There mightn’t be tears but...
Come the last day of hostilities in May the cameras descend on the fixtures involving the relegation contenders and at the final whistle, as three teams tumble through the trapdoor, TV screens around the world are filled with pictures of blubbering small boys, who don’t know any better, and blubbering fat fortysomethings, who really ought to. For the voyeurs and sociologists among us it makes for compulsive viewing.
It won’t be quite like that in the Allianz Hurling League tomorrow. It’s only the league, after all. Two teams will reach the Division 1 final, another team will be relegated and nobody, but nobody, will shed a tear either way. Lachrymose children will be conspicuous by their absence, whatever about fat fortysomethings.
That said, the afternoon won’t lack for interest. Four games in the top flight and something, whether demotion or a place in the final, at stake in each of them. After two seasons where everything was done and dusted by the evening of the penultimate round, rendering the concluding day of the preliminaries a series of dead rubbers, we were due – overdue – a final round pregnant with permutations, possibilities and meaningful matches.
So what can we forecast? Not much more than that Kilkenny will reach the final. On current form they won’t beat Offaly out the gate at Nowlan Park, but they’ll beat them nonetheless and Brian Cody will be perfectly entitled to declare afterwards that given the injury-ravaged hand they were forced to play with during the campaign they did well to top the group. For their part Offaly will avoid the drop if they do no worse tomorrow than Wexford do. Seeing that the latter have to travel to Semple Stadium this looks a fait accompli.
Yet here’s a statistic that may just give Offaly readers pause for thought. Of the 39 Tipperary-Wexford league clashes over the years, the majority have been won by...Wexford. Yes, really. (And they with four league titles to Tipp’s 19. Go figure, as they say in Kilmuckridge.)
Kilkenny to advance to their first league final in all of two years, then. Their opponents on May bank holiday weekend? In descending order of likelihood: Galway, Dublin and Tipperary. If Galway beat Waterford they’re through. But that’s not only an if, it’s a big if. For two reasons. First off, the visitors are coming off the back of that 18-point evisceration by Tipp a fortnight ago; heaven only knows what the response will be. Secondly, and at the risk of stating the obvious, look who we’re talking about here. Those lads in maroon and white. If you had your future health and happiness riding on the outcome of a single match, is there any team on earth you’d be less comfortable carrying the burden for you than Galway? Apart, obviously, from the Mayo footballers?
What’s more, they’re up against Waterford at Walsh Park.
The Déise don’t win by much and they don’t lose by much. They don’t light up the skies but they don’t go down in flames either. That they’re overloaded with competent musicians and all too short on virtuosos is not the manager’s fault. Waterford will never again hurl with the kind of precise abandon – and no, that’s not an oxymoron – they hurled with in 2007 simply because they don’t have the personnel to do so. Next time anyone feels impelled to criticise Davy for sending out Déise teams devoid of the sweep and swagger of old, bear that in mind first.
Speaking immediately after Cork’s defeat in Wexford, a game in which not for the first time this season they’d played in snatches, Denis Walsh revealed that he had “found out a bit more about certain fellas today and it mightn’t all be positive.” Prospectively this is not good news for Dublin as they travel to Páirc uí Chaoimh.
We keep saying that every next big match will be a test of their progress, as if daring them to fail. Low and behold, every next big match they continue to rise to the occasion. In their six outings to date Dublin haven’t produced a single indifferent performance. What’s more, with even a small improvement in their shooting of late they’d already be in the final.
Two years ago it seemed they’d dodged a bullet in losing to Limerick in the All Ireland quarter-final and thereby avoiding a potential hammering by Tipperary next day out, even if in retrospect they couldn’t possibly have performed as abjectly as Limerick did in the semi-final. No such qualms exist this time around. There is no possible downside to Dublin reaching the league final. The only pity tomorrow would be if they beat Cork but were deprived of a big day out in two weeks’ time by a Galway win in Waterford.
Must avoid finishing an immensely progressive campaign on a downer tomorrow. Main priority is to produce a performance against Cork. Secondary priority is to beat them. After that it’s in Galway’s — and Waterford’s – hands.
John McIntyre rightly took much encouragement from the comeback against Kilkenny. One wonders how he even began to go about rationalising the collapse against Tipperary. Fate in their own hands versus Waterford. The popular phrase that ends in the words “or get off the pot” springs to mind. Fortunately Joe Canning and Damien Hayes are back in the frame.
Looks like the two injury-time points they conceded in Tullamore on March 27 will send them down. Would be the upset of the season if they won in Thurles. A decent display would at least allow them to finish the campaign on a small high.
LOSING to Limerick on the opening day, the margin of defeat aside, may have been acceptable. Losing to Laois a fortnight ago was not. Beat Carlow and they’ll secure their place in the Division 2 final nonetheless. It could be a nervy afternoon.
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