So much to win...so much to lose

CUSTOM dictates a piece like this should begin with the reigning champions.

In the circumstances custom can go hang. You want a few fine and flowery words about Tipperary? Then by the effect they’ve been having on Kilkenny shall ye know them.

Last September Tipperary raided Fort Knox. They immobilised the burglar alarms, they kicked in the windows, they overpowered the guards and they sacked the place, running off with the silverware. Nothing on Noreside has been quite the same since.

So now you have the most successful team in hurling history entering a game as underdogs for the first time since the 2006 All Ireland final, 21 outings ago. And you have a number of their training sessions taking place behind closed doors in a locked Nowlan Park. And last week you had Brian Cody not only describing Tipperary as – surprise surprise – “a serious team” but also veering unprecedentedly off script to concede that “if they run the legs off us we’re going to lose the game”, as honest and revealing an admission as the great man has ever made.

We lived our existence for the best part of a decade in black and amber. The world has not yet turned blue and gold. But next Sunday is the day it may begin to.

Think of all the incentives for Tipperary. Successive titles for the first time in half a century, and against Kilkenny to boot. Two All-Irelands in the same decade for the first time since the 1960s. A granite platform for a putative three in-a-row next year. Champions though they are, there is even more for them to gain. And even more for them to lose, including the opportunity to become a modern hurling superpower. Contemplate too the calumnies on their heads in the event of defeat.

The predictable sneers about yet another Tipp one in a row team, and a backdoor one at that. The inevitable accusations that they lost the run of themselves after the Munster final. Declan Ryan in the frame for squandering a golden inheritance, the first item on the rap sheet being the management’s treatment of Brendan Maher. If Tipp are beaten the tribunal of enquiry will still be sitting when the national league starts.

Not that there is no downside to it for their opponents. For starters the challengers will not have many better chances of winning an All-Ireland in the next few years. Strange as it may sound, moreover – hell, it feels strange just typing these words — Kilkenny will not always field a team with Henry Shefflin, Tommy Walsh and JJ Delaney.

Victory here would instantly kneecap Tipperary’s aspirations of compiling a sequence. And even if Cody’s achievements are already written in brass, an 8-3 record in All-Ireland finals would be better than a 7-4 one.

Much to gain for both, then, and much more to lose. Carpe diem, as they say in Skeoghvosteen and Skeheenarinky.

Defeat will not spell the end for either side, admittedly. Sunday will decide the three-game rubber and the 2011 championship, but that’s all. Tempting as it is to portray the showdown as a kind of hurling equivalent of Harry Potter versus Voldemort or the battle at the gates of Mordor, it simply isn’t accurate. One will win; both will live and return next spring.

Feel like betting against a fourth successive meeting of blue and gold and black and amber in 12 months’ time? Not on summer’s evidence.

Dublin were a joy and Limerick a breath of fresh air. But no fewer than three teams in Munster lost games by double-digit margins, while the Galway situation is a joke that has long since ceased to be funny. If their county board are serious about MacCarthy Cup success any time soon the first thing they should do is bring in outside consultants to do a Genesis Report.

Thus we’re left again with Tipp and Kilkenny. It is a rivalry to be treasured, one that will inspire books in a generation’s time. Far from familiarity breeding contempt, it has become less raw, though no less intense, since the first big encounter, that febrile, often nasty national league decider in 2009 (as a by the by, attendance at the respective media events last week, both of them efficiently organised by county board officials who couldn’t have been more helpful, proved these are two places where the grown-ups are in charge. It is little wonder they both get things so right on the field when they get them so right off the field also). In an inversion of traditional verities Kilkenny are the more physical team, Tipperary the more free flowing. The two September showdowns so far were so elemental that a third helping prompts excitement rather than ennui. Between them the protagonists have brought the sport to places it never visited before. In both finals the winners have hit five wides (or in Tipp’s case last year “hit” four wides – Noel McGrath, who hailing from Loughmore Castleiney should have known better, kicked a ball wide in the first half), precision of stunning proportions.

The long cherished, endlessly repeated insistence that 1947 was the greatest All-Ireland final ever? Forget it. Let’s slaughter that sacred cow. Classical as it undoubtedly was, 1947 couldn’t have come within an ass’s roar of the past two renewals for pace, intensity, remorseless physicality and the sustained deployment of the skills under pressure. Every delivery weighed and calibrated, every decision made coldly but quickly with three opponents steaming in from all angles.

Consider the following passage from 2009. PJ Ryan pucks out. Henry Shefflin wins it but cannot get past Conor O’Mahony, so he turns and plays the sliotar back to Tommy Walsh. Walsh skies it (of course) down the Hogan Stand sideline to Richie Hogan, who turns Paul Curran but is chased by him, then hooked by Lar Corbett and shouldered by James Woodlock. Somehow Hogan manages to work the ball to Eoin Larkin, who advances and is beset from every side. He manages to fight off Declan Fanning and Shane McGrath, has his handpass blocked by Brendan Maher but manages to process the sliotar to Derek Lyng. Lyng has to see off the attentions of the indefatigable McGrath and Padraic Maher before eventually fashioning himself enough room to get off a shot that just about flops over the crossbar, screaming for mercy en route. Phew.

Granted, one doesn’t have to be an old timer to goggle at this battle of the monster trucks and fret that hurling is increasingly assuming the dimensions of rugby: all that carrying of the sliotar into contact and off loading it. Nor does one have to hanker after the lost world of ground hurling to wish some lad would occasionally pull first time on the sliotar, if only to see what random event would happen next. But random events are a necessary casualty on the path of progress.

