Munster final. No irony needed

IT’S a pity this column doesn’t appear tomorrow. Then we could truly say, with respect to the late Gene Pitney, we’re only 24 hours from Thurles.

As it is we’re only 48 hours from a Munster hurling final between Cork and Tipperary. If that realisation doesn’t quicken your pulse then we’ll probably have to shout “clear” as we charge the paddles.

Still, what is there left to say about an event so traditional it may now be too familiar?

Plenty. The Munster final must be one of the few experiences from 1930s Ireland still freely available in the 21st century; anyone transported from 1936 to Sunday in Thurles would recognise where he was, who was playing. The differences exist in degree, not in kind.

On Sunday people from Cork and Tipperary will go to the spot in Thurles where their parents always went, and where their parents always went to eat their sandwiches.

The peripheral attractions of the Munster hurling final don’t end there. It’s a free-standing experience which exists on its merits, a qualification that’s more of a selling point than first appears. The Munster final doesn’t need to be mediated. It doesn’t need to be taken with some added perspective. Most of all, it doesn’t need ‘context’, like, say, the Ulster football final.

Back when Ulster sides came to Croke Park just to pick up anything the Artane Boys Band dropped on the march around the field we were told the dreary spectacle of northern football had to be seen in the context of the province’s claustrophobic competitiveness, when the evidence suggested simply that bad always beats worse.

Now northern sides have won a few All-Irelands we’re told Clones hosts a feast of tactical sophistication invisible to the untutored southern eye, when the on-field action generally has the look of a box of angry tree-frogs emptied onto a carpet.

You don’t need a Munster final mediated for you. Breandan Ó hEithir said in Jack Lynch’s Ireland there’d be a Munster final every Sunday and two or three on holidays. Sceptics chortle until they actually attend one; then they wonder if two or three every Sunday is anywhere near enough. (To be fair, Ó hEithir’s point was political rather than sporting, and he wrote the greatest GAA book of all time, “Over The Bar”; but as a fan of Galway hurling he obviously had what we would now term transference issues with the Munster championship).

All of the above contribute to the Munster final’s status as probably themost irony-free day out in the calendar. One of the great disasters of modern society is ironic enjoyment- people throwing Eurovision parties to try to show they’re on the cutting edge. We’re enjoying this ironically, they say; look how sophisticated and detached we are, we’re not laughing at something, we’re laughing at the notion of laughing at something.

That’s not how Sunday in Thurles will play out. There are no UN observers at a Munster final; you’re either neutral for us or neutral against us. Cork people will chew their nails about Eoin Kelly all the way up through Fermoy and Kilbeheny and into Horse and Jockey. Tipperary lads will fret about Tom Kenny and Jerry O’Connor even as they’re tapping their feet outside Heuston Station, waiting for another exile to swing in and collect them. That low-level anxiety exists as a background hum until they’re in the stadium, until the first team comes out. Then it simply becomes weapons-grade fear and terror until the final whistle. All the irony in Ireland can’t detach you from that.

And that first item on the charge sheet, familiarity? Since Clare broke through in 1995 every county in Munster but Kerry has won at least one provincial title. A bit of variety in with all that tradition.

Ironically enough.