Tipperary Hurling Tipperary GAA Premierview

Irish Times, Aug 16, 1997

Unfulfilled years still haunt Tipperary

Sean Moran looks at the ups and downs experienced by three of
Tipperary's men of '89 - and wonders if there is a sting in their tale

The good times rolled. On September 10th 1989, Tipperary's under-21s
added another All-Ireland to the senior title won a week previously.
Three of the under-age team had been on the senior side which had
defeated Antrim - captain Declan Ryan, John Leahy and Conal Bonnar.
Tomorrow at Croke Park, Tipperary face All-Ireland champions Wexford in
the second All-Ireland semi-final. The same three under21s of eight
years ago survive, together with two other members of the team, Liam
Sheedy and Michael Ryan.
Despite all the potential, the county has managed in the meantime to
add only one further senior All-Ireland title (in 1991) and the years
since have been marked by many frustrations both personal and for the
team as a whole.
Estimates of what the county should have won naturally vary from the
minimalist satisfaction with two All-Irelands to the more demanding
belief that as many as five titles would have been a representative
haul.
For the young players whose inter-county careers took off in an
atmosphere of success and optimism, the course of their careers hasn't
run smoothly. All have been prey to crucial injuries which in the case
of Ryan and Leahy are believed to have cost the team matches and also
All-Irelands.
Conal Bonnar, the youngest of the three brothers who lined out in
the '89 senior final and excited mention in the same sentence as
Cuchulainn, has been afflicted with chronic injury and this weekend is
playing what is believed to be only his second full match of the year.
In common with his brothers, he is a fitness fanatic and the lost
training time affects him badly.
Declan Ryan has been the most influential forward on the team for the
past two years. Such a state of affairs would have been foreseeable
eight years ago but some of the interim disappointments would not.
For a spell his career looked over. A pitiful display in the 1995
championship was followed the next spring by substitution in a League
semi-final. Somehow he recovered his form for the championship and has
maintained it.
John Kennedy is familiar with Ryan and played with him until his own
career was ended by injury. In the 1995 and '96 seasons he was a
selector with Fr Tom Fogarty.
"I've known Declan since he was nine or 10. His ability is exceptional.
He has power and under a high ball, it's difficult to contest with him;
(has) fantastic hands; can throw a point over his shoulder; can make
things happen. Sometimes he annoys people because he takes everything
very much at his own pace, stands and waits for things to fall into
place."
Leahy's career was prone to further extremes than the others'. A
dynamic presence all around the field during the triumphant 1991
season, he appeared to have returned to unstoppable form in '94 when
his league final performance drew ecstatic notices. Injury, however,
intervened and the same levels of performance have since eluded him.
Last year was a difficult time as he was convicted of assault in
England and received a suspended sentence. His hurling didn't escape so
lightly and, obviously demoralised, he suffered the indignity of
substitution in the Munster final.
"Maybe," says Kennedy, "he could have coped better with all the
attention and pressure but we can all look back at most things and say
we could have done them better. "You need very mature fellas when
something like 1989 happens. The tour of the county lasted about four
months and as players they all had a huge amount of mileage up by their
21st or 22nd birthdays which, combined with the general euphoria,
didn't help. They were hurling constantly for three years."
Mick Minogue coached the 1989 under21s. He doesn't agree that early
success might have caused problems for the players. "I don't think so.
They are three very strong individuals and three great players. I think
they were able for it."
The personal travails of the youngest survivors of 1989 may or may not
have been a factor in the county's difficulties, but general
considerations pose more searching questions.
Answers are hard come by, but the county not surprisingly resents the
harsher criticisms that the teams had neither the mental strength nor
the stomach for combat that would have ensured greater success.
Ten years ago, in his first season in charge of the county, Babs
Keating led Tipperary out of the wilderness. The replayed Munster final
win over then All-Ireland champions Cork in Killarney is one of modern
hurling's most striking images.
Although the GAA and the public at large are delighted to see Clare win
an All-Ireland, there is a particular atmosphere of relieved jubilation
which accompanies the return of prodigals, like Wexford last year and
like Tipperary 10 years ago.
It may not have been the finished article - as subsequent defeat by
Galway indicated - and six changes in the starting line-up would be
made before the initial All-Ireland success two years later, but the
1987 team was the basis of all the county's challenges for the duration
of Keating's tenure.
Reviewing the years when success eluded the team, there is no shortage
of excuses and genuine, hard-luck stories but were there flaws in the
team or do some people in the county harbour unrealistic expectations
of how frequently even a good team can win All-Ireland titles?
Although unable to resist the urge to rewind the might-have-beens,
Keating takes a philosophical line. In a 1994 interview for Seamus
