Superb Shamrocks justify bookies’ belief

NORMAL service was resumed in Croke Park on Saturday, right down to the anthem being interrupted.

However, hurling fans had little to enthuse about in a one-sided club final which Ballyhale Shamrocks won pulling up. After Cheltenham, backers would have warmed to the chances of an upset in a two-horse race, but the Kilkenny side more than justified the bookies’ trust.

Unlike the footballing curtain-raiser, this game was decided long before the final whistle. Early sparring gave Shamrocks a slight lead, though if Johnny Loughlin had kept his first-minute effort a couple of feet lower Loughrea could have had a goal to start them off. As it was, they didn’t avail of Shamrocks’ early wides. The Kilkenny champions hit three in the first four minutes, though their manager Maurice Aylward wasn’t overly concerned: “I wasn’t worried at the start — we had a few wides, the radar wasn’t there, but at least we were winning the ball. It was only a matter of time before forwards like that would come right.”

He was right. There was a general crispness to Ballyhale’s picking and striking, and if Cha Fitzpatrick and Henry Shefflin weren’t dominating, they still contributed. Fitzpatrick’s industry and clever handpassing helped to link play for Shamrocks, while Shefflin seems to have mastered yet another skill, deflecting long deliveries onwards towards team-mates without actually pulling on or catching the ball.

It’s like The Who used to say: a pinball wizard’s got such a supple wrist.

On 20 minutes the industrious TJ Reid galloped in from the left; he seemed to have lost possession but improvised a drop-shot even as the ball was going away from him.

“I was running through in the first half and the ball got flicked out of my hand,” recalled Reid later. “I pulled on it and lucky enough, it went into the net.”

Luck had nothing to do with it. Reid’s strike gave Shamrocks five points to spare at the break, and their fortunes continued to improve after half-time: Henry Shefflin won a 65, and when he dropped the ball in the square, TJ’s brother Patrick fielded and goaled cleverly.

It was no accident that Shefflin, the Hurler of the Year, was instrumental in the second-half goal, by the way. He’d won possession with a surgeon’s deftness on the Loughrea 21 but showed the strength of a stevedore to withstand a hefty challenge and win the 65. Shakespeare differentiated between war and the rumour of war, and now there is Shefflin — and the rumour of Shefflin.

When he drifted out to the wing and away from the play during the game Loughrea defenders pointed at him and urged others to cover, which opened the way for other Ballyhale attackers.

Loughrea manager Pat O’Connor’s admission after the game echoed that stick-or-twist dilemma.

“We were saying all the week that there was no point in concentrating on Cha and Henry, because someone else would pop up and do the damage then.”

And thus it proved. Loughrea had managed just two second-half scores — one point and a 56th-minute goal — when TJ Reid offered a remake of his first-half goal (“I wasn’t planning it, it just happened; both times I was trying to burst through and the ball got away from me,”).

Afterwards Pat O’Connor was downbeat: “We were delighted with the start we got. We’d be disappointed with the (sideline) decision leading up to the first Shamrocks goal, we felt Damien McClearn was taken out of it, but we won’t dwell on that.

“In the early stages there was a bit of nerves, and when we got the chance to turn the screw on Ballyhale a bit we didn’t do it.

“When they got the chance they did.”

It was a disappointing game which left spectators taking solace in the odd glint of quality — Cha Fitzpatrick’s unearthly ball control on the Cusack Stand sideline in the 48th minute illuminated the afternoon — but the Kilkenny side won’t be too bothered about that. They could claim with some justification to have served up several seasons’ worth of entertainment in their epic semi-final victory over Toomevara, anyway.

Cabinet-makers in the Ballyhale-Knocktopher-Knockmoylan region can expect a busy couple of months as trophies of all kinds are accommodated, and perhaps one should be awarded to the former principal of Ballyhale NS.

Nine of the first 15 on Saturday namechecked Joe Dunphy as the biggest influence on their careers.

Just in case you think the other six have gone Hollywood, they cited family members. Then again, Kilkenny hurling has always been about getting the fundamentals right.