Final unlikely to rival last year
YESTERDAY’S comprehensive Irish Examiner All-Ireland supplement will have told you everything you could possibly want to know about the big match.
Just in case you have any remaining enquiries, however, our ever helpful columnist is happy to mark your card.
1: Will the game be even better than last year and the year before?
A: No chance. On the law of averages it can’t be. You wait aeons for a great All-Ireland final and then you get two epics in a row. Not three, though. Anyway, tomorrow will be a different kind of game. Whereas last year and the year before Kilkenny went out to do their patented shock and awe routine while Tipp went out to open Kilkenny up, this year Tipp will still be going out to open Kilkenny up — but Kilkenny will be playing a more conservative game, lying back deep and attempting to kill space in their own half of the field. They won’t play a seventh defender, less because Brian Cody “doesn’t do tactics”, more because such a move would be a declaration of inferiority from the off.
2: So it’ll be just like Dublin and Donegal last Sunday, then?
A: No, fool, it’ll be nothing like Dublin and Donegal — the first recorded example in history of a 30-man sado-masochistic ritual between consenting adults being enacted in front of over 80,000 spectators – last Sunday! They’ll be hitting one another tomorrow alright. But they’ll also be doing esoteric things like trying to score. Jim McGuinness will be thoroughly discombobulated if he’s watching.
3: Which of them has more to lose tomorrow?
A: On the most obvious level it’s Tipperary, being the holders and chasing consecutive titles for the first time in nearly 50 years. Yet Kilkenny are not just playing for the Liam MacCarthy Cup, they’re to some extent playing for their place in history. Nobody thinks less of the great Tipp team of the 1960s for losing the ‘67 and ‘68 finals when well past their prime. But four victories followed by one defeat and then another victory would look rather better on Kilkenny’s CV than four victories followed by two defeats.
4: You said something here yesterday about how the Brendan Maher situation will be held against Declan Ryan should the champions fall. Care to elaborate?
A: This is complicated, so please pay attention. If Tipp win with Maher coming on to play an important role then Ryan’s shrewdness will be widely acclaimed. If they win without a key input from Maher it won’t really matter, although some observers will speculate as to how much more they might have won by had the Young Hurler of the Year started. But if they lose, then the ordure will fly – the most obvious accusation against the manager being that he failed to give Maher sufficient game-time earlier in the championship. “You don’t get everything right when you win and you don’t get everything wrong when you lose,” as Mickey Harte likes to say.
Either way, the outcome will decide the verdict and the shades of grey will be irrelevant.
5: Talking of subs, might Tipperary win it off the bench?
A: Last year they harvested four points from their subs – two from Seamus Callanan and one apiece from Benny Dunne and Seamus Hennessy. But neither Callanan nor Hennessy will be on the bench tomorrow.
6: Talking of subs, what of Kilkenny’s chances of winning it off the bench?
A: On all known form, slim.
7: It won’t matter who’s leading at half-time, will it?
A: Au contraire, it probably will. When Tipperary led Kilkenny at the interval last year it was the first time the latter had gone in trailing since the 2005 All-Ireland semi-final against Galway, their last defeat before then. The challengers cannot allow their opponents to make every post a winning post tomorrow. Hence the general consensus in recent days that Tipperary’s younger legs may tip the balance in the closing 15 minutes and that Kilkenny will need to be a few points in front at the three-quarter stage in order to weather this storm.
Oooh, that was an interesting statistic. Hit me with another one, big boy... Okay, here’s a cracker. Their first five championship defeats under Brian Cody – Cork 1999, Galway 2001, Wexford 2004, Cork 2004 and Galway 2005 – Kilkenny avenged the very next time they met their conquerors. Defeat last September was their sixth. Tomorrow is their first meeting with Tipperary since then.
8: I have Kilkenny relations, who I’ve in no way invented just now, I want to cheer up. Can you give me three reasons for them to take heart?
A: The team’s preparations haven’t been disrupted the way they were last year. They have their centre-back and their forward leader present and correct. And hunger is, as the cliché merchants inform us, a great condiment.
9: I have Tipperary relations, who I’ve in no way invented just now, I want to cheer up. Can you give me three reasons for them to take heart?
A: The holders too have to be incredibly hungry, which seems to have been overlooked. The test Dublin gave them means they’re not going in with the game already won, which can only be a help. Lar Corbett.
10: You’re fond of a bet. It’s been a long time since 1959. Should I stick a tenner on the draw at 10/1?
A: No.
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