Tipperary Hurling Tipperary GAA Premierview

Battle for survival of the unfittest

Sunday January 12th 2003

Sunday Independent



Three stone overweight, Paul Shelley wants his place in the Tipperary team, writes Dermot Crowe

IT'S a shivering January night in Thurles, but Paul Shelley is in predictably high spirits. After a two-year hiatus he's back in circulation, the subject of talk, awaiting two trial matches that will tell if he's still got something to offer Tipperary.

He's overweight, but that's nothing exceptional for this time of year. The season ends, he turns off the engine and the pounds fly on. At the moment he is just over 17 stones, but was a stone heavier in 1999 and ended the year in the best shape of his life.

For five years he hurled in the championship for Tipperary, racking up 17 matches, a couple of league medals and an All-Star. His style was more Rambo than Rembrandt, but that's why the crowd loved him; on the pitch he had a raw, invigorating presence.

And then boom. They played Clare in 2000, finally turning them over with Shelley taking 1-1 off Brian Lohan as well as winning a penalty. Cork were duly forewarned and the Munster final brought a romping victory in the head-to-head to Diarmuid O'Sullivan.

It wasn't Shelley's last game for Tipperary, but it will be the one people remember most before his self-imposed exile. In February 2001 he left for the US. There followed the surreal sensation of watching Tipp win the All-Ireland from an Irish bar in Boston.

Last year he was beset with back and leg pains brought on by sciatica, which has since been treated successfully by Alan Kelly. They asked him to drop to 15 stone by a given deadline, but he failed to make it. He feels ready now though.

Given a second chance he wouldn't have gone to Boston, but there were strong determining factors at the time not least his jobless status. Anyway, it's in the past. "The way I look at it now is that I've been thrown two lifelines with these trial matches and hopefully I can catch them and get back in."

Those who have worked with Shelley rate him highly and none more so than Fr Tom Fogarty, who coached him for five years at minor and U21 level. "I have no hesitation saying that Paul Shelley is the best player I have ever worked with in terms of attitude and commitment and will to win," he stated in 1997.

That year Shelley claimed an All-Star at corner-back after a series of forceful displays. He hit some ice, though, in the final when Niall Gilligan scored three points and Clare gained a major psychological advantage as Shelley had come to embody Tipperary's resistance.

The following year against Waterford he was at corner-back, but regrets not being asked to follow Paul Flynn when his man was switched to full-forward. There, Flynn caused serious damage. "It's an awful pity the lads didn't put me in on him," he says. "I wasn't actually hurling well but I was kind of beating him my own way. I had him kinda tormented, you know?"

Tormented? "Ah 'twasn't that I was doing much mouthing, but I was kind of walking on his toes and I was holding on to his jersey and the whole lot."

Tipperary's defeat brought in the new regime led by Nicky English and an early team-talk raised Shelley's tactics on Flynn. One of the selectors said his behaviour had been disgraceful but he didn't pay too much heed.

"I remember getting a bit of a going-over about the way my mouth was going and the whole lot. I wasn't fully fit at the time, you know what I mean, and the two of us were mouthing at each other. But mine (words) were kinda sinking more than his were."

It was a case of survival at all costs, you suggest. "Of the fittest," he interjects, "or the unfittest," before breaking into feisty laughter.

With Shelley, there's plenty of laughter. And for all his warrior poses on the field, away from the battlefield he's easy and convivial company. In 1995 Fogarty drafted him into the senior squad and he won an All-Ireland U21 title, but he didn't make the senior championship squad despite some league appearances.

Instead he watched the 1995 championship defeat to Limerick from the stands. He didn't hide his disappointment. Tipperary were without two suspended backs and moved midfield Colm Bonner to corner-back in the emergency.

"I got a good lesson when I went in there first. I remember Conal Bonner Conal was a bit of a blackguard, a messer and you'd be having the craic after a training session. We were in there having a shower and he said to me: 'Do you think you're going to make this team with players like me here?' All this, you know. So you're brought into it fairly quick."

Good humour and mischief come naturally to him and he doesn't brood excessively on the lows. In 1997 he captained the U21 team that lost to Cork in Thurles. Timmy McCarthy ran through for a last-minute goal while Shelley was otherwise engaged outfield. "The joke went around," he says, "that Shelley was gone up to the stand to collect the cup when Cork scored the goal."

