Tipp must be like ravenous wolves
It finishes tomorrow. The latest, most frenetic phase of the long war waged between blue and gold and black and amber and the greatest, most thunderous modern rivalry in Gaelic games. Less engaging than Cork/Waterford a few years ago, but more elemental. Less bitter than Kerry and the northern counties, but no less passionate or meaningful.
We’ve seen Kilkenny and Tipperary lock horns time and again these past four seasons — and lo, it was good. It was very, very good.
A thrilling, albeit consenting-adults-only, league final to start it all in 2009. Two shuddering, juddering All-Ireland final collisions that took the sport to new places. A third September decider, this one a merely interesting encounter, in which the guys in stripes enshrined their status as the greatest team ever.
Between them the counties have won the past six championships. But here’s the thing: this is not a statistic that will endure indefinitely. Kilkenny are not the team they were; Tipperary are not the team they thought, or hoped, they might be. More contenders are crowding onto the stage. One of them may even be crowned champions next month. Some All-Ireland semi-finals are finals by any other name; this is not such a semi-final. As such, it marks the end of the Kilkenny/Tipperary cycle.
Three potential outcomes suggest themselves. Not being fans of delayed gratification, we’ll hit you with them here and now. First, Kilkenny by a couple of points. Because while they’re growing old, they’re still Kilkenny in the ways that matter most.
Because they found themselves in a deep and dark wood at half-time against Limerick but – elderly canines, tough thoroughfares, etc — found their way out, rediscovered their mojo in the process and are back almost to full strength. Because Henry Shefflin and Tommy Walsh look more like their old selves and because the Michaels Rice and Fennelly are back to give the midfield ballast so lacking against Galway last month.
Eoin Larkin rediscovers his form of the spring, Richie Power makes a full recovery from his mishap against Limerick and they retain enough iron in the soul to win by a couple of points. All very straightforward. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s murderous Scot, Galway scorched the snake, not killed it.
Or: Tipp narrowly. Because the hurt of last September is their rocket fuel.
Because Declan Ryan is no longer a novice manager yet to come to terms with his brief. Because they have, as was patently obvious against Waterford, been keeping something in the tank for the late-summer days that count.
Because their options on the bench are superior. It’s not hard to visualise someone like Shane Bourke coming on and finding the net at a critical stage. A combination of these factors pushes them over the line. For Kerry against Donegal read Kilkenny against Tipp.
Third option: the levee breaks as it did in the Leinster final and Tipp, ~scenting blood, win by seven or eight points, perhaps even by double figures. Because the Leinster final wasn’t an off-day for Kilkenny but an intimation of their slow decline. Because the challengers smell blood. Because Lar Corbett, instead of throwing shapes out the field and laying off handpasses as he did against Waterford, goes for the jugular.
Because the challengers bomb out of the traps and do what teams that beat Kilkenny — Galway last month, Tipp themselves in 2010 — have to do: make all the running, make every post a winning post and exhaust their opponents en route.
Tipp may or may not come from behind to win tomorrow; Kilkenny will not (the last time the latter won a championship match in which they trailed at half-time? Nine years ago. The reason they haven’t done so in the meantime is that they’ve rarely been required to). Every day they go out, the champions are not merely participating in a fixture but hurling against their own mortality, raging against the dying of the light. A few years ago there was a sense that Brian Cody was playing not just the opposition but the game itself – and beating it. No more. Kilkenny wear the same jerseys, they have many of the same players, they’re managed by the same man but they’re not the same team. Nor can they be.
Witness the heavy weather they made of it against Limerick. That the holders led by the minimum margin at the interval tells a tale. That they scarcely deserved to tells another tale. In their Wagnerian pomp of a few years back they’d have had Limerick dead on the table after 15 minutes, as they had in the 2007 All-Ireland final.
In the event they were antsy and they were angsty and they were over-anxious and they were so busy trying to walk the ball into the net – always a sign of a team short on confidence – that they forgot to do the simple thing and put it over the bar instead.
They were, in short, not themselves at all. And that is easily explicable, for a 10 point beating in a provincial decider (and in truth Galway were at least 15 points a better team at Croke Park on July 8) has to leave a mark on a side. Even a side as experienced, as worldly and as successful as this one.
And parse that 4-16 to 1-16 scoreline against Limerick while you’re at it. It wasn’t a nine-point win, it was a three-score win and Kilkenny’s tally of white flags was well short of the 21 or 22 points they customarily racked up. Never mind the old saw about goals winning games; it is points that are the staff of life, and Kilkenny only managed 11 points against Galway.
Limerick were unable to keep the foot to the metal for more than 35 minutes; Tipperary will be. Limerick gave away two horribly soft goals; Tipperary will not. Is Henry Shefflin, who unlike last month in Thurles isn’t facing a full-back line of intermediate clubmen, really going to have 2-2 to his name inside 20 minutes tomorrow? Brendan Cummins has been sharp and clear-eyed this summer, the ball he dropped against Cork apart, and has been well protected by his defenders. Then again, a clean sheet against Cork and Waterford is one thing, a clean sheet against Kilkenny quite another. The latter are not in the habit of bringing knives to a gunfight.
But Brendan Maher’s form loss is countered by the absence of Richie Hogan, whose record against Tipperary, from minor up, is excellent. One wonders if the underdogs might try stationing Brian O’Meara at left-half forward to keep Tommy Walsh quiet. Bonner Maher did exactly that to signal effect in the 2010 final.
If the bookies had priced the game on the evidence of the 2012 championship, Tipp would be considerably shorter than 6/4. But does it really have to be pointed out that there’s a weight of pressure on them nonetheless? The wealth of quality hurling they’ve done over the past four seasons demands –“demands” as opposed to “entitles them to” — a second All-Ireland triumph, and that’s without pointing to their 2009 Oscar for Best Losing Performance in an All-Ireland final. But Cork, Galway, Clare and Limerick are improving teams. The time to win that second title is now. Tipperary are not going to have a better chance of it in the coming seasons.
Some other observations.
Kilkenny have been in media lockdown for the past fortnight; this week’s Kilkenny People did not contain a single quote from Cody. If the pattern of the last three meetings holds up, the team that scores more goals will win. Bonner Maher’s first touch needs to be spot on; when he fails to get the sliotar into his hand and runs at people, as by and large was the case in the Munster final, there’s little he brings to the table.
Noel McGrath has still not made the step up from adorning games to shaping them. Tomorrow would be a good day to start.
A small question surrounds how well Tipperary manage the five-week gap since the Munster final. Given the previously mentioned necessity to lead from the off, a tús maith here will indeed be leath na hoibre.
A larger question surrounds the manner in which Declan Ryan runs his establishment. You see Lar Corbett with a column in a national newspaper; you do not see a Kilkenny player with one. You read of Tipp players and their Twitter pensées; Kilkenny do not have a policy on Twitter simply because their players are not expected to be diverted by such fripperies.
Different strokes for different folks, of course. Cody, even though it took him years to arrive at the discovery, was born to be capo di tutti capi. Ryan is a laidback guy who was propelled into inter-county management and may by now have grown into it — or not. If tomorrow he succeeds in sending out a pack of ravenous wolves, baying for feline blood, then he’ll have done his job.
Either way, a curtain falls regardless. Gentlemen, it’s been emotional.
