but you just got the impression from watching the highlights that the pitch in Tullamore was a real leveler. Ballyhale should have been out of the competition three minutes into injury-time but they got the wake-up call they needed. And going to Croke Park was the ideal place to work that frustration out of their system.
Their players are tailormade for Croke Park, not just because they have so much experience up there, but because of their sublime skill and elite execution levels. The goals were the story of the game but if you wanted to draw up a coaching manual and show forwards how to bag green flags, all you’d have to do is cut the six clips of the goals and press play.
They were textbook finishes. Four of them were driven into the ground, one of them was flicked over the advancing goalkeeper, while Eoin Reid’s goal was a genius flick from a long ball. Cathal Dunne has looked like a solid keeper throughout this championship but he was faultless yesterday because of the clinical nature of Ballyhale’s finishing.
Colin Fennelly has traded on goals throughout his career, but his second goal just reaffirmed the killer instinct he possesses. Most players in that situation – after blocking down Darren Maher’s clearance – would have picked the ball, gone out a few steps and thrown it over the bar. Not Fennelly.
You can almost picture his brain whirring and computing the calculations in a millisecond. ‘Hi, I know I had the legs on this guy, so I’ll take him on and just go for it’. He still had a lot to do but Fennelly’s flick over the keeper with two defenders all over him was one of the highlights of the afternoon.
Ballyhale had standout performers everywhere but Richie Reid was a well-deserved man-of-the-match. Most teams now are trying to play a deep-lying centre-forward but leaving a guy like Richie loose can be lethal if he starts pinging ball around the place, which is what he did all afternoon.
It has been a brilliant year for the Laois side, but the second half reminded me of the second half of the 1993 Munster final against Tipperary – you just wanted the final whistle to blow. It was a great occasion for the club, but a 27-point hammering is a cruel way for your season to finish, especially on live TV.
Stephen ‘Picky’ Maher had been man-of-the-match in their two previous games but Darren Mullen had the shackles on ‘Picky’ throughout. Willie Dunphy got no space. The game just bypassed Willie Hyland. That’s not a criticism of the lads because they are great men, but they just met better hurlers yesterday.
It’s funny how an All-Ireland club campaign can change in an instant. How different would the All-Ireland picture look now if Rynagh’s had taken out the Kilkenny champions last week? Either Rynagh’s or Clough-Ballacolla would be Leinster champions. St Thomas’, Slaughtneil, Ballygunner or Kilmallock are still in with a right chance but the door would be far more ajar if the Shamrocks weren’t casting the long, dark shadow they now are over all the other competitors.
It’s almost unfathomable to think that the first great Ballyhale team could win three All-Irelands and yet the two teams the club have produced in the last 15 years are now on the brink of doubling that haul.
All the talk in the lead-up to this game was about Cough-Ballyacolla, their small community and meagre population base, but it’s not as if they were coming up against a super-club in south Dublin. Ballyhale certainly isn’t a metropolis but they are the galaccticos of club hurling.
Some of the greatest players to ever play the game – Henry Shefflin and Michael Fennelly – have walked away in the last six years, but it has had no impact on the continuum of excellence and elite standards that has driven this club to exalted levels.
Another thing that has really impressed me about the Shamrocks is that they are not afraid to look for help outside. Shefflin guided them to successive All-Irelands in 2019 and 2020 but James McGarry coached them to the 2010 title and Andy Moloney and Colm Bonnar guided them to the 2015 crown. And now James O’Connor from Lismore is leading that charge for All-Ireland number 9.
And at this stage of the season, it’s hard to see the Shamrocks being stopped in that quest.
