GAA talking points: An Ulster epic, Walsh gets his medal

DELIRIUM: A Glen supporter celebrates after the AIB Ulster GAA Football Senior Club Championship Final match between Glen Watty Graham's of Derry and Kilcoo of Down at the Athletics Grounds in Armagh. Pic: Ben McShane/Sportsfile

An epic in Ulster 

At the end of an epic game, the air around the pitch in the Athletic Grounds was suffused with green and yellow smoke. The first flare was lit in the terraced stand after Ethan Doherty’s point sailed over the bar with five minutes remaining to push Glen two ahead, but the final whistle triggered such an eruption that the pitch was thick from smoke pluming from flares like factory chimneys.

A first Ulster title was bound to unleash an emotional firestorm but Glen were giddy with delirium by that stage, especially with how the game ended. Alex Doherty’s injury-time goal was so well constructed by a couple of smart soccer plays that it wouldn’t have been out of place in Qatar.

There was a real edge and raw tension to the match throughout and a six-point win didn’t do full justice to Kilcoo’s heroic resistance because the second half had been on a knife-edge in such a tight and taut tactical arm struggle. The third quarter produced just one score from play but the game hinged on a fine save from Conlann Bradley off Celium Doherty shortly afterwards when a goal would have handed Kilcoo momentum and the initiative.

Kilcoo joint manager Conleth Gilligan said beforehand that the match could be a “classic” and, while there was that potential with the firepower of both sides, the game was a modern classic in so many other forms. There were only 32 shots but it was such a hard-hitting and physically unforgiving contest that the first half was largely defined by the volume of bodies sprawled across the pitch from the ferocity of the challenges, mostly on the ball.

Glen set that tone from the first whistle. Their first five unanswered points were sourced from two Kilcoo kickouts and three Kilcoo turnovers mined from relentless intensity. Kilcoo only managed seven shots in the first half but they still could have led at half-time if Paul Devlin hadn’t driven his penalty wide.

Glen only had two more shots (17-15) over the 60 plus minutes but Kilcoo went man-for-man in the second half and it took an age for Glen to finally break them down and make those decisive late attacking incisions. The turnover stat (Glen 14, Kilcoo 13) underlined just how tight the game was but Glen critically mined 0-7 from those 13 Kilcoo turnovers.

It looked early on that Conor Glass was going to run the game when he had eight key posessions in the first ten minutes, winning a free and scoring a point. Kilcoo restricted Glass to just nine possessions for the remainder of the game but Glass was at the centre of two key Kilcoo turnovers late on.

It was that type of game where inches – everywhere – eventually added up to everything for Glen.

Walsh finally gets the rich reward he deserves 

Prior to this year, Kerins O’Rahillys’ last appearance in the Munster club championship had been a rollercoaster experience for the club’s two best young players, David Moran and Tommy Walsh. After O’Rahillys defeated Clonakilty in the 2009 quarter-final, the pair travelled to Australia for AFL trials and missed the club’s narrow semi-final win against Moyle Rovers.

Three days before the Munster final, Moran was told he wasn’t getting a contract with St Kilda. He jumped on a plane to get back for the final. Walsh didn’t make it as he stayed on after getting his AFL contract. In O’Rahillys' one-point defeat to Kilmurry-Ibrickane, Walsh’s loss was colossal.

After both had won an All-Ireland with Kerry that September in 2009, Moran and Walsh’s careers took different paths. In July, Moran won his third All-Ireland medal in a third decade. Walsh ended his career with that solitary All-Ireland medal after announcing his retirement from Kerry at the end of last year.

When Walsh returned from Australia in 2015, the Kerry public were disappointed that he never reignited his Kerry career after five years in the AFL. Yet it was also completely unrealistic for people to expect that Walsh would return precisely as they remembered him.

The 21-year-old who kicked four brilliant points in the 2009 All-Ireland final no longer existed. His body had been stripped down and transformed to play a different game. The other complication was that the final two years of Walsh’s time in Australia were smothered by the kind of injury that ended Paul O’Connell’s career.

The whole readjustment took time for Walsh. When he started a league game against Galway in 2019, it was Walsh’s first start for Kerry in over three years and he spent the 2019 season chasing lost form.

The general response in Kerry was confusion and frustration but injury continued to hold him back. His four championship appearances in 2019 were all as a sub and while Walsh did make a huge contribution when introduced in the second half of the drawn All-Ireland final, he had no impact when introduced in the last quarter of the replay.

Walsh was marking Mark Keane when he scored the game-winning goal for Cork in the 2020 championship while Walsh’s last match for Kerry was as a late sub in the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Tyrone.

Walsh seemed destined to never win that second All-Ireland but, 13 years on from missing that 2009 Munster club final, Walsh finally made up some long lost ground on Saturday afternoon as O’Rahillys won a first title.

Walsh was central to that success. From just eight possessions, Walsh scored 1-1 while he set up another goal for Barry John Keane. Walsh almost had a second goal only for a brilliant block from James Kelly. When Newcastlewest reduced the deficit to one point in the last minute of injury-time, Walsh won the crucial last kickout – and a free – with effectively the last play.

Newcastlewest will have huge regrets. They had nine more shots (22-13) but their conversion rate was just 41% compared to O’Rahillys 62%. In the end though, Walsh was the difference. For a brilliant player who has had a difficult time since lighting up the football world in 2009, nobody deserved that precious medal more than Tommy Walsh.

Kilkerrin-Clonberne take control 

In the history of All-Ireland finals, at all levels, one of the most dramatic endings in the last decade was the final moments of the 2019 All-Ireland ladies club decider between Mourneabbey and Kilkerrin-Clonberne. The sides were level when Mourneabbey broke out of their defence, stitched seven passes together before Laura Fitzgerald kicked a brilliant point. As the ball was sailing over the bar, there was just 15 seconds left. Absolute elation for Mourneabbey. Absolute heartbreak for Kilkerrin-Clonberne.

The pain was all the more acute again for the Galway side as they tasted it far too often for their liking; they also lost four All-Ireland semi-finals between 2014-18. Yet by the time Kilkerrin-Clonberne arrived back on the All-Ireland final stage in January, they were firmly ready to take that decisive final step when beating Mourneabbey. Overcoming Donaghmoyne on Saturday saw Kilkerrin-Clonberne retain the title.

Kilkerrin-Clonberne were far more efficient, having a 61% conversion rate compared to Donaghmoyne’s 41%, but the Galway side were also supremely disciplined as they only conceded 11 frees, none of which were in a scoreable position.

Eleven different clubs now have won more than one All-Ireland club title in the 35-year history of the competition. The club championship has been dominated by Ballymacarbry, Carnacon and Donaghmoyne but five of those other clubs won successive titles.

And now, after so much heartbreak and so long waiting for a first title, Kilkerrin-Clonberne have joined that illustrious group in the space of just 11 months.