Leahy's The Tipp Revival, the Tipperary manager from 1986-'94 answers
the question: "Did the county win as much as it should have?"
"You can say if you like that we didn't win enough. But I made the
point . . . that since I took over in 1987, we had won two All-
Irelands - on a par with Cork, Kilkenny and Galway . . . Every hurling
All-Ireland we saw in the last few years, there has been a Kilkenny
team in it between minors and under-21s, and they haven't won more
senior All-Irelands than us.
"I have no doubt that we would have won the '93 All-Ireland. We did
everything right to have the lads right and ripe for the championship
that year but every bit of bad luck possible came to us in Croke Park
(in the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway), from Ken's (Tipperary
goalkeeper Ken Hogan's) easy goal to the injury of Declan Ryan. And
when did you see two players from the same team colliding and the two
being knocked unconscious?
". . . This (1994) was one year that you could really say we had a team
that was better than anything in the country. Offaly won the All-
Ireland with a young team playing badly for most of the hour and they
will improve. But there is little doubt that had we survived Clare,
things would have happened for us. It is hard to perform at your very
best against a team that you had beaten by as much as we had beaten
Clare in 1993."
All sorts of teams seemed to cause Tipperary problems at different
stages. Galway in the late 1980s had a young but experienced team,
tempered by two agonising All-Ireland final defeats. In the early
1990s, Cork were highly motivated traditional rivals, capable of
punishing an apparent sloppiness of attitude on the two occasions that
Tipperary laid an All-Ireland on the line in Munster.
By the end of Keating's reign, new forces were emerging. A new Galway
team exploited Tipperary's bad luck, referred to above - the
goalkeeping error that led to a reviving goal and the injury that put
Declan Ryan out of the match within 10 minutes of the throw-in - but
there was a feeling that complacency had set in after the 18-point
destruction of an embryonic Clare side which to this day nurtures a
sense of grievance that their opponents disrespected them on the day.
Within less than a year, Clare sensationally reversed the result just
weeks after John Leahy's tour de force in the league final had blown
aside Galway and installed the county as hot All-Ireland favourites. In
a stroke of further ill-luck, Leahy missed the Clare match after
injuring himself playing in a championship game for the county
footballers.
Even after Keating's departure, Limerick became the bane of Tipperary's
championship aspirations, narrowly defeating them in a 1995 Munster
semi-final and overcoming a 10-point deficit at half-time to draw the
following year's provincial final and win the replay.
"What we haven't achieved," says John Kennedy, "is more of a topic of
conversation. It's very hard to put your finger on it. People say it's
attitude and the old `Tipp are arrogant' thing comes up, but I never
recognised that as a factor with any of the teams I was involved with.
"Some of our followers are not very helpful. They decide after a game
like this year's against Limerick that the team are worldbeaters. This
year, Tipp beat a Limerick team not even related to the team we played
over the last two years. But for some people, it's time to stick their
heads back in the clouds."
Mick Minogue is one of those who believe that more should have been
achieved since 1987. "I would feel that two All-Irelands from the time
of the breakthrough, was a poor reward for the number of under-21
titles won in Munster and at All-Ireland level. It took a while to get
going in 1987 and '88 but '90 was a disaster when key men were left
off. We should have had another All-Ireland that year."
Kennedy agrees that 1990 was a lost opportunity. "We were over-
confident, thought we only had to turn up. Because of injury I
shouldn't have played myself and there were one or two others who
shouldn't have, either. Our attitude wasn't correct. After 1990, we
were really wound up. Other times, the commitment wasn't as strong and
on any given day, you can be beaten. Any team can beat another.
"Although it is annoying, the fact is that we have succumbed in
physically intense games. It's like we need a kick in the pants before
we get going. In '91, the attitude was unrecognisable and we kept our
foot on the accelerator at all times. We could be accused of not always
doing that."
John O'Donoghue was a selector with Keating from 1990. Whereas he knows
the script of misfortune as well as anyone, O'Donoghue is inclined to
be upbeat about the whole period.
"If you say the team under-achieved, you have to measure it against
something. I think the record from 1989-94 stands comparison with any
other county.
"Maybe there was more in them than came out but we were lucky to win
the 1991 All-Ireland, because Michael Cleary got a lucky goal. Then we
were unlucky in '93. Over a period of seven or eight years, you get a
fair share of luck and the day it comes, you take it and when it
doesn't there's nothing you can do about it.
"I would say what was won was a good return for a team coming from the
wilderness with no experience at that level. I'm proud of the way they
acquitted themselves. None of them was ever put off and that was an
achievement over all those years and winning all those matches.
"The team also changed the whole method of hurling training and also
saw the start of the supporters' clubs which meant that teams weren't
financially shackled by county boards. It was the start of a new era,
the start of everything."




