EIMEAR RYAN: Tipperary don’t need to be the new Kilkenny

It’s a common trope in any cat-and- mouse thriller or police procedural, writes Eimear Ryan.

To get into the mind of the person he’s pursuing, the detective must get in touch with his own dark side. As Denzel Washington’s cynical cop tells Ethan Hawke’s newbie officer in Training Day: ‘It takes a wolf to catch a wolf.’

Swap out the wolves for cats and you have Tipperary’s dilemma. For the better part of the last decade, they’ve been pursuing Kilkenny: almost catching them in 2009 and 2014, apprehending them in 2010 and 2016, but otherwise chasing their tails.