Munster magic not a patch of former glory
Believe it or not, but it’s 10 years ago this coming weekend that the same two counties tussled in what was the last good old-fashioned do-or-die Munster championship match ever.
It was a pulsating affair, just like every Munster championship game back then seemed to be.
Waterford, buoyed by the emergence of a young tear-away corner-forward called John Mullane, stormed into an early 2-6 to 0-1 lead.
But then he hobbled off and Ollie Moran came thundering into the game, and before Waterford knew it, they were out of the championship, gone in 70 minutes.
After that Gerald walked away and Justin breezed in. Justin’s not the most fashionable in either Waterford or Limerick now, but that still can’t detract from his achievement in Waterford.
It should be remembered — especially in Cork whose recent underage record is regularly highlighted — that he came into a county that hadn’t won a minor match in five years and hadn’t reached a provincial U21 final in seven years, instead crashing out of that championship by an average defeat of 10 points. Limerick, meanwhile, were in the middle of winning three All-Irelands in that grade. You would never have guessed back then Waterford would be the ones to challenge Cork for Munster supremacy in the subsequent years. As Ken McGrath would say in Damien Tiernan’s book, ‘The Ecstasy and the Agony’, “I remember thinking at the time we were kind of f**ked, to be honest.”
Of course, Justin got a few breaks, like with the advent of the backdoor for early-round losers.
People speculate that Waterford could have won the All-Ireland in 2002 and 2004 if the championship had been straight knockout, not appreciating that only for the backdoor the county probably wouldn’t even have won Munster in those years.
Would they have held their nerve to craft Ken McGrath’s winning score at the close of the 2002 Munster semi-final against Cork if the spectre of that being probably their last game of the summer had been hovering over them? Instead they subconsciously knew they’d get to hurl another day regardless, which freed them.
It’s impossible not to get nostalgic about those do-or-die games in Munster when Jimmy Barry Murphy and Loughnane bestrode the sideline.
The magic of it all was in the waiting. Eight months out the date would be circled, just like kids mark out December 25. June 3 is forever etched in this mind. That was the date for the 2001 face off between Tipp and Clare. Their rivalry was at its height after four previous seismic clashes on Leeside and only the previous month the sides had met in the league final. Yet one of them would be gone in just 70 minutes.
I can still remember the sense of anticipation driving down to Cork.
Underneath the stand a cordon of heaving humanity had assembled outside the Clare dressing room, vying for a sight of Lohan’s red helmet finally being unleashed into the packed coliseum after a full year champing at the bit. Never again will an early-summer game invoke the guttural roar that greeted Loughnane’s army running out of the tunnel.
It would prove to be a compelling contest but the game itself was fractured, both teams strangled by the anxiety of not even having a single win to show for all those months training. The day’s abiding image is of an ashen-faced Jamesie O’Connor plodding towards the tunnel. He had just scored five points from play and would win an All Star later that year but it was no consolation for the simple joy of being able to hurl through a summer.
It’s a basic right, really, in a summer game like hurling — to actually play it during the summer.
Last month Seán Óg Ó hAilpín advocated a return to the old do-or-die format and while there’s not a chance of that, a part of us would sympathise with him.
There was something electrifying about those old days. The backdoor has diluted the pain of defeat and shaved a few thousand off the gate.
But the 5,000 you lose on a day like Tipp and Cork last Sunday week you’ll more than make up with in 20,000 in a qualifier that would never otherwise have been played. It wasn’t like the old days that always drew bumper crowds.
Only 23,000 attended Cork’s opening game against Clare in ‘97 because just like this year Cork were coming off an underwhelming championship and league.
The integrity of the provincial championships remain. When Cork were seven down to Tipp early on in the second-half, they didn’t fold their tent like Cork seemed to do against Limerick 15 years ago; they kept going, kept wanting to win. Seán Óg says we have too many games now. The reality is we didn’t have enough in the old days. We spent most of our time instead talking about them and waiting for them.
There was a terrible beauty about that too.
