Tipperary awaken other giants that may have been asleep

Regime change? Tipperary’s emphatic victory over Kilkenny in yesterday’s All-Ireland senior hurling final certainly felt like an administration of long-standing yielding to new rulers.

This was partly due to the transfer of power, which was too abrupt to be strictly democratic. Nine points was the final margin, and Tipp left a couple of goals and a dozen wides after them also: only for the Cats’ innate obduracy, it might have been an obliteration.

The auguries were good for Kilkenny. On Saturday evening Squeeze packed Vicar Street in Dublin: Squeeze, whose Cool For Cats has been recycled by a thousand headline writers in the years of Kilkenny’s pomp. As Sunday afternoon unfolded those same headline writers were reaching for Up The Junction: there was no disguising Tipperary’s supremacy.