Sat, Sep 13, 97

Brave and bold mixed in talisman

Tom Humphries on John Leahy, whose Tipperary career has been marked by
huge highs and awful lows

August 17th. No mega-watt smiles. No clenched fists. No chest beating.
No histrionics. No champagne. Just the sort of cool focus which might
easily have been mistaken for gloom if you had missed the preceding 70
minutes of hurling.
John Leahy moved silently about the room. An ugly swelling had forced
his left eye shut and his cheek was frozen into a puffy mess. He was
naked save for the towel he had tied about his waist. He hugged his
teammates. They hugged him back. Leahy's embraces betrayed the real
message. The heart of the Tipp team was beating loudly. Elsewhere
Wexford lay dying.
Leahy had been taken off, looking like elephant man, in the 51st
minute. He had scored 1-4 by then. Tipperary were back in the All-
Ireland final. Back in debt to Leahy.
In the lean years Tipp missed his exuberance like they missed nothing
else. His return to form this year has been faltering, but timed nicely
to coincide with Tipperary's needs. From a cameo against Limerick, to
top billing in the All-Ireland final. Leahy is a marquee name again. An
old dog, with some new tricks too. He has, for instance, learned to
harness himself, channel the energies a little.
"I'd say that the John Leahy of 1997 is a little different," says
Galway's Tom Helebert, who spent several roiling afternoons in his
proximity. "He seems more assured of himself, more certain of the
importance to the team of him being right."
Leahy will be 28 next Tuesday. Self-realisation took a while.
Fulfilment of promise came early though. Reared in a footballing
outpost, hard by the Kilkenny border, he became the first Mullinahone
man to hurl for the county. By his early 20s Mullinahone was holding an
annual street carnival to coincide with Leahy's birthday. Kilkenny's
Fan Larkin once noted that in Leahy Tipperary had found their "new
Jimmy Doyle". In Mullinahone they see Doyle as being history's answer
to John Leahy.
At 16, he was playing for the club's best team. His derring-do
eventually dragged a junior side to the senior ranks.
Leahy became accustomed early to Croke Park on All-Ireland final days.
Lost a minor final in '87. Played on Peter Finnerty in the senior final
a year later. Finnerty, gnarled as any veteran on the field that day,
noted him down as "being very aggressive". Not disparagingly, either.
He won senior and under-21 All-Ireland medals in 1989. His input was
low in 1990 when Tipperary succumbed to Cork. The following summer his
contribution prised Tipperary free of the province. Conor O'Donovan
played in the Tipperary full back line those afternoons. He reckons
that Leahy's greatness places any flaws into damning perspective. "The
Munster final replay of 1991, I remember him as being awesome in the
final 20 minutes. Just in the right place at the right time all
through. He made a series of interceptions and clearances which lifted
the team. He would be very quiet in a dressing-room, but would have a
passion about the jersey."
Yet, even in the time of his greatest triumph, Leahy couldn't free
himself from the need to rub salt into a loser's wounds. Offered water
by a Tipp mentor, he drank while his Cork marker stood panting beside
him. The mentor offered the drink to Leahy's rival. Leahy turned and
splashed water in the Corkman's face. Doubtless the Cork player dwelled
on the incident longer than Leahy did. That was the point. Always
looking for the edge.
"The public would have the wrong perception of Johnny Leahy," says
O'Donovan. "There is the idea that he is a bit of a boyo, he must be a