He made fast ground on the senior circuit. In 1996 he played the championship at full-back while Noel Sheehy was struggling with injury and in '97 Len Gaynor restored him to the corner when Sheehy had recovered. It worked well until Gilligan's intervention, which raised doubts over Shelley's future viability as an inter-county defender.

English had made his mind up on that question by the time he took charge, deciding Shelley was better utilised at full-forward, a position they had been having problems filling. Typically, he didn't baulk at the challenge. "That was more exciting. 'Twas a new mission, or a new task.

"I remember the first day I was down to play corner-back against Kilkenny in a league match in Nowlan Park. I remember the teams taking their positions, I was wearing number four and running off up to the other end. Next thing I could hear someone shouting from the stand: 'For f**k's sake Shelley, you're going the wrong way."'

He began with a goal and a point, marked by John Costello, which was a decent return. The slagging was inevitable. "I remember Ken O'Shea saying to Liam Sheedy after the match, 'Ye're after making some money on this. Ye probably had Shelley to get the first score of the game."' Which he did.

Corner-back is his natural habitat because he's played there most often, but his future with Tipperary, if anywhere, is likely to be at full-forward. "Playing corner-back or full-back you can drive out, burst out, drive a ball anywhere (whereas) up there you're living on scraps and trying to do everything right when you get a ball not make a hames of it.

"But you'd play anywhere. If I was to get the Tipp jersey again I'd play in goal."

DESPITE his weight, speed wasn't a chronic problem. He could read a game astutely, enough to compensate if there was a crisis. Nor does he believe he is, as some people reckon, slow on the turn. Over the first 15 or 20 yards he says he's as fast as anyone. And after that? "The head gasket goes on me." On the field he foraged for possession as if his life depended on it and this endeared him to the crowd. "The Tipperary supporters used to give me a wicked gee-up. Being gone the last two years, it's one thing you'd miss like, the cheer they'd give you."

Why was this? "I've no idea. I remember when we were U21, I was full-back, we were playing Limerick, and the Limerick full-forward was running around the field. I suppose he was trying to tire me out. I got this ball and just stuck it over the bar. I never saw anyone to run back in as quick in me life; the Tipp crowd went bananas.

"I don't know, maybe (it's because of) the way I played I just got the ball and got rid of it. 'Twas great."

He scored moderately two of his three championship goals came against Kerry and doesn't believe his 2000 Munster final performance should be overstated. "Nicky asked me to go up and do a job there and I gave it everything."

Did his confidence suffer after the Munster final in 2000? "Ah (pause) . . . not really. Disappointed to be taken off. It was the first time I was really taken off. It was disappointing especially in Thurles in front of your own crowd."

Reliving more good days is his main obsession now. "I hope I can impress, have a good 'oul match and get back in training with them. If I get back in I will train as hard as I ever trained.

"I'm after getting people coming up congratulating me for being back on the panel and I have to tell them I'm not back; I'm only going in for a match the same as anyone else. Just going back in for a trial match."

He feels capable of getting back, though. "I do. Definitely, if I can get down to the right weight I'm still good enough. I think I am anyway."

And he may even dare to dream of renewing his old rivalry with Lohan, Davy Fitzgerald et al this summer. The 2000 clash was the toughest he ever played, a gruelling ordeal which left him with a bloodied nose and migraine. "The two of us were just giving it everything we had."

If he goes back into training the diet will be obligatory. Dry bread and skimmed milk. "I often had the soya milk. I've tried them all." It will be tough going but worth the investment. "Ah tis, when you run out there in front of 50 or 60,000 with the Tipp jersey on your back - it's worth every bit of it.

"I was out of it two years, hopefully I still have something to offer, (and) get down the weight again. I still reckon that if I got down to my fighting weight (14 stone) I've something to offer. I'm only 26, like."

Former team-mates have been urging him to make a go of it, too. "I was talking to Eamonn Corcoran and the boys and they were saying, 'Jaysus, come in and give it a lash.' I think Eamonn misses me, like."

More laughter. He's missing it too.
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Lethal mixture of
size and style.
By John Harrington.
July 27th 2003.

Ev'ry mornin' at the mine you could see him arrive

He stood six foot six and weighed two forty five

Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip

And everybody knew ya didn't give no lip to Big John.

Big John, Big Bad John

TIPPERARY hurler John Carroll mightn't exactly match the physical specifications of the Big John of Jimmy Dean's classic 1961 hit, but it seems an apt signature tune all the same.

