Christy O'Connor: Clare set new record and Offaly taste rock-and-roll days
SO CLOSE: Adam Screeney of Offaly reacts at the final whistle of the Leinster GAA Senior Hurling Championship Round 1 match between Offaly and Dublin at Glenisk O'Connor Park in Tullamore, Offaly. Photo by Mark Kavanagh/Sportsfile
Just two points ahead after having conceded all the momentum to Waterford, Eibhear Quilligan took the puckout in the 73rd minute, Peter Duggan knocked it down with his hurley, Ian Galvin tried to get onto the break and flicked it into the hand of Tony Kelly. The Ballyea man swivelled and drove the ball over the bar on the backfoot.
Clare got the one player they’d want on the ball in that moment and Kelly’s score raised one of the biggest cheers of the afternoon in Cusack Park. It settled Clare’s jangling nerves, but the point was also a historic moment in the history of the Munster round robin championship – it was the first time that a side had raised 33 points (white flags).
In essence though, history had been made just two minutes earlier when Darragh Lohan registered Clare’s 32nd point. Limerick had put 0-36 past Clare in the 2020 Munster quarter-final but that was the old system. Prior to yesterday, only one team (Clare) had raised 31 white flags in the round robin. And that was in a rout against Waterford in 2022.
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In the seven-year history of the Munster round robin, the 30 points (white flag) barrier has now been breached eight times. Tipperary and Cork both raised 30 white flags against Waterford in 2019 while Cork scored 1-30 against Limerick in 2023.
Cork put 4-30 on Tipp in 2024 while Limerick clocked 0-30 against Waterford in that same campaign. Tipp and Cork registered 1-30 against Waterford and Limerick respectively in last year’s Munster championship but Cork’s total was accumulated after extra-time in the final.
Yesterday’s score-fest was the latest illustration of how shot-counts are increasingly going through the roof – the match produced 88 shots. After Cork’s 42 points total against Tipp in 2024, and Clare’s 40 points against Waterford in 2022, Clare’s 39 points total haul here equalled the points total that Cork accumulated against Tipp in 2022 as the joint-third highest in the Munster round robin.
This match was also the joint-highest scoring match in Munster hurling history, alongside the 2024 Cork-Limerick epic in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which also saw a combined tally of 72 points accumulated. Similar to that game, yesterday in Ennis also saw 60 scores registered in 70 minutes.
And that’s just modern hurling.
One thing guaranteed with Tommy Walsh in his media duties, especially in his radio and TV analysis, is at least one classic line or analogy during every media or pundit appearance. Just after Jason Rabbitte scored his goal for Galway against Kilkenny in Pearse Stadium on Saturday, Walsh - excuse the pun - pulled another rabbit out of the hat. “Limerick have the Bull (Shane O’Brien),” said Walsh in his co-commentary on GAA+ “but Galway have the rabbit.”
The comment came decades after Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s immortal line about Rabbitte’s father Joe, when he was trying to dispossess Tipperary’s Pat Fox in a championship match. “I’ve seen it all now,” said Ó Muircheartaigh, “a rabbit chasing a fox around Croke Park.”
Analogies and comparisons between a father and son are always inevitable but they’re more bountiful with the Rabbittes because of the similarities in their physical profile. Like his dad, Rabbitte is a huge man, good in the air with a paw like a bear. He even wears the same old Ash-guard glove. It's surely one of his father’s old gloves.
Helmets conceal the identities of modern players but when Rabbitte was interviewed on GAA+ afterwards by Aisling O’Reilly, anyone who doesn’t, or who didn’t, know Rabbitte beforehand could see that he’s the head of the auld fella.
He made ripples during the league but the wider public are fully aware of who Rabbitte is now, and what he’s capable of. As well as scoring 1-1 on Saturday, he was fouled for three converted frees.
He is a target man but his goal was also a neat reflection of the broad range of Rabbitte’s game - and how it has to be in Galway’s system. After funnelling a huge amount of bodies back and turning over Kilkenny inside the 45-metre line, Galway cleverly worked the sliotar back out through the crowd before Cian Daniels dinked it forward to an onrushing Rabbitte. After careering through the middle with Mikey Butler on the backfoot, Rabbitte lashed his shot past Aidan Tallis.
Rabbitte is still under 20. So is Aaron Niland, who also had an excellent debut. Niland has long been touted as the future of Galway hurling. Rory Burke, another player the Galway public have been eyeing for a while, was also superb on his starting debut, scoring 2-2. Galway are flush with quality young talent but Rabbitte again underlined just how pivotal he will be to that future.
It's rare in the modern game that an elite team would frame so much of their system around an U20 player in his debut season. Yet Rabbitte has the power, strength and quality that has enabled Galway to invest that faith in him.
Then again, it’s no surprise considering Rabbitte’s physical profile and ball-winning ability. He’s just the like the auld fella.
As Adam Screeney was walking off the field in Tullamore on Saturday evening, his hands and hurley behind his head, the disgust and disappointment was smeared all over his face. Screeney was out on his feet from the pulsating action but he wasn’t stopping for autographs or congratulatory well-wishes. He had no mind for that kind of stuff.
Screeney was sickened that the kind of rock-and-roll days he had regularly experienced as an underage player had just slipped through his and his team-mates fingers for the first time as a senior player.
Screeney was reared on stories of Offaly’s halcyon Leinster championship days of iconic drama and gripping tension. Saturday finally saw a return to that emotion in Offaly but Screeney and his team-mates have no interest in getting just a brief taste of what that was like – they want to consistently bask in that afterglow.
Their disappointment after Saturday was a reflection of how much this team has grown and developed after a confidence-sapping and winless spring in the league. Offaly almost managed something that they haven’t done in an age – take a scalp in the province.
They would have if Dublin goalkeeper Seán Brennan hadn’t made an incredible save deep in additional time from Shane Rigney. It wasn’t the only top class save Brennan made. Four goals could have at least been seven. Offaly still led in the dying seconds before Donal Burke landed an outstanding equaliser.
In a helter-skelter of a match that produced 86 shots, the drama and tension heightened to a crescendo as Offaly’s confidence and chances of that ground-breaking win increased and Dublin were forced to keep pace and chase them down to keep their ambitions of a provincial title intact.
Offaly were brave and bolshie all evening but the maturation of this group was also reflected in their increased athleticism and power. It was bound to in the natural cycle of a young side but they were still prepared to hunt and scavenge and get up and down the pitch all evening. They had to be to counter Dublin’s pace and athleticism.
Saturday was a really positive day for Offaly. But the fact that they were still so disappointed underlined how Offaly are edging closer to consistently living in the world of their forefathers that they have heard so much about.
