Another step closer to the Holy Grail

Ah, it was one of those mighty Sundays. The underdogs carried some hope but little trust. Both are displaced really. Bob O’Keeffe, outsized as it is, can never fill Galway dreams. Murray, as Scottish as grumbling, can’t put his back into building an English bridge to Fred Perry.

Tanks filled with personal pride then. With disappointments heaped like a fat man’s pancakes. Hunger games.

Who knew Galway were so ravenous? Our old friend The Savage Hunger hardly does justice to an incredible half hour in Croke Park. Somehow, Anthony Cunningham bottled decades of underachievement, of squandered promise, of buckled minor conveyor belts, of conspiracy theories, of bloodletting among old stalwarts, of bitching about Tony Keady and John Denton and released it in a whirlwind of purpose that blew Kilkenny off the field.

There was much method, of course, in that first 30 minutes of madness. It was a wonder Cunningham hadn’t knuckled down to a morning’s fencing, so intent was he on overgrazing the middle third of the meadow.

Not every ball won was stamped with a message but most, at least, carried an address.

Joe put on a show, but he didn’t run it. This was a community effort. The hurling tumbled out of men like Iarla Tannion, recipient of more write-offs than the State can dream of.

Flicking the telly, during the week, some kind of supernatural hokum called Grimm landed on a satellite outpost. Some class of jive-talking creature from beyond — back to help out with murder cases, as you would — was delivering a pep-talk.

“You’re gonna have to dig deep within yourself and, like, pull up the history of your ancestors, and I mean all of them man, to bring it.”

Was this lad on the water Sunday? The Connollys, Lynskey, Sylvie. Were the whole lot of them out there? Over in South West London, meanwhile, Andy was doing alright too. A man whose personality is in his arms was shaking the match’s hand warmly. Federer seemed discommoded by the urgency of Murray’s early vigour, roofing a couple off the rim. At the changeovers, you half expected Roger to pull out a comb as much as a new racket, just to tidy himself up a bit.

But having edged a set towards destiny, Murray ran into difficulties.

Firstly, the officials sat on tennis chairs are attributed none of the vast wisdom ascribed to the modern hurling referee. Instead they are bound, inhumanely, by petty rules and regulations.

While men like James McGrath are now more conductors than adjudicators, free to gauge the timbre and indulge the swell of a match with a blind eye to scelps, tugs and dunts, umpire Enric Molina had no such licence to ignore the yelps from his minions in the cheaper sets.

So when Murray began to tire and the second serve faltered and the odd forehand drifted wide, Molina had no option to let them belt away on the basis that everyone would enjoy things that bit more if he just let the game flow.

And then, of course, there was the small matter of the company he was keeping. If Murray’s own hunger was savage, the man across the net wasn’t near sated either.

In his elegant, majestic way, Federer channelled as much intensity into the match’s key moments as Galway did into that first half hour. Visibly growing on his toes, he seized on that second set break-point with the heightened awareness of a man who’d heard a noise downstairs in the middle of the night.

The drop volley that won it landed as silently and deliciously as Pirlo’s panenka — and turned a contest as conclusively. In that moment, you knew.

In the end, everyone except Andy went home happy. The English, a people whose expectations aren’t nearly as great as their press would have you believe, eventually got one of the things they came for. Tears. It sufficed in 1990 from Gazza and it was enough here too.

Kilkenny, on the other hand, bottled up the tears — and the blood and sweat too — for Nowlan Park, where bad beatings invariably become learning experiences. You suspect Tipp were as disappointed as anyone with Sunday.

With Galway, nothing they really want is won. And we wonder now if they can somehow regather the hurt that spilled out of them last week and bring it again.

“At least I’m getting closer,” mumbled Murray on Sunday evening, through the sobs. That’s probably how Galway should look at it too.