Croke Park on Patrick’s Day trumps the lot for club players

Out of over 2,000 clubs in the country, they’re the two running onto Croker. It makes for one of the most glorious days of all

The ad isn’t lying. The All-Ireland Club championship final is The Toughest, to win, or to even reach. Yet The Toughest is the most romantic too. Few GAA terms can stir the emotions quite like the mention and dream of “being there in September” but, for anyone connected to the club game, the image of “running out onto Croker on Paddy’s Day” trumps even that.

Of course both phrases and dates are under threat. Over the winter, a fixtures task force featuring big hitters like Paraic Duffy, Liam O’Neill and Donal Óg Cusack recommended that the All-Ireland hurling final be moved to August, and the club final be played in December to streamline all competitions into the one calendar year.

The proposal is on hold and you can see why it might never come into place. The national games should have a place on such a national holiday, and outside of launching a revamped championship on March 17, what better way than with such a celebration of the club?

Something else got us reflecting on this one. Last week we interviewed Paudie Butler. A few years ago we interviewed him as well. “Whatever the top team in the parish is, they’re the heartbeat of the parish,” he observed at the time. “Because if they’re training, the kids will be in the field and they’re learning this way of life. If that team gets beaten early in the year, the field can go dead.”

Do we really want teams and clubs knocked out of their county championship in May, the parish field to go so quiet, even dead, so early in the year? They need games in May, but not necessarily knockout ones, and as Butler said last Saturday, giving the club player a meaningful programme of games to sustain their interest and the vibrancy of the parish is going to need a greater concentration of minds than heretofore.

For hurling anoraks like us, the romance and resonance that goes with March 17 is all the greater this year because of another date: July 2, 2011. That Saturday evening, Colm Bonnar’s tenure as Wexford manager finished up after a convincing defeat by Limerick in the Gaelic Grounds in the first round of the qualifiers. A couple of hours later, Ger “Sparrow” O’Loughlin’s underwhelming term as Clare manager also wound up, his side receiving a 17-point hammering by Galway in Salthill.

It hadn’t happened for either man. They hadn’t made it happen. That could have been the end of them.

It wasn’t. Sparrow is manager of Kilmallock. Bonnar, along with Andy Moloney, is in charge of Ballyhale. They learned and returned.

“In fairness, Colm has done wonders with this team,” Moloney has remarked in the lead-up to this game. “He keeps them fresh and gets on with all the players exceptionally well. I’d rate Colm as the best around. If Tipp are looking for a manager down the line, I’d have him in the role he is currently in for Ballyhale, no doubts at all.”

O’Loughlin probably is a good bit down the queue in getting a shot with his native county, between having already had one go at it and with the U21 management of recent years deserving their crack if and when Davy Fitzgerald’s tenure comes to an end. But O’Loughlin’s record at club level, especially in guiding Kilmallock through so many tight games in Limerick and Munster, is testament to his ability on the line and on the training ground.

Then there’s the players. We all know about Henry but what about Andrew O’Shaughnessy? In 2007 he was an All Star, just like Shefflin.

Two years later he was diagnosed with MS. Yet in the closing minutes of last month’s All Ireland semi-final, he was brought on by O’Loughlin in the win over Portaferry. Whether he plays today or not, the fact he’s running onto Croke Park at all on Paddy’s Day is a measure of his grit and love of the game.

The football final has its plotlines and drama too. Paddy’s Day is actually the one day in the year when it seems you’re more likely to get a better game of football than hurling. The past 13 hurling finals have been won by an average of 8.5 points. In football the margin has been 2.6 points.

On only three of the last 13 Paddy’s Days could you argue the hurling final was definitively the more satisfying game. Today could well buck that trend but even then the football will provide its share of romance.

There we were thinking about how the competition had evolved in the last 10 years, that you had to be a superclub from a big town or city to hang at this level; a team from Dublin, or a Castlebar, Killarney, Belfast; that the days of a Corofin reaching and winning club finals were gone.

Then along comes Slaughtneil — a parish that doesn’t even have the proverbial pub or church — with Corofin back to face them.

Out of over 2,000 clubs in the country, they’re the two running onto Croker on Paddy’s Day. It’s what makes The Toughest one of the most glorious days of all.