With his unique mixture of brute force, pace and deceivingly subtle touch, the bustling Roscrea man is something of a hurling anomaly, a throw-back to times past. In the modern era of hurling, quick nippy forwards are thick on the ground, but the big man is a dying breed. Carroll bucks the trend.

There's a touch of the Mick Mackey about him when he gets the ball in his hand. His synaptic response is uncomplicated - he puts his head down and bores straight for the posts. It's a supporter-pleasing spectacle, but this water-buffalo route to goal isn't just easy on the eye, it's pretty damn effective to boot.

Against Galway in the last round, Carroll's introduction as a second-half substitute undoubtedly swung the match Tipperary's way.

Before his arrival, Tipp had struggled to make any serious headway against a resolute Galway half-back line, but the addition of Carroll's bulk and boldness changed everything.

He won virtually every ball, high or low, that came his way, punched gaping holes in the Galway rearguard with bullocking runs, set up Benny Dunne's defining goal and chipped in with two points of his own.

You could safely say he responded to being dropped for the first time in his inter-county career in suitably positive fashion.

"Being dropped fired me up a bit and, thankfully, things went fairly well for me," admits Carroll, exhibiting a neat line in the art of understatement. "It was a bit of a shock to the system to be told that you're not playing, especially when you've been on the team for the past three years. There's nothing to do only put the head down, keep going and take your chance when it comes again."

Carroll's performance on the day highlighted just how much he brings to the Tipperary attack when he's in the groove.

His ability to win possession and then break the first tackle blows open acres of space and usually commits one of the opposition full-back line to an intercept course, leaving another Tipp forward in the clear. Cue the simple pass from Carroll, and the usually inevitable score. "That's what I'm there to do - take the ball on and then pop it off to the lads closer to goal," says Carroll.

"It's important to get the mix right - the likes of Eoin (Kelly), Brian (O'Meara) and Lar (Corbett) all have their different strengths - and the challenge is to get us playing in such a way that we complement one another.

"If I can take the ball on and open things up for the other lads, then I've done my job. It seemed to work well against Galway, but against Offaly it mightn't be nearly as effective."

It can be easy to forget that Carroll was originally a defender by trade. He first made his name as an inspirational centre-back on the Tipperary minor team that won the All-Ireland in 1996, and in 2000 won a senior All-Star at wing-back.

Tipperary manager Nicky English took the decision to relocate Carroll to centre-forward mid-way through the 2001 championship, a gamble that paid off in spades as the former All-Star defender brought the drive and heft to the forwards that had previously been missing.

English didn't just make the decision in order to beef up his attack though, he always felt that Carroll's long-term future lay further up the field.

"It's something we'd been thinking about for a while, because John's fitness is always an issue for him," explains the former Tipperary manager.

"He's a big man and it takes a lot to get him fit and any slight injury really messes up his progress. I think that the forwards suits him more because you get some chance to recover whereas you have to be much fitter nowadays to play in the backs.

"Many people in Tipp have called for John Carroll to be made the team's centre-back, but I don't think that would be the right move for him. Fitness is always going to be an issue for him, and he's going to have to be worked harder and harder as he gets older to keep him at the required fitness for inter-county hurling."

As long as Carroll can keep the scales pointing to a respectable figure, then English is in no doubt that he will remain one of the most vital components of any successful Tipperary team. "John Carroll is very important to Tipperary's cause," says English.

"He's a great leader and when he's going well Tipperary are at their best. He brings some real urgency to Tipp's play, and opposing teams certainly don't like having to cope with him.

"He's very difficult to deal with because he's such a direct hurler. He has great skill, and I think people sometimes forget that about John because his strength is his most obvious attribute. He has a great touch and is very quick and very powerful. He's an ideal centre-forward in that regard."

Today's match against Offaly will be of special significance to Carroll. His home town of Roscrea straddles the border between both counties, and is the epicentre of an intense local rivalry.

Offaly fans are still stung by the memory of driving through Roscrea after their defeat to Cork in the 1984 centenary All-Ireland in Thurles, only to be greeted by locals waving red and white flags. Since then, whenever Offaly have won a major hurling match, their supporters living on the outskirts of Roscrea take great delight in gunning their engines and driving through the town, horns blaring.

The county border is a pretty fluid one as far as hurling goes.

Moneygall is situated in Offaly yet they play in the North-Tipperary championship while Carrig-Riverstown is in Tipperary yet they compete in Offaly.

