Cinderella story shames mighty Cats
Put a hurl in the paw of a Cat and you create headlines like the ones which graced Kilkenny’s stirring victory over Cork 48 hours ago when the point that mattered after a titanic clash at the top level of the new league was again in their favour.
But remove the hurl from the Cat and stripe him again in black and amber and it seems that all you have is a fragile Kitten. There were no big headlines about the display of the Kittens against Leitrim in the football league during the same weekend action. The teams met in Division 4, where headlines are scarce as the crowds, and the clash was notable for the hurtful fact that Kilkenny failed to notch a single score during the game. If you set out to deliberately achieve that feat you would have considerable difficulty. Leitrim scored three goals and 18 points and Kilkenny were not able to raise a flag at all. Is that some kind of record? That is not the whole story either. Leitrim is often called the Cinderella County for a variety of reasons. It certainly has the smallest population and the least resources of all its peers. It has been ravaged by emigration down all the years since the GAA was established.
It’s club teams have recently been decimated by the new wave of emigration. Yet that facile victory over Kilkenny was not the county’s only success of the weekend. The county’s hurlers were also in action away down in Division 4 of the hurling League. They took on Cavan in that so-called basement clash and won on the scoreline 3-19 to 1-8, which was a considerable achievement. The Cinderella County had a real ball of a weekend all round and well done to them. They fielded teams to meet all their association’s requirements and came away with all the points.
At the same time one has to sympathise and empathise with the footballing Kittens of Kilkenny.
They are mighty men to seek to keep football alive at all in a county in which the big ball code is not so much the poor relation as the unwelcome illegitimate child.
It has to be very difficult to troop off the field after a game without managing even one score. That takes another kind of courage out of the same locker that Leitrim’s hurlers have to display when they run up against higher calibre opposition than Cavan.
I gather that there was some success for Kilkenny’s footballers away back in the very early GAA days. They won a Leinster title as far back as 1888, I think, but it has been all downhill ever since as the hurlers flourished and stole away their support.
They have failed to field teams many times due to a scarcity of players and maybe the most striking episode happened in 1914 when Kilkenny had to tog out their mascot to fulfil a championship fixture. For the record, his name was Peter Dunne – and they still lost.
I walk now on thin ice. I feel it is shameful, as a powerful unit of the GAA, as a large and prosperous county, that Kilkenny long ago reneged on the ethos of the GAA itself and opted out of fielding a football team in the Leinster Championship.
That decision has to be difficult to defend. It means that only 31 of the home counties go in search of Sam Maguire annually and that, to some extent, dilutes the sovereignty of the national championship. For Heaven’s sake there are seven or eight counties at least, including my own Fermanagh, who go into combat every year knowing well they have not a snowball’s chance in Hell of reaching the All-Ireland final in September. Maybe Kilkenny’s only Leinster football title was back in 1888 but we have never won an Ulster title. Still, in keeping with the spirit of the GAA, which is far more than a mere sporting organisation, surely you should participate.
There is another element to the equation. The fact Kilkenny does not compete in the senior football championship and throws all its powerful energies into winning yet another hurling title somehow dilutes and lessens each hurling success, for me at least. Kilkenny is the only county in the country to do what it is doing. If others followed suit in relation to both codes the national consequences in relation to the battles for Sam Maguire and Liam MacCarthy would be nothing short of disastrous. It is not all about winning. It is about taking part. And this is especially true for GAA competitions. It is far better to trade and fail to score in the League than not to play at all.
There is maybe one ray of hope. A good source tells me that there are real genuine Kittens in the county. There is a girls’ Under 13 football development squad which is being coached into the makings of a formidable outfit. Since it includes girls with distinguished surnames like Comerford and Walsh and Delaney then maybe the people of Kilkenny will give them the support they deserve in the years ahead.
* Contact: cormac66@hotmail.com
