ENDA MCEVOY: Attack key to Tipp bridging the gap
It’s a sprint, not a marathon. It’s knockout, not league. Even the stateliest of cruise liners can be holed, as Galway proved last summer and as Galway and/or Cork will have to prove again this summer if the duo of May 5 are not also to be the dance partners of September 8.
Therein lies such appeal as the coming championship holds. That somewhere along the way Kilkenny or Tipperary will hit a couple of bum notes on the same afternoon their opponents hurl two levels above themselves. “We only have to be lucky once,” etc.
If it was a better contest than it was a spectacle, last Sunday emphasised nonetheless the task that awaits the field. Tipperary deployed a five-man forward line and, even if they never threatened to win, still hit 0-20. How many other counties could manage the same? As for Kilkenny, they did what Brian Cody’s Kilkenny do. The whistle blows in the dawn light and out of the trenches they pour, fixing bayonets. Over the top and up and at ‘em. Weight of numbers, heavier ordnance and hunger for victory combine to achieve the rest.
That said, it’s hard not to avoid the conclusion that this was a reconnaissance trip for Tipp. Siting Noel McGrath at midfield was a declaration they’d come not to prosecute all-out war but rather to examine – without actually testing – the enemy’s defences. Hence, in part, Eoin Murphy not having to make a single save.
In the circumstances such reticence was a mistake. Minus Shefflin, Power and Reid, the champions were never going to shoot the lights out. An entirely rhetorical question at this stage, but had Tipp got Kilkenny’s start would they have been pulled back? By a home forward line that included two midfielders? Clearly the McGrath gambit was a success. Then again, with a player of such poise and culture and sleight of wrist, how could it not have been? Whether McGrath and Brendan Maher constitute the county’s optimum midfield pairing will be one of the more interesting questions of the summer. But here’s a prediction. If Tipp are to win the All-Ireland it’s Maher rather than McGrath who’ll have to be Hurler of the Year.
The losers’ implosion up front demonstrated the continued importance to their cause of Patrick Maher. Maher may have butchered that chance in the first half, but at least he bustled his way into the right place to butcher it. Not too many other Tipperary forwards were bustling any place. And the qualities Brian O’Meara brings to the table – the ability to offer a jumping-off point for attacks and to stretch the opposing defence both ways – were illustrated by his very absence.
If they didn’t know it beforehand they know it now: Tipperary cannot afford a single passenger in the forward line. Every day Kilkenny go out they’re a paean to the power of honest toil. Eoin Larkin and Richie Hogan were their least effective attackers six days ago, but nobody could accuse them of not putting in a shift.
Thus it goes in the house that Cody built. Laborare est orare (to work is to pray): the Rule of Benedict. Laborare est hurlare: the Rule of Brian.
Fight the next encounter on the battlefield of Kilkenny’s choice again and Tipperary will lose again. Ergo they’ll try and fight it on the battlefield of their own choosing. The aim for Eamon O’Shea – not the aim, in fact, but the imperative, because there is no way around this – is to rebuild and update the attacking kaleidoscope that so undressed Kilkenny in 2010. And given Sunday’s systems failure, either John O’Dwyer or Jason Forde will be required to make a big step up in double time.
O’Shea’s task has been made all the more pressing by the ongoing refurbishment of the MacCarthy Cup holders’ panel. Look at the sheer size of Kilkenny’s new or newish recruits: Kieran Joyce, Walter Walsh, Lester Ryan, even Eoin Murphy. Coincidence or serendipity? It is certainly not the former.
Cody continues to prefer a good big ‘un to a good small ‘un, a restatement of the enduring lesson he learned from watching Loughnane’s Clare. Nice handy stickmen – the PJ Delaneys, the Charlie Carters – were no longer good enough for Kilkenny and never would be again. You gotta fight for your right to party.
And so, to a fanfare of silence, the championship is almost upon us. The gap between Kilkenny and Tipp looks bridgeable. The gap between the pair of them and the pack does not.