It doesn't end there. The Ballyskenach and Killavilla GAA clubs are part of the parish of Roscrea, but compete in the Offaly hurling championships. Before a 1961 Tipperary county-board bye-law which restricted each parish to only one hurling and one football club, Ballyskenach competed in the Tipperary hurling championship rather than in Offaly's.

Once that ruling came in though, they were forced to up sticks and return to an Offaly championship they'd previously abandoned in 1940. To this day, the Ballyskenach pitch is on the Tipperary side of the border.

The fact that Offaly stars Brendan Murphy, David Franks and Mick O'Hara are all Ballyskenach men has added further spice to today's match as far as residents of Roscrea are concerned, and bragging rights are much coveted on either side of the divide.

As well as the Ballyskenach trio, Offaly players Joe Brady, Michael Cordial, Barry Teehan and Damien Murray all went to school in Roscrea and are all friends or acquaintances of Carroll.

Considering all this friendly local rivalry, it's of little surprise that Carroll is anxious not to be on the losing side today. "No, we certainly wouldn't want to be going home bet," he laughs. I'll have to go on about three weeks holidays if we are! There's been great crack around the town this week, and whoever wins on Sunday won't be shy about rubbing it in."

Confirmation of that fact comes from Offaly's Brendan Murphy who will be just as key to his team's hopes as Carroll is to Tipperary's.

"I'm trying to keep my head down and stay out of the town as much as I can at the moment, but if we manage to come away with the win on Sunday I'm sure I'll be in there first thing Monday morning," he admits with a smile.

If Big John Carroll has anything to do with it, Murphy won't get that opportunity.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Hurling Through Hatred.

By Dermot Crowe ,Sunday Independent


AT its peak it was wild and uncensored, an explosive piece of theatre pitting player against player, fan against fan, even local newspaper against local newspaper. Each summer Clare and Tipp met you got sucked into the vortex and were made glad of the ticket.

Ten years have defused much of the tension. At times it took off like a kite in the wind, veering out of control, ignoring the safeguards laid down by protocol. Blind hate took hold and when it did, they all realised there had to be a limit.

Len Gaynor sampled it at Ennis in 1999, watching the counties contest a Munster U21 final. By then Tipp seniors hadn't beaten Clare since 1993; the rivalry had a strained complexion. It was as good a place as any to empty the bile.

"That was the worst night of all," he recalls. "You could cut the tension with a knife and that shouldn't happen. You had young players there to play a game and all of a sudden there seemed to be a war on. It was time to call a halt."

Officers from both county boards met soon afterwards to make a gesture of goodwill. Were the circumstances exaggerated? Gaynor, who managed Clare and Tipperary during the main years of their rivalry, doesn't believe so. "You couldn't overstate it really. I went down there with a clear head and mind but I could not believe what was happening.

"I would say very little would have touched off a riot that night. If any serious incident had taken place on the field it would have set it off."

He remembers Tipp getting a goal in the second half and clapping his hands between his knees. "I didn't want to be seen clapping them any higher - it was that bad. 'Twas a sad night for sportsmanship and the like.

"I think people realised after that it was gone beyond a joke."

Clare and Tipp was rarely a joking matter. Over the last 10 years they've met nine times in the championship, each winning four with one draw. Gaynor was there from the start. Out of the 1993 Munster final an enduring rivalry was born that no-one could have predicted.

Tipp's 18-point romp was to this rivalry what the Big Bang proved to science. They destroyed Clare and recreated them in one go. They played keep-ball, piled up a score of 3-27, and Nicky English learned that when you smile the whole world doesn't necessarily smile with you.

Within 11 months Clare had turned the tables, ended Babs Keating's managerial career and begun a winning sequence at Tipp's expense that ran to four championship matches, including an historic Munster final and All-Ireland in one season.

By then Gaynor had swapped sides and Ger Loughnane took Clare's obsession with beating Tipp onto another dimension. The depth of Loughnane's desire had much to do with it. "Loughnane had us driven demented," as Anthony Daly recalls.

"He said we'd never get the credit until we won another All-Ireland, that we'd never beaten Tipp in a Munster final, that he had dreamt of this all his life."

It was in this context, Daly says, that his 'whipping boys' remarks came out of the bag - putting their rivalry on a whole different plain. He remains somewhat puzzled by the fuss that followed the '97 Munster final speech.

