Mayo the hot tip to save summer
unny how history repeats itself. The last time Waterford put themselves forward for an All-Ireland senior hurling final was back in 2008. As will be the case again this coming weekend, they had to vie for attention with a Republic of Ireland side that had business with Georgia in the shape of a World Cup qualifier.
Giovanni Trapattoni’s lads had already opened up their campaign with a 2-1 defeat of the Eastern Europeans in a game played in Mainz the day before, when a group of them walked into an Irish bar in the German city to take in the Déise’s first decider in just short of 50 years.
Unfortunately, half the Irish press pack was already there.
There was a time when the two species could have mingled comfortably, but that day had long since gone the way of trendy mullets and black boots. With no such thing as GAAGO and nothing like the number of illegal streams available now — don’t do it kids! — the players had to sit there nursing their water while us scribes did our best not to neck the beers.
Awkward enough at the beginning, you could only feel for the likes of John O’Shea and Stephen Hunt, both of them proud Waterford men. Those guys had to sit there for the entirety of the 70 minutes as Kilkenny inflicted almost unprecedented damage and in the knowledge that they probably couldn’t be seen to walk out while their county team imploded.
It’s a scene that popped to mind again this week. Not just with Waterford looking to erase that memory against Galway on Sunday, but because of the reaction to events at HQ last Sunday, when Dublin mopped the floor with Tyrone in the second All-Ireland football semi-final and prompted fears of a similar beating for Mayo come the decider.
There are parallels to be drawn. The most obvious is that, like Mayo next month, Waterford were coming up against a side that was redefining greatness, though not everyone had cottoned on to it at the time. Henry Shefflin wrote last weekend about how, with all the attention on their neighbours, no-one spent long mulling over the fact that the Cats were licking their lips at the prospect of a three-in-a-row.
The superlatives for Kilkenny after the game, and in the years that followed, made up for any slow uptake and Brian Cody could have been describing today’s Dublin footballers when he spoke of his side after that Waterford drubbing.
“I never have a worry whether the players will turn up, or whether they’ll perform, or whether they’ll put themselves in a position where they could win the game. They were outstanding. They were everything you could ever ask for. They were a team, they were together, they were hugely for each other.”
Dublin’s consistency of excellence is yet another example of a terrible beauty as far as everyone else is concerned. The expectation after their filleting of Tyrone is that they will write the final sentence on Gaelic football’s first three-in-a-row since Mick O’Dwyer’s Kerry added the last line of lore to their bewitching story in 1986.
Is it really such a fait accompli, though?
When Waterford fell so far short to Kilkenny that time it had been four years since the sides had met in the championship. For all the romance about the Deise’s duels with that excellent Cork side in the noughties, Kilkenny were the decade’s ultimate standard bearers and Davy Fitzgerald’s men went into that decider all but oblivious to the standard required.
Consider this.
“I think we had a good idea of what they were going to do but you never know the ferocity with which they’re going to come at you until you’re toe-to-toe with it. We never experienced that in any of the league games we played over the years with this particular group of players. This was a different level today. They had a real energy and drive.
“It’s something we hadn’t seen face-to-face. We saw them in the league and that’s a different time of the year and they’re at a different stage of their training regime. We didn’t experience the ferocity that they would bring to it. You can’t experience that until you’re toe-to-toe with it and I have to compliment them that they were very, very up for this game.”
That’s not Fitzgerald talking nine years ago. It’s Mickey Harte last Sunday.
For Tyrone, it had been their first time facing the Dubs in the championship since 2011.
Gavin wasn’t even manager at the time. Tyrone basically went into the hottest of cauldrons cold last week and it showed in every facet of their underwhelming performance. Mayo? They will feel everything they have done and been through since 2011 has been a warm-up act.
Already nine games into their summer campaign, the guts of Stephen Rochford’s side know what it is to beat Dublin, Kerry and Jim McGuinness’ Donegal under the most unforgiving of championship microscopes. Losing to all three in the same period merely means they are better attuned again to the standards required.
Have faith: Mayo have saved many a summer lately. Don’t bet against them saving themselves this time, too.
brendan.obrien@examiner.ie
@ByBrendanOBrien
