Put your hands together please...
Today you can see who won tactical innovation of the year and learn the final indignity suffered by Tipperary after their All-Ireland semi-final loss.
You will also find out - the big one - who took home the Padraic Maher Annual Trophy. Men have died for less. They've certainly dyed for less.
When it comes to individual performances of the year we all have a tendency to start at the end of the season and work backwards. But Liam Watson scored 3-7 in the All-Ireland club final in March when his Loughgiel side beat Coolderry . Remember that?
Come on. You have to ask? Even before last Sunday we had someone describe the four-man farce witnessed in the Tipperary-Kilkenny All-Ireland semi-final as being like ‘a dog following a friendly lady-dog’. Only those weren’t his exact terms.
A couple of years ago an intercounty manager referred to the ‘learnings’ yielded by a heavy defeat. Before this year’s final one team mentor referred to ‘learnings’ twice. Twice! The word is ‘lessons’, gentlemen. Enough of the nouning verbs already.
The Sunday Game’s searing investigation of Clare manager’s Davy Fitzgerald’s bad language in a Munster championship game. Des Cahill said they had been “asked to investigate”. Dear God. Bad language on the sideline? Coming soon, a set of placards with Down With This Sort Of Thing to be waved at all intercounty games.
Not only did Tipperary lose to Kilkenny by 18 points in the championship, one of their players came home to find someone – who had presumably been bedecked in black and amber – had kicked the wing mirror off his car. “And it was parked up against the wall,” added the player. “He had to get around the side to give it a shot.” If nothing else, they’re thorough in Kilkenny.
Just after Kilkenny-Dublin ended in Nowlan Park in this year’s league there was a confrontation between a supporter and Dublin boss Anthony Daly.
The Clareman shrugged it off: we understand the term used was “an oul ape”, which sounds anthropologically correct.
Langton’s of Kilkenny is the market leader by some distance when it comes to pre-All-Ireland press night food.
Galway decided not to take them on at their own game and produced light finger food at their presser in Loughrea before the drawn final.
Tasty, but not as welcoming as The Hungry Bookworm in the town, which serves wine with second-hand paperbacks.
Why yes, I will chance an Albarino with Joseph Wambaugh’s The Choirboys, thank you so much!
We’re giving this one to the Waterford jersey launch, at which the hurlers who were to speak to the media left without, er, speaking to the media.
Everyone ended up gathered around a phone and listening to Michael ‘Brick’ Walsh talk on speaker, like the hurling correspondents of Pravda.
There we were, strolling into a Limerick press evening and noting the lack of press representatives apart from . . . hang on a second.
The press night at which this writer was the only press man remains a cherished highlight, and the Limerick lads were great company if a little reticent in tackling the sandwiches.
Gavin O’Mahony tweeted later that yours truly had indeed been present: “And there’s not many can say that.”
This goes to The Sunday Game for asking Donal O’Grady why James Skehill didn’t give away a penalty after his All-Ireland final save from Colin Fennelly.
Donal did well not to exhale in exasperation before outlining that it had been a technical foul, etc.
Anthony Nash of Cork was in the lead for a superb tip-over from Joe Canning in the All-Ireland semi-final, but Skehill’s full-length from Fennelly, mentioned above, takes the palm. Presence of mind to flop down on the ball afterwards, too. Why wasn’t that a penalty again?
A bauble for Limerick boss John Allen, as affable and laid-back as he was when steering Cork. Would that there were more etc etc.
Early on in the All-Ireland semi-final Conor Lehane of Cork bore down on the Galway goal with goal on his mind.
Enter Fergal Moore in a serious hurry from stage right to bury the Corkman and erase the threat. A step too late or too early and it would have been a red card; as it was, his crushing challenge put down the proverbial marker.
Tipperary’s management team went after their championship exit. Two-thirds of the Waterford management team was gone before their championship entrance.
Antrim lost their manager halfway through the season. Laois lost theirs. Fancy this line of work?
Darren Sweetnam of Cork is likely to become unpopular among GAA writers if he insists on playing rugby well, thus sparking a string of ‘will he go off to the dark side’ stories at a time of the year when hurling correspondents traditionally have a light snooze (although to be fair to the Corkman, he rather settled that issue yesterday if you look elsewhere in this newspaper).
We now understand, however, that Walter Walsh of Kilkenny is also someone given to the odd bout of egg-chasing. Gentlemen, this is not how it is done . . .
After the Tipp-Kilkenny All-Ireland semi-final your correspondent went to Heuston Station for the train home.
The first sight on offer was a Tipp supporter being held face down on the station concourse by two security guards.
The trip south went downhill from there, with some forthright physical challenges being issued by passengers to each other (“What would you say if I bate the s--t out of you?”).
Matters quietened down a good deal after the carriages decanted in Thurles and Limerick Junction and we were able to emerge from a cramped cower behind the laptop screen.
I’m driving the next day if you want a spin.
Kilkenny boss Brian Cody likes to emphasise the point with an extended index digit. Pictorial evidence from the drawn All-Ireland final supports this thesis.
Galway boss Anthony Cunningham didn’t delay in withdrawing Conor Cooney from the drawn All-Ireland final. Nine minutes the Galway substitute lasted.
Asked after the drawn All-Ireland if Michael Rice had a chance of being back in three weeks, Brian Cody said he probably wouldn’t be back in three months.
Here’s hoping the Cats midfielder makes a full recovery from a smashed digit that took seven screws to put back together.
Joe Canning’s goal in the drawn All-Ireland final was the one you dreamed of as a child – getting the ball 30 yards out, beating one player, then another, then another, then slapping it home to the roar of the crowd. See? Dreams can come true.
Henry Shefflin gets the sentimental vote – and a good deal of the hard-nosed realistic vote, to be honest. He held Kilkenny together in the drawn All-Ireland final, after all.
On balance, though, we think Paul Murphy was better than anyone else over the course of the year. You have to give them corner-backs some love from time to time.
A colleague interviewing a young player was interrupted by an official advising the youngster to: “Tell them nothing.”
You stay beautiful, baby.
At the (second) Kilkenny press night Brian Cody was confronted by a row of journalists seated on one side of a table — who were instantly compared by an art-lover in the room to Leonardo Da Vinci’s apostles in The Last Supper. “Could you pick out a Judas?” Cody was asked. “Not from the people here,” was the answer. Cue some furrowed brows as everyone tried to work out who, then, he had in mind.
A historic first here as the above prize goes not to the Tipperary wing-back – who insisted it be named after him in perpetuity, however – but to Donal Og Cusack for an uncompromising mohawk-type effort (check out that Foyle speech on Youtube).
