Eternal vigilance is the price of future success

Something strange happened in Walsh Park last Sunday.

Kilkenny won the Tony Forristal tournament, unofficially the All-Ireland U14 hurling title.

One of the members of the team, the full-back, was a chap with not one but two All-Ireland senior medal-winning granddads. Another, the free-taker, had won the skills competition at Feile na nGael a couple of months ago. The right-corner back was — wait for it — Tommy Walsh from Tullaroan. (Yes, really. A distant relative, seemingly.) But those incidentals, noteworthy as they are, weren’t the strange part. The really striking part of it was that Kilkenny won the Tony Forristal tournament in the first place. Because winning underage competitions like the Tony Forristal, which they’ve rarely managed over the years and last achieved in 2005, is not what they’re in it for.