Kilkenny fear factor melts away in a boiling cauldron

Over the last three weeks, everyone raved about the quality of the Cork-Tipperary match but Saturday night’s game appealed to me a lot more, writes Anthony Daly.

Harry Kehoe of Wexford in action against Kilkenny players, left to right, Lester Ryan, Conor Fogarty, and Paul Murphy, during the Leinster GAA Hurling Senior Championship Semi-Final match between Wexford and Kilkenny at Wexford Park in Wexford. Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

I wasn’t in Wexford Park on Saturday evening. We were waking Mickey McNamara, a great Clarecastle GAA and greyhound man, who we buried yesterday morning. I would love to have been there to sample the partisan and electric atmosphere but you still got that sense off the TV that it was a boiling cauldron of ferocity and intensity.

Over the last three weeks, everyone raved about the quality of the Cork-Tipperary match but Saturday night’s game appealed to me a lot more. The tribal intensity, the thunderous tackling, the intrigue of the match-ups, the absolute ferocity of how both teams stood in the middle of the ring and just kept swinging, landing haymakers and uppercuts with every alternate punch.