NBA playoffs not the only place ‘where amazing happens’
The past couple of weeks the NBA didn’t just treat the wider world to the Donald Sterling controversy but the best first-round playoffs in history. Five of the eight match-ups went to a Game Seven. Two of the others were won by the lower seed. So when you’ve seen the Oklahoma Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies bring each other into overtime in four consecutive games, or Damian Lillard clapping his hands demanding that inbound pass with 0.8 seconds left and draining that three-pointer to send Portland into delirium and the Houston Rockets on holidays, you’d understandably think when it comes to consistent high and late sporting drama there’s nothing like the NBA and its playoffs.
But there is.
Hurling, and its national finals, especially those between Kilkenny and Tipperary.
Think of the national deciders the game has had recently. The 2012 All-Ireland final went to a replay. So did the 2013 All-Ireland, both games outright classics. Then you had the league final Kilkenny and Tipp served us up last year which was trumped by this year’s version, the equal of the other overtime spring classic the counties conjured up in 2009.
Combine all that with their recent All-Ireland jousts along with the 5-20 to 5-14 shoot-out in Nowlan Park in March and you can only echo that line the NBA popularised years ago: I love this game!
Another recent hurling rivalry that routinely offered up such compelling drama was Cork-Waterford but it had one asterisk: the fact Waterford never won the ultimate slightly detracted from the rivalry’s greatness.
Similarly there will be critics with reservations about the magnificence of the current Kilkenny-Tipp saga: a rivalry implies both sides are bordering on equals and how can you say that’s the case when Kilkenny have won eight of the last nine clashes?
It hasn’t been as one-sided as that though, not even the 2012 All Ireland semi-final: Tipp were ahead at half time that day. In fact only once in their last six clashes with Kilkenny have Tipp trailed at the break — last year’s league final — and even then by only two points.
Of course it would have been huge psychologically for Tipperary to have edged out Kilkenny on Sunday. But it wasn’t huge psychologically that they lost which was why Eamon O’Shea was uncharacteristically prickly by any such inference. Not only does he know that his team were close last Sunday but that they’re close to doing something big in the summer.
Padraic Maher’s switch to full back instigates memories of Seamus Moynihan’s relocation in 2000: a swashbuckling half-back taking one for the team. Maher will hardly be stuck minding the house for four years like Moynihan but he’ll be staying there for at least one and just like the Kerryman might have some major team and individual awards to show for that initial season there.
Brendan Maher at six with his blend of steel and style is another that evokes Moynihan comparisons. There is still some fine-tuning to do in that Tipp rearguard, such as their goalline defending for penalties for one, but when you consider the consistency of Michael Cahill, the emergence of Cathal Barrett and James Barry and that players of the tenacity of Paddy Stapleton and Conor O’Brien are now fighting to make it back into that starting line-up, the defensive crisis of last month seems like the joke of today.
Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher’s contribution may or may not yet be duly appreciated but what was certainly underestimated was his marginal impact and circumstances last year. He’d just joined the army, a new regimen that seriously restricted the amount of time he got to train and hurl, which seriously affected his touch, confidence and the effectiveness of the entire Tipperary attack. This year he is back to his busy, bulldozing best.
Tipp will still need less fitful contributions from a couple of other forwards, and/or a few more to come into the rotation but Niall O’Meara’s dash and Seamus Callanan’s renaissance will have enthused O’Shea.
The pair of them had it tough last Sunday, mind, especially Callanan, but look at who he was up against. JJ Delaney has now won eight league finals on the field of play to go with his eight All-Irelands. Incredible.
Richie Hogan has to be the most underestimated big-game player in hurling. Against Tipp alone he’s now scored 1-10 in the 2009 league final, that wonder goal in the 2011 All-Ireland, along with six points from play last Sunday. He also notched a goal against them in the 2006 All-Ireland U21 final to bring the tie to a replay which Kilkenny would win.
Another key man that day was TJ Reid. Last Sunday he and Hogan combined for 2-17, most memorably for that winning point. Whatever about from Brian Cody’s playbook it seemed like one straight from the 1980s Boston Celtics’: Larry Bird inbounds to Robert Parish, slips away to take the return pass, then nails the match winner.
But the NBA playoffs isn’t the only place ‘where amazing happens’. It happens in hurling too — and the beauty of it is its playoffs are about to enfold as well.