"My natural reaction was to say we'd arrived, we were no longer the whipping boys. I was talking more about our own experiences."

From there, devices went off in every corner. Enter Liz Howard, Tipperary's long-serving PRO, who took Daly up on his tone during a match programme article shortly afterwards. It would never be the same again.

Loughnane's reaction to Howard's analysis was probably based more on team motivation than a sense of personal grievance. Clare's win in the Munster final hadn't ruled Tipp out of the championship. And this concerned them greatly.

"If we'd lost the All-Ireland I was ready to fight my way through the crowd because I felt I was going to get (people saying) 'whipping boys' all the way," admits Daly.

The most colourful episodes were in 1997. Loughnane's open letter to Howard in the Clare Champion became a portent of things to come. It gave a surreal account of days spent hunting beagles with her father Garret.

More seriously, it took a few swipes at Howard and claimed that Gaynor had said 'Tipp think nothing of Clare' in the run-up to the 1994 championship meeting, when Gaynor was Clare manager and Loughnane a selector. Gaynor, now Tipp manager, didn't respond.

"I was tempted and nearly harrassed into it," he says now. "The day after the 1997 All-Ireland final, I was surrounded by six to eight reporters and the questions were fired at me. What did I think of what was said in the build-up? I held my cool and said I didn't want to get involved.

"I think it was the best way. It would only keep the thing stoked up. It was tough at times to keep a civil tongue but I'm glad I did. Very glad."

Gaynor had little taste for it. "I always felt - and I played the game all my life - that there was a certain dignity about hurling whether you win or lose. I always had great respect for my opponents."

Clare's dislike for Tipp was more pronounced than Tipp's for Clare - at least in the earlier years. But why? They've not had an extended period of traditional rivalry. Much of it is traced to the 1993 Munster final.

Aside from the hammering, Nicky English's smile became a source of future Clare resentments. A taunting image if you bought into it. English himself has steadfastly denied those were his intentions, but it haunted him, even when he took over as manager from Gaynor in 1998.

In 1993 he came on in the second half and scored four points. The first of those was set up by Declan Ryan who held the ball up long enough for him to get on the scoresheet. "Declan would have had no problem scoring himself," English explained in his autobiography.

"If anything he was treating me as an old cripple by holding onto the ball so long to set me up in a scoring position. So, having scored, I looked across at him and grinned. I felt as if he was helping me like you'd help an invalid. If anything, I felt that he was having a bit of a laugh at me."

Daly admits they used it as ammunition for their next assault. "I know Nicky English did not start laughing at Clare lads, but they were laughing among themselves. Okay, they hammered the shit out of us, but hammer us and go home.

"I would say one thing for English (as manager). He really respected this Clare team. Any time he came into the dressing-room there was a sense of respect. I think his Clare gameplans alone shows that."

Gaynor says the incident was misunderstood. "'Twas a few of the Tipperary players and fellas enjoying themselves, they had the match won. Those kind of things can be hurtful to the opposition. You must show respect."

Astonishingly, they beat Tipp 11 months later in Limerick. Afterwards Babs Keating didn't come into the Clare dressing-room, which would prove another sore point. The next two years saw the tension ease before they met again in '97.

Daly agrees that Cork had given them plenty of beatings too, so why the fixation with Tipp? "There just seemed to be something about Tipp when they beat you. You'd be more ridiculed. Cork maybe codded us into thinking that way for a long time; they had a nice way of hammering you."

By 1999 Clare were showing signs of erosion. Tipp should have beaten them in the championship but let a lead slip and were crushed in the replay. But by 2000 they were in the ascendancy, guided by English, winning with eight points to spare.

Loughnane made his exit and the tension immediately slipped down a few notches. His successor is a polar opposite and the matches since have had none of the spicy dressings served during the 1990s.

You might forget that there were actually some games going on. At the end of their 2000 encounter Daly went to John Leahy and offered his hand. "I suppose it's time to bury the hatchet," he told his rival, conscious that the end was nigh.

There were sparks between them on the field. "It was usually backs trying to put forwards off their game," says Daly. "Leahy was about the only exception. But from '99 you could not get a hop off him; he was terribly disciplined."

The crowds have started to show signs of fading interest. The appeal of Tipp and Clare has diminished, improbable as that may once have seemed. Repetition has drained it of intrigue. And spite.

Gaynor is happy with that. "If you let hate into hurling you're in deep trouble," he says. "Hate is a terrible word."