A good script, but no fairytale finale

I MET a man in Charleville on Saturday, a Cork man, bitterly bemoaning all the predictions from the soothsayers that he had been hearing and reading for the last week, about the outcome of this match.

Kilkenny, we were saying, would win, not a doubt in our collective minds. “Lord God,” he said, “Are ye all scientists or what? Is there not a dreamer or a romantic among ye?”

Well, yesterday in Croke Park, against a Kilkenny team hotly fancied – long before the season even started – to win their fourth All-Ireland title-in-a-row, Waterford nearly made fools of us all. Nearly, because though they did come close, gave their thousands of supporters in the near 62,000-strong crowd reason to dream right up to the final minutes, the dream never really threatened to become reality. That reality, unromantic and all as it might be, is that Kilkenny remain the benchmark in hurling. Waterford came close yesterday, played their part in a cracking contest, but Kilkenny are still champions today, and Waterford are still the nearly-men of hurling. A pity, for the dreamers and the romantics among us, a pity for the players and supporters of Waterford especially, that at a time when they’ve produced a team of such talent, they come up against this Kilkenny super-team.