‘Best thing I’ve seen in my life’
“Happy are we one and all; May our lives be full of pleasure; May we rise and never fall.”
That was the theme of the evening in Thurles as a Garda-estimated 30,000+ crowd gathered to welcome home the triumphant team from Sunday’s All-Ireland final in Croke Park, a county en fete, a success-starved hurling stronghold back on top.
All afternoon the crowds had been gathering, all roads leading to this fabled stadium. Such was the traffic it could have been a Munster final, and all the trappings were there; crowd build-up, chip-vans and flag-sellers in position, though with one obvious difference – only one set of colours for sale, the ubiquitous blue-and-gold.
Rain? Yes it was falling, and falling steadily, but as with the team itself in Croke Park the previous afternoon it made no impact, failed to dampen the spirits of an appreciative crowd.
The team travelled from Dublin by train, rolled into Thurles station dead on time, 6.15pm, Liam McCarthy travelling in a place of honour up front with the train-driver, in the company of team captain Eoin Kelly and manager Liam Sheedy.
There they were met by an open-topped bus, travelled the short distance to the stadium with any number of players enjoying themselves up top. In then through the new Dome, back-door to the old stand, to be met by a wall of noise, the pitch covered with umbrella-wielding supporters, both stands also well filled, leaving midfielder Shane McGrath – for once – almost caught for words.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Looking out at a sea of blue-and-gold, now I really appreciate what it means to be from Tipperary.”
Not stuck for words, however, was Eoin Kelly. As if to the manner born Eoin had made a very composed victory speech from the steps of the Hogan Stand on Sunday. But, he says, there was no pre-composition involved. “Just speak from the heart and you can’t go wrong. To be honest with you though, it hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m talking about the game, analysing it, but winning, captaining the team – I haven’t got to grips with that yet.”
Going through the motions but not yet the emotions. That, he says, will come.
“This homecoming, this is the start of it I suppose, but when all this is done and dusted and we get together ourselves, just as a group, we’ll start to realise what we’ve achieved.”
With that realisation, however, will come another – “we’ll realise that yes, we’re All-Ireland champions, but we’re not champions of Munster, and that’s still a prestigious title. I’ve been hurling for ten years with Tipperary, I have three Munster medals – where did the other seven years go? That’s a target for next year.”
One by one the players were introduced to the crowd by super-efficient Tipp PRO Ger Ryan, one cheer bigger than the next. Two of the biggest cheers of the evening, however, were reserved for two of the veterans, three-goal hero Larry Corbett, a local man, and goalkeeper Brendan Cummins.
For Brendan, 16th championship season, 62 championship appearances (fast catching up on Christy Ring), this was only his second All-Ireland medal (also scored his first championship point, a booming 105m free in the first half) – relief.
“Coming back here tonight, seeing this crowd gathered in the stadium, it was worth every second of every minute of every year! You put the head down and train as hard as you can, you win, and it means a lot to the group we have, to our families, but then you see a crowd like this evening and it sinks in, what it means to the whole county.”
For Larry, forget the hat-trick, this was about the team, about Tipperary. “It’s special to win an All-Ireland and come back to your home town but individual performance – means nothing. What good would it be to me if I’d scored three goals and we’d lost? We got onto the bus yesterday morning in Thurles to go to Croke Park with one job to do, get the win. We got that win, and how we got it, who got the scores, that’s only a sideshow.”
Much of the responsibility for that win rests with manager Sheedy, but his job with this team didn’t stop on Sunday. That was merely Tipp’s fourth All-Ireland title since 1971 – Kilkenny have just done that in four years.
“Exactly, and that puts this in perspective. It hurts, to be honest, and that hurt brought us through yesterday. Today is about cherishing the 2010 All-Ireland final win – we beat a top-class team, a team that really raised the standard of hurling over the last decade, and the challenge for us was to rise to that standard – we did that yesterday, thankfully, and surpassed it.
“They’ve made the big breakthrough, won the All-Ireland, but now they’ve got to kick on, stay together. Kilkenny, Galway, Waterford, Cork – there’s a lot of top-class teams going to come back into it again next year. I think though that everyone is aware that this bunch is moving in the right direction.”
No doubt about that, no doubt whatsoever.
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