The fire is truly back in the Yellow Bellies
The kind of glorious summer evening, warm and bathed in a haze of gold, those of us who read newspapers didn’t have in our youth because there was no backdoor and no qualifier matches at provincial venues. The kind of glorious summer evening the youngsters present will be reminiscing about in 50 years’ time, long after those of us who do read newspapers, not to mention newspapers themselves, have gone the way of the dodo.
A full house. The place rockin’. The goals flying in.
Wexford continuing their long march back from obscurity and, even more painful, irrelevance. There were more than some people on the pitch when it was over and for them, there wasn’t a better place in the world to be.
There are many things wrong with this country of ours, but on a night like last Saturday in Nowlan Park, they don’t matter as much. In fact, on a night like last Saturday, they don’t seem to matter at all.
And maybe three quarters of the crowd weren’t from Wexford, but it sure seemed that way. And maybe not every single person among those three quarters was wearing purple and gold, but it sure seemed that way.
And maybe all of this isn’t especially relevant to readers in Munster or particularly important in their eyes, but it’s relevant for hurling and it’s important for hurling.
A thriving Wexford makes the intercounty game healthier, fresher, more interesting, better. They always have.
The superior team won. The slicker, snappier team whose greater cohesion (2-8 of their first-half tally of 2-9 came from play) was founded, understandably, on their recent whirl of match practice.
The move for David Redmond’s goal — a thrust here, a thrust there, then the rapier slice through the middle — could only have been put together by a team on a roll.
Waterford, in contrast, were going straight from freezer to microwave and something was, equally understandably, lost in the process.
Derek McGrath’s men could point to one grossly unfortunate strike against the head. A stonewall close-range free on the blow of half-time went unawarded and moments later Conor McDonald had the ball in the net at the other end: a four-point swing. Overall, however, it was a case of Waterford finding their level. Not quite good enough on the night, not quite good enough this year, yet still a reasonable debut season for McGrath.
That the winners made it hard on themselves came with the territory. They wouldn’t be Wexford if they didn’t. They hit nothing like as many wides as they had against Clare but they hit worse wides, including four spirit-sapping misses from placed balls in the second half. But again, being Liam Dunne’s Wexford of the summer of 2014, they got there in the end. Long-suffering folk from Slaneyside can finally permit themselves to talk hurling once more. And a thousand pikes were flashing at the rising of the moon.
Is there a more inane seanfhocal than “ ”?
Inane because in assuming that encouraging youth is the important bit, it blithely gives no thought to the quality of said encouragement and instruction.
Amid all the coverage of the underlying cause of Germany’s World Cup victory — the change of philosophy and restructuring of the national youth system that followed the embarrassment of Euro 2000 — one aspect has been widely overlooked. What the Germans did was not so much to mol an óige as to mol all types of óige. The long, the short, the tall, the thin, the brawny.
What’s more, it was about mol-ing them the right way. They still wanted big guys like Mats Hummels in defence, but elsewhere they wanted handy little lads who could think around corners and play between the lines, handy little lads of the kind who in the past would have been overlooked on size grounds.
There’s a lesson there for the GAA and it’s a screamingly obvious one. How many young hurlers and footballers fall through the cracks because they’re deemed “too small” at under-14 level and, left to their own devices, are never heard of thereafter? Would every county have seen the potential that Mayo saw in a young Keith Higgins or that Clare divined in Podge Collins and Shane O’Donnell?
Mol an óige. Wisely.
Been saying it all summer and will say it again here. Rio Ferdinand to QPR: it’s the transfer story that won’t happen because it’s just too surrealistically obvious, too heroically stupid, for words.
An ageing, injury-prone player in search of a final payday he doesn’t need and possibly doesn’t even want, the type of individual any club with the remotest pretensions to financial prudence should be running a mile from.
A manager whose interests include horse racing, unconventional financial transactions and the recruitment of ageing players — all diamond geezers, doubtless — he’s worked with at previous clubs on nice little earners.
Lavvly jabbly. (Whatever about Tottenham’s failings in the transfer market in recent years, one part they certainly got right was making sure ’Arry never got his hands on the keys to the sweetshop. Ask a Portsmouth fan.)
A club who have net debts of £177m (€223m) and who the last time they were in the Premier League posted an annual loss of £65m (€82m), a sizeable portion of the outlay on — yes — ageing players who promptly helped get QPR relegated.
QPR have learned their lesson and have a different, leaner financial model now.
Although I haven’t been online since Thursday, I know Rio still can’t possibly have arrived at Loftus Road as I write this. Not even the Premier League is that daft.
Oh, hang on. What’s that you’re saying? Really?
One last incident from Nowlan Park the other night. Only six minutes had gone when Conor McDonald did something that hadn’t been seen at the venue for 15 years. He gained possession, showed his marker, Liam Lawlor, a glimpse of the ball, tossed it over the full-back’s head, collected it on the other side and stuck it over the bar.
It was apt that it should have been McDonald who performed this feat of youthful impudence. As Damian Lawlor relates in his rollicking new book Fields of Fire (subtitle: The Inside Story of Hurling’s Great Renaissance), Liam Griffin was minding his own business one day a couple of years ago when his phone rang. It was none other than Brian Cody, asking him about one of the Wexford minors. Next moment Cody launched into an unprompted panegyric on the hitherto obscure McDonald. “He’s a fair hurler – by God, he’ll be some handful in the years ahead!”
The last time that particular stunt was pulled on a full-back at Nowlan Park, incidentally?
It happened in the 1999 National League meeting of Kilkenny and Wexford. The unfortunate No 3 was Ger Cushe. The brat of a full-forward was a young lad called Shefflin.
