Funny how things have turned for Tipp

Call it Tipperary’s Sliding Doors moment.

For readers with fuller lives, the reference is to a 1998 film which begins with a young woman in London — Gwyneth Paltrow at her drippiest and most complacent – both catching and failing to catch a Tube train and the parallel narratives that arise from this banal event/non-event.

She meets and doesn’t meet a new guy; she does and doesn’t catch the old boyfriend cheating; she starts/doesn’t start her own company; she spouts about the benefits of a macrobiotic diet, annoys the entire world and “consciously uncouples” from her husband/spouts about the benefits of a diet of Bulmers and chips and battered sausages, is adored by the world and marries Leo Varadkar or Mick Wallace or the Pope orsomeone. And so on.

So think of Niall McMorrow with that chance for Dublin at Semple Stadium in the closing round of the league six weeks ago.

Time is running out, the visitors are three points down and McMorrow is unaware of the permutations. What happens if he simply pops it over the bar?

Here’s what.

He pops it over the bar, Tipp win by two but it’s not enough. They’re consigned to a relegation play-off against Waterford the following week. As it happens they win that, but it’s too late; the damage is done. Their league campaign has been a disaster. They’ll go two months without another match until the Munster semi-final with Limerick. Confidence is on the floor. There are rumblings from all corners of the county, and it’s not the Bulmers, chips or battered sausages. Premierview is in meltdown. Eamon O’Shea’s refrain about “how well we’ve been training” is scoffed out of court. Tipp are chugging into the 2014 championship in a Ford Fiesta that’s seen better days.

But what happens if McMorrow doesn’t pop that ball over the bar?

We know what happens. Because it did happen.

McMorrow goes short instead of going for a point, Tipp win by three instead of by two and everything changes. Far from facing a relegation playoff the following Sunday they face a quarter-final with Cork, and there – instead of playing well for long spells of one half, as had been the case against Kilkenny and Galway and Dublin – they perform admirably for long spells of both halves. And then they’re in a semi-final, where they see off the MacCarthy Cup holders. And now they’re in the final, at home to the crowd who’ve cleaned their clock in four consecutive big matches. What more of an incentive could they desire? Fine lines. Narrow margins. Sliding doors.

Forget for a moment tomorrow’s outcome.

Bottom line, Tipp will approach the championship arena in an altogether classier vehicle than might have been the case. Not quite a sports car but certainly, say, a high-end Volvo. Since the Dublin game they’ve picked up momentum, acquired a sense of purpose and perhaps – it is too early yet to be categorical – regained their sense of self. All of which was unimaginable after the loss to Galway at Salthill on March 16th.

Come to think of it, Tipp have come back from the horror of August 2012 at Croke Park to reach successive league finals. That wasn’t inevitable; teams have imploded on far lesser grounds. However lukewarm the feeling from the faithful towards the players for the past while, this bunch are entitled to a fair measure of credit for remounting the horse.

The form-book points in no particular direction here. Tipperary hurled better in winning their semi-final than Kilkenny did in winning theirs, but the All-Ireland champions were less wound up for the task than Galway were. And that was understandable, for Kilkenny in the league final was a prospect to be avoided by Clare. The fewer chances they give Kilkenny to get near them and act as radiographer, thereafter to rush home and deconstruct the x-ray from all angles, the better. And Davy now has a very big stick to beat the troops with. Perfect.

But the presence of three men in particular gives Tipperary reason to believe. Kieran Bergin and James Woodlock at midfield, Bonner Maher up front.

What Bergin, so eye-catching at wing-back in last year’s league final, and Woodlock, who’ll barrel forward whenever he can, possess is physical presence. They won’t outhurl the opposition duo but they won’t be horsed out of it either. Against a midfield that includes Michael Fennelly, who should be sharper following his first start in nine months a fortnight ago, such cuttin’ is the most basic of requirements.

Apropos of Maher, one of the many reasons for 2013’s early championship exit was the Lorrha man’s malfunctioning hand-eye coordination. If Maher can’t get the sliotar into his hand he’s an irrelevance. If he can get the sliotar into his hand he’s dangerous, not so much because he’ll do something with it but because he’ll make five or 10 yards and give it to someone who’ll do something with it. He might even score two goals, as he did against Clare. And if he can’t he might kick the ball forward a couple of yards and thereby create a point, as he also did against Clare. An impact by Maher tomorrow and John O’Dwyer and Noel McGrath will have space in which to flourish. No impact and they’ll have less space. And it was the O’Shea-plotted creation of space that destroyed Kilkenny in 2010.

Keep an eye too on Padraic Maher, a man who has stagnated noticeably this past year or two. Eamon O’Shea’s response has been to hand him a new challenge – the less elegant among us might term it a kick in the arse — at full-back. The task for Maher tomorrow is to rein in his natural instincts to show off, as Diarmuid O’Sullivan was forced to by Donal O’Grady a decade ago, and simply play the position.

The visitors too don’t absolutely have to win, although there are Kilkenny folk of uncertain age for whom – it scarcely needs to be explained why – beating Tipp often enough and by enough will never be enough. It is a mindset best summed up by the oldtimer who three decades ago penned a less than complimentary missive to Thurles’s very own Raymond Smith after the latter had dared to take issue with the size of Noel Skehan’s bas.

“May you and John D Hickey burn in hell,” the screed concluded, “and may the gods decree that Tipperary never win another All-Ireland!”

In case he’s somehow managed to access the Examiner online in the great beyond – modern technology, dontchaknow – Smith’s correspondent may be interested to know that BC (before Cody) the score in National League head-to-heads read Tipp 26 Kilkenny 16, with five draws. This morning it reads Tipp 31 Kilkenny 28, with six draws. If only that oul’ lad had lived to see it and everything else...

Yet Cody will want to win because it is who and what he is. He’ll also want, and needs, Brian Kennedy, Padraig Walsh and Cillian Buckley to do as well as they did against Galway. This is very close to his championship XV, or at any rate the XV that will take the field against Offaly next month. Mind you, don’t expect Walsh to chip in with another two points from wing-back; Cody will knock that nonsense out of his head immediately if not sooner. Elsewhere it may take John Power, who moves less fluently than Richie, a season or two to get up to the speed of championship hurling, but throw him a ball and he knows what to do with it.

Through force of circumstance Kilkenny are playing a more considered game this season on the unspoken basis they’re girding themselves for an August or September showdown with Clare. If you flake the ball down the field against other teams you’ll get it back; flake the ball down the field against Clare and they’ll hang onto it. The new paradigm.

But Cody still has Henry Shefflin. And Henry Shefflin a fortnight ago was playing a different game to everyone else in the Gaelic Grounds.

For his fourth point he demonstrated the gear change of a man half his age to cover half the width of the pitch in a trice, sprinting in from the touchline and looping around Lester Ryan to take a pass and split the uprights. Ryan could have done anything with the ball but Shefflin removed his scope for being blocked down or shooting wide and forced him to do the right thing. It looked simple and it was simple, but only because Shefflin made it look simple.

In The Numbers Game, the book that so electrified soccer’s tweeting classes last year, Chris Anderson and David Sally made the following observation. “Crucially, the manager has to be blessed with a team-minded strongest link, the sort who is first to the training ground in the morning and last to leave at night, promoting an ethos of maximum effort at the same time as making it easier to think that his success is down to hard work, not talent.” One wonders have Anderson and Sally ever heard of Henry Shefflin.

There are lots of good reasons for optimism on the challengers’ behalf. The one good reason for pessimism is the identity of their opponents.

Cody’s Kilkenny. Some doors slide open. This one tends to slide shut with a clang.