Tipperary have worn the mantle of champions lightly. Brendan Cummins has shown no signs of the slippage that appeared imminent a few years back. If the holders shade a tight encounter, Padraic Maher will be hurler of the year. And to death, rain and taxes has been added a new inevitability of life: first goal, Lar Corbett.

Against Cork they did what had to be done. Clare they fell behind to early on but hauled back smoothly and won on the bridle. Waterford they paid the compliment of eviscerating, although Tipp’s performance that day has been overrated; their attacking play was infinitely more imaginative in last year’s All-Ireland final. Against Waterford they just lorried the ball forward from defence and midfield at the earliest opportunity. Effective, largely due to the inability of the Waterford defenders to do the bread and butter stuff, it was. Subtle it was not.

The Tuesday after the Munster final they met and concentrated on consigning the game to their Sent Items box (doubtless Declan Ryan had a few stories from 1993 to assist them in that regard). As a result they were mentally prepared for the All-Ireland semi-final; they wouldn’t have got through if they hadn’t been. Noel McGrath has had more spectacular second halves for his county than he had against Dublin. He will rarely have a worthier second half.

In the past two seasons Tipperary trained on ten lengths between the All-Ireland semi-final and the final. It can be safely assumed that Tommy Dunne and Cian O’Neill have been rationing the petrol with next Sunday in mind.

Last year they lost the physical battle but won the game nonetheless. Two years ago they had bad wides at a critical juncture from Shane McGrath and Pat Kerwick, Hail Mary efforts from distance. Tipp don’t have wides like that any more. They work the ball and inhabit the dimensions of the pitch far too cleverly for that.

For their part Kilkenny are a stronger proposition than a year ago, even if they’d be stronger still had Richie Hogan and TJ Reid stepped forward to push the cart as anticipated and had someone – anyone – from the 2008 All-Ireland winning minors trained on.

Yet David Herity is an upgrade on PJ Ryan, Paul Murphy has brought a badly needed injection of pace and poise to the full-back line and Henry Shefflin, the ultimate shepherd, is back to lead a group than in his absence were a flock of lost sheep in the second half 12 months ago.

Nor, naturally, has there been a repeat of the Shefflin circus. On returning to his hotel afterwards, one prominent inter-county manager who was in Nowlan Park the night of the Henry Training Session last year told his wife that Kilkenny could not possibly win the All-Ireland. His instincts were proved correct.

Who knows the wealth of quality training Tipperary got through on the qt in Semple Stadium while the world and his mother were speculating about Shefflin’s knee? Well, we do. We saw the proof on All-Ireland day.

It is the first of the three finals where Kilkenny have been required to think more about Tipperary than vice versa: the hunter becomes the hunted. That won’t do them any harm, not least because the former champions cannot do a sub-four-minute mile on their own any more. A chunk of their time on Sunday will be spent behind their own ramparts instead of engaging with the enemy in the field.

But imagine that Cody gets his planning right, the underdogs maintain their two banks of three in defence and Tipperary are unable to craft the goal chances they created last year and the year before. Will Patrick Maher, John O’Brien or Seamus Callanan really make the difference in a tight game?

Tipp have hurled superbly – the word is not lightly employed – in successive finals. Can that continue ad infinitum? Will it have to? Is it too obvious to assume that, like last year, both teams will hit in or around 19 points and that, again like last year, goals will consequently be the key? Concede more than two goals and Kilkenny are unlikely to win; ditto if they fall behind early on and are forced to chase the game rather than shape it.

And Tipp have been averaging seven wides per game this summer to Kilkenny’s 13. If the pattern holds then the MacCarthy Cup will not be crossing the county border.

Declan Ryan must show he can think on his feet under pressure. Kilkenny must get their subs on earlier than they did in the past two finals. Admittedly their bench is nothing like as strong as it was, or at any rate was perceived to be, four years ago. Then again, we didn’t need the second half of the Dublin game to demonstrate that Tipp’s bench is scarcely as strong as their more excitable supporters would like to believe.

We’ll pitch you two alternative scenarios. You can go with the one that, for whatever reasons of provenance and partiality, floats your boat more.

So, Kilkenny because...

They’ve geared training all year towards this day and the non-test against Waterford was exactly the semi-final they needed. They enter the arena like a pack of slavering wolves and build up an early lead, with Shefflin proving too wily for John O’Keeffe. Michael Rice stops Padraic Maher rampaging forward; Michael Fennelly does likewise to Shane McGrath. With the supply to the champions’ forward line reduced substantially, the Kilkenny full-back line are able to keep their shape. Patrick Maher, required to provide more than just nuisance value this year, has his clock cleaned by Tommy Walsh. Herity makes a blinding save at a crucial juncture. Richie Power, the most gifted player on the team, finally makes a September canvas his own and Kilkenny win by a couple of points.

Or, Tipperary because...

The test against Dublin was exactly the semi-final they needed and they have two higher gears available to them. Faced with their opponents’ defensive phalanx they content themselves with picking off their points from out the field, with Callanan’s movement proving too much for JJ Delaney. Forced to chase the game in the second half, Kilkenny leave themselves open to Tipp’s brand of speed chess. The champions win, perhaps win well. It is a rerun of 1937 in Killarney, when the great but ageing Kilkenny team of the 1930s were beaten 3-11 to 0-3 and the man from the Sunday Express observed: “Tipperary were too strong and swamped Kilkenny, and the reason was obvious – they were faster, and this is an age of speed.”

It may not be the first scenario. It may not even be the second. But Tipp have done enough this year to earn the vote nevertheless.

Verdict: Tipperary