Cha ready for redemption

FOR Cha Fitzpatrick and his colleagues on the Ballyhale Shamrocks hurling team who take the field in Croke Park this afternoon against Portumna, February 22, 2009 is a day of infamy in this proud and hurling-mad Kilkenny parish.

It was a day of humiliation for a club with one of the finest records in club hurling history. That afternoon, in Thurles, in front of a heaving crowd, they took the field with hopes high. Two years earlier they had been All-Ireland champions and were optimistic that they could knock Portumna — the reigning champions — off that perch and reclaim the title for themselves.

Oh, how they fell. 2-2 to zip behind after five cyclonic minutes, Ballyhale clawed back some respectability by the break to trail 3-7 to 1-7. Another whirlwind nine minutes, however and another 2-2 conceded sucked the life out of their fight. They lost by seven points, but for a team that takes its representative duties so seriously (the club, the parish, all the generations that have gone before, Kilkenny, Leinster), this one left a sense of shame, of dishonour. Little wonder then that this was a day Cha never wanted to re-visit, but re-visit it he did, and it wasn’t any prettier second time round.