Is hurling 2010 already set in stone?
TWO rounds into the Hurling League and what news on the Rialto? Tipp losing their opening brace of fixtures, not unduly surprisingly in the circumstances. Kilkenny and Galway winning theirs: scarcely a surprise either. Cork beating Offaly and coming from eight points down at half-time to very nearly get a result at Nowlan Park, a fightback that may have implications but — and we’ll get to this in a minute — may not. Dublin doing rather nicely, Waterford ditto. Wexford already fighting a rearguard action.
Elsewhere Limerick comfortably beat Clare in the first of the two matches that will matter in Division 2, proof that Donal O’Grady has speedily imposed the kind of riar agus eagar on his adopted county that one associates with teams coached by An tÚasal O’G. And a couple of weekends ago, Jedward became the least welcome visitors to Croke Park the day of a Dublin/Tipperary game since the Black and Tans. If Declan Ryan needed an excuse in the aftermath of defeat, this was a perfectly valid one.
As of the moment we’re looking at a Kilkenny-Galway showdown on May 1, with Dublin and Waterford possessing outside chances of being there.
Cork wouldn’t mind being there but may have been scuppered by Richie Hogan’s late free last Sunday week. Tipperary don’t need to be there. The rest of them won’t be. Galway and Kilkenny in May, then, to be followed by Tipperary and Kilkenny in September.
Is 2011 already set in stone? Digging beneath the topsoil provides one further pointer. On foot of the “circumstances” referred to above (the long and luxuriant winter they’d had, Eoin Kelly’s wedding the day beforehand, the dismal Saturday night that was in it at Semple Stadium, injuries), Tipp’s defeat by Kilkenny in the competition opener was easily understandable. With this small asterisk: All-Ireland champions should wear their status rather more proudly and lightly than Tipp wore it that evening. To put it another way, would a team of Brian Cody’s have expired as softly as the hosts did? And that is not a rhetorical question, for Tipperary may be the team to beat in 2011 but Kilkenny, in attitude and approach and everything else, remain the team to emulate.
Declan Ryan is evidently not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. The midweek after the Dublin defeat he and his selectors dispensed with the services of four players. Each of the four had seen action in the county’s opening two fixtures. All four — one of them a club-mate of the manager’s — had failed to impress sufficiently, clearly. Ryan has not been long about making a statement of intent. The remaining panellists now know who’s boss, and it’s not the ghost of Liam Sheedy.
If it’s not to be a third successive helping of blue and gold and black and amber at Croke Park in September, maroon and white will surely feature on the colour scheme. Entering their third season in the job, John McIntyre’s management team may not still be entirely definitive about which players constitute their optimum 15. They’re surely definitive, however, as to which players don’t. If there’s one man who might make a difference for them in 2011 it’s Iarla Tannian. Get him — tall, rangy, inconsistent — producing on a regular basis and Galway should have a half-forward line capable of holding their own. That’ll do. While Joe Canning can work miracles, he shouldn’t be required to work them all the time. And if Tipperary demonstrated anything last summer, it’s that a ball-winning half-forward line is not an absolute necessity when it comes to winning an All-Ireland.
Galway do not have to win a second successive League title. But reaching the final won’t do them any harm. Losing it mightn’t be the worst thing in the world for them either. Older readers will recall 1986, when Galway lost a dour National League decider to Kilkenny at a wet Semple Stadium. As is often the case, more was learned in defeat than would have been learned in victory. After concluding they couldn’t come back with the same hand against the same opponents in the championship, Cyril Farrell and his selectors devised the three-man midfield strategy that would floor Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final. The losing of the League final was the winning of the All-Ireland semi-final. And hurling history repeats itself from generation to generation. (Granted, the winning of the All-Ireland semi-final would prove the losing of the All-Ireland final, but that’s another story.)
CORK? One cannot question Denis Walsh’s willingness to take a tough decision after he dispensed with the services of Sean Óg Ó hAilpín. One can, on the other hand, question his judgement, if only because by showing Sean Óg the door Walsh crafted a rod for his own back. There’s knowing your own mind and then there’s making a statement, and sometimes the line between the two can be blurry. Incidentally, to those admirers of the great man who lamented that a glorious career “shouldn’t end like this”, the only possible response is that this is how glorious careers do end and have ended for legions of legendary Cork players since time immemorial. You really think Sean Óg, that most modest and admirable of contemporary Irish sportsmen, had his heart set on a tickertape farewell parade down Patrick Street? Please.
Walsh will have taken succour from the comeback at Nowlan Park a fortnight ago. Any manager in the same situation would and must. But whether the comeback demonstrated anything more than that Cork possess fighting spirit is doubtful. Champions in waiting would have not merely mounted a comeback but consummated it. Walsh’s side failed on the latter count. The comeback just happened, as comebacks sometimes do; a team catches a wave and surfs it for 15 minutes. There was nothing more to it than that.
Tipp, Kilkenny, perhaps Galway. That’s the height of it. The coming summer in four words.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
