Saturday night fever adds another familiar chapter
On Saturday night we attended the Munster hurling final played under lights in Thurles, a sentence combination which uses timing, illumination and event in a sequence we scarcely expected to write in our lifetime.
Leaving that affront to tradition to one side, the customary ingredients of the southern classic were all in evidence.
Outstanding scores. Lurching momentum. Defeat which leaves its victims walking past you glassy-eyed and unseeing. Victory that sends grown men roaring into the night sky, their faces dampened by the softly falling mist.
In the tunnel between the dressing-rooms there was a tick for every sensory box: flat Waterford accents loud in celebration; rogue contrails of deodorant seeping along from the humid dressing-rooms at either end of the corridor; Bernard Dunne shaking his head, radiating trim purpose. Flash frames. Instantaneous memories.
For a fixture so deeply bound up with tradition as the Munster hurling final, nothing else in Irish sporting life puts you so starkly in the moment.
There are moments, though, and there are moments. In the 17th century the French clergyman Cardinal de Retz said: “Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif“, which translates as “there is nothing in the world that does not have a decisive moment”.
The good Cardinal’s hurling knowledge was clearly underestimated: the decisive moment on Saturday night came in extra time, when Eoin McGrath of Waterford found himself in traffic near the Killinan End goal and popped an outlet pass to the nearest white jersey.
That jersey belonged to Dan Shanahan. Let him describe the second or two afterwards, which occurred long after 9pm, as a series of moments.
One: “The ball came out to me from Eoin and to be honest, I thought I might get caught by a covering defender. I expected a Cork player to tackle me straight away, but there was no-one near me. I was a good bit out but I felt confident. I’ve a decent record against Cork when it comes to scoring goals.”
Two: “It crossed my mind just then, for a split-second, about carrying it in a bit, but I looked up to see where (Donal Óg) Cusack was in the goal.
“He stepped out from the line, just one or two steps – I’d say he was expecting me to carry it in and was getting ready. He shimmied a little bit to his right, and that opened up the goal a little on his left-hand side.
“He didn’t move by much, but I thought I might catch him if I went early, so I let fly.”
Three: “I connected well with the ball but it didn’t shoot off the wet grass like I hoped – it was as if it got caught a little in the grass, if anything.
“He got his hurley to it but it carried on and rolled into the corner.
“I didn’t think it was the end of the game – this is Cork-Waterford, it’s never over until the final whistle – but I knew it was a huge blow for them. It’s hard enough to get scores in extra time if you’ve played the 70 minutes already, so it’s always going to be very hard for the team that concedes a goal to pull it back.
Four: “I just jogged back out to centre-forward. It wasn’t a day for big celebrations. Not during the game, anyway.”
After the game you had the usual crowd of diehards and player relatives who loiter by the dressing-rooms on the Kinnane Stand side of the ground.
The winning team usually emerges first, and Waterford came out to a flurry of camera flashes and upheld mobile phones. It was a long time before they were able to climb aboard their bus and head southeast. Cork were even longer in their dressing-room, and some little boys stayed close to the door, trying to hear what was going on inside. Out beyond the gates their bus waited, empty, as the rain came down hard.
Only another 12 months before this tradition gets another chapter.
* michael.moynihan@examiner.ie Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
