Joy sustained for another few weeks by All-Ireland replay
Some strange country we all live in. Last Sunday was proof hurling is the national game in whatever place it is that the gods live. The gods dressed the table for the All-Ireland final. Absolutely perfect conditions in Croke Park. The sun was masked by cloud, the day was grand and warm and still. The electricity running around Croker was so special, you could hear it crackle.
And there was a great story. After last year and the summer of new things and novelties the big powers were back in Croke Park ready to kick back against the revolution. We romantics who love the idea of a Clare breakthrough or a Dublin insurgence or a golden era of Laois hurling were going to be hard to please.
Tipp and Kilkenny delivered though. I don’t believe that you can take any two games of hurling and say that this one was better than that one. All games happen in their own time and their own context.
I’d have to say though that in terms of quality and skill and tactical manoeuvring Kilkenny and Tipp produced the most sustained 70 seventy minutes of excellence I have ever seen.
What it turned into was an incredible national occasion. This game, this special game that we play and love just left so many people with smiles on their faces afterwards. A friend who got very bad news about his own health not long ago texted me in the minutes after the game. He was blown away. The match had put a smile on his face and taken the troubles out of his mind for an afternoon. Somebody else told me about a 10-year-old young fella new to these shores and soccer-mad. He couldn’t sit in and watch the Irish soccer match which came on afterwards. Hurling had flipped something in his brain. He had to go out and try hurling there and then. At lunch time he wanted to be Messi. By tea time he was dreaming Richie Hogan. By Tuesday he was working on his weak side. What this game and its players give to this country is immeasurable.
I read the tweets from our people living abroad who wanted to run out into the streets of Manhattan or Melbourne or Mumbai afterwards to tell the world, I read the comments of people in Britain watching a hurling final for the first time, not quite grasping the detail but understanding the beauty.
That was the sort of day last Sunday was. It was a celebration of something that is great and unique about this little island. After the battering we’ve had these past few years, it wasn’t just an escape for one afternoon it was something which made me think that if we can invent and preserve and develop a game as passionate and brilliant as hurling well everything is going to be alright.
What surprised me on Monday was that so many of the headlines chose to respect the traditions of the bellyache brigade, that band of begrudgers who, like the poor, are always with us.
The game was reported in so many headlines as a “windfall.” Various estimates were given as to how much the GAA would be raking in by having another (wink! wink!) drawn final.
Talk about missing the point. We’ve been roughed up and shaken down for years, we’ve had our pockets emptied and our dreams ransacked and we got last Sunday afternoon when we could let out a few mad whoops of celebration letting Berlin or Brussels know that we’re still alive, still kicking and still unique.
What do we do? We reduced it to money. When Barry Kelly threw the ball in last Sunday and I looked down from the press box in the Hogan Stand and I could see at least 20 questions that needed to be answered very quickly. I was transfixed.
Kilkenny had nobody within 30 yards of Tipp’s goal. Backs and forwards were moving all over the place. like in those movies years ago where they’d show dealers milling around like mad in the stock exchange during a crash or a boom. All the movements and transactions made sense only to the few who had been obsessing for weeks about what way they wanted the match ups to go, about how to make them go the way they wanted them to go and what to settle for if the first choice match up was being refused.
There was all that movement and there was Barry Kelly himself. The best teams at this level are expert at sussing out within a few minutes the priorities that the ref has brought with him for the day. I thought Kelly did well. He laid the parameters down early. The game could be tough but there’d be no nonsense, no taking advantage of the ref. Both teams got the message. No man will ever referee a game of hurling without making mistakes. It’s a tough job. But I thought Barry Kelly in setting the tempo of the game and the rules that went with it contributed towards the flow and spectacle.
And there were the questions the goalies had to answer with their early puc outs. Especially Darren Gleeson. What am I going to be allowed today in terms of variety? Where are they pressuring us? Where am I going to be able to pressure them? Do I need to draw some of the heat out of this already or do we drive on full throttle.
And each player had questions to answer. Kilkenny have far more fellas who have been around the block than Tipp have. If Tipp didn’t settle quick Kilkenny had the ruthlessness to dismantle them. The answers coming back for Tipp were encouraging. I watched Cathal Barrett, a young fella who’d had a big target drawn on him when Kilkenny named their team for last Sunday. In those circumstances you see what a young man is made off. Barrett came out as if he and all belonging to him had been insulted. He tore into the game. If Tipp didn’t take a lift from that, nothing would encourage them.
As the questions were answered and the frantic tactical stuff settled a bit the game established its own pattern. Kilkenny had altered their style of play this year but when it comes to the business end they are still the same. They look to get the overlap every time they attack. They know their own patterns and abilities so well by now that they can be sure that if they just keep doing what they do best goals will come.
Tipp worked differently, changing the direction and style of the attack as often as they could. Sometimes they’d play the big ball into Seamus Callanan more often they’d take Kilkenny on by playing the ball through their lines. They did this with amazing variety of movement, stretching the Kilkenny backs around the place.
In a drawn game you’ll always look back and see moments when either team rode their luck a bit. Both goalies did well and looked relaxed even though Darren did have one scare with a mis-control early on. I wouldn’t fault Eoin Murphy for the Bonner goal. That sort of shot that goes underneath you is hard to stop. He reacted well though. Tipp won two marginal penalties and hit neither very well. If they had been given as 21-yard frees in hindsight they might have just stuck either or both over the bar. Kilkenny’s first goal when TJ (whose run of form is incredibly at this stage) and Richie Power got the overlap right at last was a great score but Darren Gleeson stood up well to another chance coming in from his right and the ball came off his body. To Tipp’s credit when they did concede that first goal they did exactly the right thing.
