Big fancies won’t fall at this hurdle
The weekend when championship 2012 takes shape, takes off and takes to the skies.
Two afternoons of hurling that between them are bigger than a Leinster final, bigger than a Munster final, bigger than an All-Ireland semi-final, bigger even than Craig Doyle’s sense of self-satisfaction.
By teatime tomorrow, barring a draw, two heads will have rolled. And it will be no shock, no more than a mild surprise, if one of them is the most decorated head of all.
Which is why the more important game of the pair is not tomorrow’s encounter on Leeside but today’s face-off in Portlaoise.
For Páirc Uí Chaoimh will see nothing more than a defeat for a team that might win the All-Ireland — and, come to think of it, still might do so anyway, as was the case after Cork defeated Tipp at the venue two years ago.
Whereas O’Moore Park this afternoon could see a defeat for the team that on all known form will win the All-Ireland. Think about it: Dublin beat the MacCarthy Cup holders and suddenly the championship goes skittering off in a new direction and an entirely different summer unfolds before us.
Is that laying it on too thickly? Imputing to Dublin a status they don’t quite merit? Overstating Kilkenny’s vulnerability, which in any case is considerably less apparent than it was this time last year following their defeat in the league final, after which it seemed the empire might be about to crumble any minute? Very possibly.
Come nightfall it may well be that the hype about Dublin was bubbles and froth, that the burden of expectation of performance got to them and that Kilkenny had seen them coming from a long way off.
As of this morning, however, it can be stated with perfect truth that this isn’t one of those Leinster championship outings against Offaly or Wexford where, whatever polite words Kilkenny utter in public beforehand, they know in their heart of hearts it’ll be a turkey shoot as long as they don’t take their eye off the ball.
(One of Brian Cody’s greater virtues, by the by. He never regards an easy-looking match as a turkey shoot. Such rigour of approach is precisely why Kilkenny do turn such fixtures into turkey shoots. They’re never allowed, whether by their manager or their own sense of duty, to fall asleep on the job. Doesn’t matter if the opposition is Offaly, Wexford, Tipp, Cork or the Mount Mercy junior B hockey team. Nothing personal, just business.)
Today it’s different. It’s different because it’s Dublin, because it’s Daly and because it’s a full-strength Dublin in their fourth season under Daly. This is the game he’s lived for all year, the game into which he’s poured the work of those four seasons. It’s as though he were back in his own playing days with Clare, counting the days down till the first round of the Munster championship.
Analysing, plotting, planning, dreaming. This afternoon comes detonation.
His managerial record at provincial championship level may be unremarkable, but one area in which Daly excels is when it comes to preparing a team to do a particular job against particular opponents. Clare against Kilkenny in 2004 and against Cork the following year. Dublin against Kilkenny in the 2009 Leinster final and against Tipperary in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final.
All of those teams performed in all of those games, punching their weight and some more on top of it. There’s no reason to believe that Dublin, a team Daly has pieced together with a view to coping with Kilkenny physically and giving it back to them in spades, won’t do likewise here.
It will not be pretty. Oh Lord no. Try visualising an articulated lorry rally hitting midtown Manhattan at rush hour on a Friday and you’ve a fair idea of the scene between the two 45-metre lines this evening.
A war of the monster trucks, with endless bumping and boring and grinding, and nobody — absolutely nobody — giving way to another driver.
Great antipathy, little room. Much heat, scarce light. If ever there was a day for flaking on a ground ball or two, just to ease the press of hands on throats and see what might happen next, this is it.
That both sides will play on the edge is a given. Kilkenny will need to be careful about not straying too far over it, for a sizeable section of the media is itching for the chance to put the boot into them. Similarly, Ryan O’Dwyer will realise by now about the dangers of rushing in where angels fear to tread. Dublin found during the league that they were conceding too many frees for comfort, but Kilkenny clearly aren’t squeamish in that department either.
The holders won’t have to be told they cannot win this All-Ireland through the back door. In view of the standards they’ve set themselves, such a victory would amount to debased currency. But logic says that, even if they need someone like Matthew Ruth to come off the bench and score a game-breaking goal, they’ll find it easier to get vital scores at vital junctures. And that should be enough.
The team under most pressure tomorrow? The Sunday Game team. They let themselves as well as the viewer down last week with that ridiculous fuss over Davy Fitz swearing. Oooh look, here’s a fish in a barrel — let’s shoot it! Whatever the reader’s opinion of Davy is, he didn’t deserve that.
At least they’ll have Cork and Tipp to talk about tomorrow night. One topic that may be discussed is the coherence of Tipp’s attacking play, which was conspicuous by its absence in the first half against Limerick last month.
After their springtime troubles, this was the moment for Tipperary to make a statement. Until the early stages of the second half the only statement the forward line made was to imply they had been introduced to each other for the first time in the dressing room beforehand. Getting the ball into Brian O’Meara and hoping he’d do something with it seemed to be the entire game plan.
Fortunately for Declan Ryan he has Patrick Maher back. We said here a few months ago that Maher was now Tipperary’s most important forward. Against Limerick he illustrated why.
The great thing about theLorrha man is that he stays in his own movie. He knows his limitations and he abides by them. He doesn’t go for ball tricks or essay points from the touchline — or from anywhere else, come to that. He gets the ball and he runs (and one of these days he’ll be done for over-carrying at a crucial stage, as he was in the 2008 All-Ireland U21 final).
But let that last bit pass. All told, Maher provides the perfect ballast for the Tip forward line. Every catwalk queen needs her bit of rough.
Cork look to have more in the way of conviction about them, greater knowledge of what they’re trying to achieve and infinite faith in their manager. Still, the suspicion here is that Tipp, cleansed by the Limerick game, will manage to muddle through nonetheless.
