The Booker and the prize as Canning on his own

THIS COLUMN bows to no man in its admiration for all things Tipperary. Clonmel Chardonnay. Liberty Square. Horse and Jockey. The list goes on and on, and is now joined by The Book.

Our love affair with the Premier took a temporary nosedive last Saturday when we tried to cross the Semple Stadium pitch after the Waterford-Offaly game (longstanding tradition usually includes ‘hallowed turf’ at this point).

No sooner had our feet landed on the sideline when a beefy hand landed on the shoulder and a rich Thurles accent asked what in the name of God we thought we were doing, etc.

Production of a press card sparked the reported response Moses had when waving his staff on the banks of the Red Sea, and the rest of the stewards quickly took up the chorus.

“Let this man through, he’s with The Book!”

“What? The Book? Hi, hi, let this man across quick!”

“The Book? Why didn’t you say so?”

And so on. At one point we were tempted to ask for a sedan chair in which to be carried across, waving to our loyal subjects, but in the end we decided to hoof it along with everybody else.

An hour and a half later the stewards gave up the ghost, when Cork supporters streamed onto the field following their side’s extraordinary win over Galway.

It’s hard to describe the atmosphere to anyone who wasn’t there: some Cork players and backroom staff said the victory was sweeter than an All-Ireland, an impression reinforced by the hundreds of people in red and white singing ‘The Banks’ outside the Semple Stadium tunnel afterwards.

There was no prize on offer, but that didn’t matter. Just about everyone in Thurles accepted immediately that they’d been at an incredible sports event.

AND a huge part of that experience was the performance of one of the Galway players.

All this week the men in maroon have been castigated for their lack of support for Joe Canning, criticism which seems a little unfair to us. When you have a player giving a career-defining display then you get the ball to him as quickly and as often as you can, surely, and that’s what Galway tried to do.

And Canning was in awesome form last Saturday night. For brawn, take his first goal. For accuracy and quick thinking, take his second goal — it’s common sense to aim a hurling penalty at the player on the line who’s not likely to have his eye in, like a substitute.

However, it takes something special to be able to execute perfectly in your first real championship game to that degree.

For calmness, take your pick of any of Canning’s handpasses, one of which set up that late first-half penalty. For sheer outrageousness, that sideline cut from halfway out the field.

The quality of his performance didn’t end at the final whistle, either. Canning stayed out on the field signing autographs for as long as anybody wanted one, and then he came in and faced the television cameras.

After all of that was finished, only then was he free to walk back down the corridor to the Galway dressing-room. The photograph which captured that walk is open to several different interpretations.

First there was the sheer contrast in colours, the interplay of maroon, red, grey and green. Then there was the body language and the architecture: the slumped shoulders and the arching concrete, the springy carpet and the receding shadows, with the dressing-room door looming at the corridor’s end.

Most striking was the fact that Canning was alone. The Galway team and backroom staff were on the far side of that door, preparing to leave in funereal silence; the man who’d carried them to the brink of victory was outside on his own.

As performances go it takes another Tipperary expression: the finest.

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