They came right back at Kilkenny.
No time for mourning. Tipp seemed to have a rota of players taking their turn playing on Brian Hogan, preventing hims settling. One minute he’d be marking Noel McGrath, the next Lar Corbett was out on the 45forty five doing his thing. A great mark of Eamon O’Shea’s management was the frequency that Lar came into this game. The pressure that sometimes has weighed down on Lar was off but the self-belief was all there and he had a license to express himself. His passing was sublime. Lar recognised times have changed, the space he got for that snapshot which came back off the woodwork wouldn’t have been available against Kilkenny a few years ago. He still took a hit for his troubles but it would have been a unique sort of goal to see a Kilkenny team concede.
What I loved was the way the game had different passages and so many storylines. Seamus Callanan on JJ was worth watching on its own. JJ brought every trick he has learned down the years to bear on Callanan. At one point he shepherded Callanan on the Cusack Stand side so well that when the forward was forced to take his point instead of drive towards goal I saw Eoin Murphy in the Kilkenny goal applaud JJ’s persistence.
Last Sunday though was the day that Callanan ended any doubts anybody had about him. He looks to me like a corner forward playing in a full forward’s body. For a big man his control and shooting from around the field while on the run is incredible. Next day Tipp should feel free to let him wander even more if he is inclined to and maybe run at JJ some more.
In the second half the tactical moves were all of greater value. As the clock ticked on a shift one way or the other had the possibility to decide the game. Lar had that purple patch where he looked 10 years younger. Then Kilkenny shifted Richie Hogan to centre forward and they got a major pay-out.
Padraic Maher had been playing very well at centre back for Tipp, not just in terms of his defensive presence but in his distribution which was excellent. Suddenly he had Richie playing him like a kid plays with a yo-yo. Sometimes the string between the hand (Hogan) and the yo-yo (Maher — and that’s not meant as any sort of insult) would be stretched just through Hogan’s unique movement. He’d head towards traffic with Maher in tow and then pull off out in a different direction and he might be 20 yards away by the time Maher would start closing the gap again.
It was cruel to see a defender who had had such an excellent game being tortured while Tipp came up with a solution. Hogan started adding up the points after his name and Padraic Maher was torn between doing his regular duties and chasing this cat about the place.
Back in the day Hogan’s cousin DJ was known as Dodger but Hogan is an Artful Dodger in the true sense. He wanders around picking pockets. He could shake your hand, have the wristwatch off your arm and have vanished into a crowd before any of the hands on the watch had moved. The next day Maher needs to know Mickey Cahill will be following Hogan wherever he goes as if they were handcuffed together. Cahill has the chops to play midfield and he has the marking to follow Hogan if he shifts off into the forwards.
As soon as the game was over last Sunday we wandered around grinning and wondering about the next day.
There was a school of thought that Kilkenny have more room for improvement. That’s a glass half-full position. If it turns out that the glass is actually half-empty we’ll look back and think that Kilkenny had more players who couldn’t deliver. What to do about Henry Shefflin is a question Kilkenny will have to deal with. I didn’t understand the idea of introducing Henry for the last three minutes for a token lap of honour. Were Kilkenny saying that they have moved on? Were they telling Henry that he hasn’t got it anymore? I’d imagine from what I know of the man that if Kilkenny believe he hasn’t got the game anymore to make a decisive contribution he’d prefer not get a pat on the head and three minutes. Then again in terms of a reply still to come what happened last Sunday will have him tearing at the leash.
Kilkenny didn’t get a lot wrong but their half back line wasn’t as terrifying as in the old days. A Tipp player getting past the half back line wouldn’t be flinching or waiting for the punishment from further inside. Kilkenny need to send Colin Fennelly to some ruthlessness classes. He has the pace and intent to be a goalscorer in the Fast Eddie style but last week he went back to laying too many balls off.
As for Tipp. I think they need to send Bonner Maher to one of the best stables on Ballydoyle and have him pampered and rested like any other thoroughbred before a big occasion. He needs to work on his handpassing off his left hand, a tiny glitch. They need to settle on a plan for Richie Hogan and the need to do one more really important thing. Invest in earplugs.
On Monday I was heading home with that morning-after-the-day-(and night) before feel and I stopped for a coffee to revive myself. As it happened some of the Tipp team had stopped at the same spot. Had a couple of words and then bumped into an old guy from Tipp who was still buzzing and talking to some of the lads.
“Isn’t it great ” he said ” we’ve three weeks more of the craic.”
I knew what he meant. The end of the hurling year is like a small death for anybody who loves the game. Getting a few weeks extra lease on the season is brilliant. But I felt like telling him to keep the notion to himself. Tipp is a hurling place and its people are hurling people but there’s nowhere like Tipp for celebrating the good days too well and picking over the bad days too ruthlessly.
Managers in most serious counties knew exactly what Paidà Ó Sé was talking about when he made his “animals” comment about Kerry supporters. Tipp won’t need reminding that their performance last Sunday was worthy of celebration but that celebration shouldn’t be allowed til they bring home the silver, if they bring it home. Collapse the next day and the knives will be out.
Tipp have won nothing yet. Being brilliant in a drawn game is fine. If they take three weeks of back slaps and congratulations from their own it won’t count for much come the replay if they lose. Up the road in Kilkenny there’s no adulation about being part of a great draw. If Kilkenny win the replay by a point on a score of 0-7 to 0-8 they know that will be the time for backslaps and high fives. Seconds out and eyes on the prize...
Twitter: @donalogc
