With added steel, Canning a worthy heir to the throne
If Kilkenny win, Henry overtakes Ring on the All-Ireland roll of honour, and with it, for some, elevates above him in the greatness stakes as well.
Should Galway win, there’s a strong case that Joe Canning has established himself as the preeminent player in hurling, a title Henry has enjoyed for the guts of a decade.
Either way, it’s all good.
In this column’s eyes, Ring’s greatness can never be diminished by Shefflin’s, nor can it be surpassed, only equalled; the pride of Cloyne wrote the rules of what constituted hurling excellence and Henry has only abided by them. Nor can Henry’s greatness be slighted; Canning more than anyone is aware that he has many years to go before he could be considered Shefflin’s equal, whatever about his heir.
What we can say is that Joe is on the right path. Like Ring and Shefflin, he’s finally become The Package.
It’s no coincidence that the year Galway have finally got back to an All-Ireland final is the year Joe Canning finally decided to become an athlete as well as a hurler. There’s a suspicion among traditionalists of the growth and benefits of the sports sciences, fearful that its increasing prominence in Gaelic Games is at the cost and the reduction of technical skill, ignorant to the possibility that it can actually enhance and complement it.
Henry Shefflin long ago copped that he needed to be an athlete to max it as a hurler. Ever since he broke onto the Kilkenny team, we’ve only known the chiselled face but that wasn’t his natural condition. Derek Lyng has known Shefflin as far back as when they both played with St Kieran’s and Freshers hurling for WIT and as he puts it, “back then, Henry was a lumpy type of fella who could put on weight easily”.
It took Brian Cody being on his case, telling him to watch what he ate and drank, for him to become more than a decent county hurler, but before his student days were done, he’d come to relish the idea and lifestyle of being an elite athlete.
Up until last year, Joe was still “a lumpy type of fella”, a state of affairs that couldn’t deny him All-Ireland club titles but denied him September days in Croker. In his own mind, he resisted the hard slog, on the basis his relentless match schedule didn’t allow for such expenditure of energy, but now when he reflects on it, “I was only kind of joking myself.”
This year he’s over a stone lighter. He’s exited a comfort zone.
For too many other GAA players, it works the other way. The physical is their comfort zone. They’re more at ease doing another set of weights in the gym than hitting the pitch or the alley and confronting and addressing their weak side or weak foot.
Shefflin, Canning and Ring never did. Their skill was never heaven-sent but chiselled out in a local field. Shefflin spent thousands of hours below in the squash court of the family bar in Ballyhale, just beating that ball against that wall. Even after he’d made the Kilkenny senior team and won an All-Ireland, Cody brought it to his attention that too often he was forcing shots over his right shoulder because he wasn’t adequately competent off his left side. So Shefflin went back to the gable-end wall, hitting ball after ball after ball, this time just off his left side.
Ring lived by the same ethos. Constantly practising, constantly looking to improve. The filmmaker Louis Marcus recalled watching a league semi-final with Ring when Tipperary’s Jimmy Doyle pointed a free. “Did you see that?” Ring nudged excitedly. “The follow through? I must practise that myself.” By then, Ring was in his late 30s. Doyle was in his late teens. And still the master wasn’t too proud to learn something new .
He’d always been open to developing himself. “When I started off, I was only nine and a half stone and had nothing to recommend me,” Ring once said. “I knew my limitations and I knew I was away back.”
Even when he started to bulk up, he wasn’t that comfortable playing a physical game, once remarking to Val Dorgan, “Why should I hit anyone when I can outhurl him?”
Later he’d learn to take care off himself as well as anyone. He identified his fighting weight. “I knew that weighing 13 stone and travelling at speed I could take on any player.” He’d train as hard as he’d practise. In the two months leading up to one Munster championship clash with Waterford, he walked 10 miles every day to steel himself for going up against John Keane. After he’d hit as well as outhurled Keane, he’d comment, “My legs were like rocks; I knew I could run forever.”
Now Joe is similarly steeled, physically and mentally. He is a worthy heir to King Henry’s throne, just as Henry has been to Ring’s.
* kieranshannon@eircom.net