bit of a pup. I think it's unfair. He has an aggressive side, but every
hurler needs what he has. He'd live by the sword or die by the sword,
yet I don't think he's ever been sent off for Tipp."
"His temperament is his main problem," says Mick Minogue, a Tipperary
mentor who has played a part in shaping Leahy. "He has to be playing
physically to be playing well. He can't take it handy, there has to be
aggro in his game. Then he has to control it."
Tom Helebert suffered more acutely than most under the sweep of the
Leahy broadsword when the Mullinahone man chose to impose himself on
the League final of 1994. Leahy had seven points. Helebert's own day of
splendour had come the previous summer when he limited Leahy's input to
a single point in the All-Ireland semifinal.
"Leahy moves very well. He has good wrists. When you are in possession
he works very hard. Hooks and blocks well. He gets under your skin in a
variety of ways. On the days when he's on song the ball seems to find
him, he's like a magnet for the ball."
The league final of 1994 was perhaps his last truly great exhibition.
Indomitable as a force of nature on the field, he was scarcely
containable off it. Afterwards he shrivelled Galway in a couple of
salty sentences. "All their talk. They have no All-Irelands. We have
two All-Irelands. When they learn how to win All-Irelands they can
talk."
There has been relatively little talk from Leahy himself since then.
Last week he was spirited away from the Tipperary press night by one
publication much to the chagrin of invited journalists who sought a
word with a man whose resurrection is a topical work in progress.
On the field, though, he has picked up a reputation for being quick
with the bitter word whispered into an opponent's ear. In the hurling
community, it seems to be taken as part and parcel of Leahy. "He talks,
but that's OK," says Tom Helebert. "You go for any advantage you can
get. If it's part of your make-up, you go for it. I would have great
respect for him. He'll always shake you hand at the end. You notice the
abuse coming in over the wire and in fairness to him he gets on with
it."
Injuries and controversies have been his company for a few seasons. He
lost the hurling season of 1994 with a football injury. He was involved
in a highly-publicised contretemps with a Limerick supporter, Steven
Downey, in a pub in Manchester in 1996. The weight of it seemed to
diminish him briefly and he was substituted in each instalment of last
year's Munster final.
Off the field his life has become more settled, though. Having left
school at the age of 16, he held down a variety of jobs in his early
days on the Tipperary team. Plasterer. Seed company worker. Creamery
operative. He now works as a sales rep with Finches, the sponsors of
the Tipperary team. His natural affability makes him a natural salesman.
On the field the acute hurling brain which had him virtually running
Mullinahone's senior team from his late teens onwards ensures that he
remains a threat. His habit of ghosting into spaces might have secured
Tipperary a draw in this summer's Munster final. Uncharacteristically
Leahy fluffed a ground pull in front of goal.
"I thought when he was picked at midfield for the Munster final he
might take it by the scruff of neck," says Conor O'Donovan, "but he
never came into it until he went to wing forward. He's showed some of
the old form, but not everything."
Twenty-eight on Tuesday, entering maturity with a fine young side
growing around him. John Leahy. The kid who grew up in the shadow of
Fox and English and Bonner might yet cast the longest shade