Greatness becomes him
One of the craziest, most exciting All-Ireland hurling finals ever had ended in a draw (yes, crazy — how bizarre a scoreline is Waterford 1-17 Kilkenny 5-5?).
For the replay Kilkenny called up a promising youngster from the postcard-pretty village of Inistioge. He’d starred, albeit on the losing side, in the minor final the previous month and had shown up well subsequently against Dublin in the Oireachtas and Wexford in the Walsh Cup. Now, a week short of his 18th birthday, he was on the bench as Kilkenny and Waterford met again — and was off it and into the fray after 15 minutes when Johnny McGovern, the wing-back from Bennettsbridge, succumbed to a recurrence of the shoulder injury he’d picked up first time around.
