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The Freewheeling Babs Keating 11.10.05
"At the end of the day it's all about the players. I have no hesitation in saying that. A lot is said about management but players are what count and they always will be. We are only trying to help out and trying to put an environment in place whereby we can get the best out of the players available. You try to give something back. Playing for Tipperary is an honour and should be seen as such by all those who get the chance to play."
Nicky English, June 2001 (as quoted in the Limerick Leader)
Michael "Babs" Keating is now 61 years old. In common with another Munster hurling manager, he spent a good deal of his professional life as a manager with a petrol company, though it is fair to say that he is a good deal more flammable than his counterpart Justin McCarthy, who today announced his intention to remain as manager of Waterford. Much has been made of Babs' age, and of the yawning years since he last managed Tipperary, but I see his age as an enabler. He is now retired from full-time work, and apart from his abiding interest in racing, he has now nothing else on his mind except the right turn at Horse and Jockey that will take him into training three nights a week from next month.
Having managed Tipp to two titles thus far, he is back to net a third, so that he can retire to the hearth in Castleknock with three titles as a player and three as a coach. It would be an impressive haul, and would cement his reputation as as one of the great GAA managers. After all, Micko may have come back, and dragged the flourbags to Croker, but they were bested on their only appearance. Laois and Westmeath footballers may have made provincial history with returnee Kerrymen at the helm, but they fell asunder outside Leinster. Leaving 1998 to one side - when Bondex was required to put shattered Offaly egos back together again - Babs is a hurling manager who seeks that magic third title that will put him on a plinth alongside Paddy Leahy.
But first, for the Classics scholars amongst you (and I don't mean fans of the Munster Final(s) of 1991 - that will come later), let us first borrow perspective from the ancients. For the following account, I am indebted to the internet, the first and last refuge of the dilettante:
"In May 333 B.C., Alexander the Great faced a crucial decision concerning his Persian conquests. Lacking reinforcements, his men ragged, and with Macedonia poverty-stricken from funding his war effort, Alexander waited near Gordium for inspiration from the gods. Upon resolving to continue his campaign, Alexander was halted by his personal seer just before leaving the city. To depart without attempting the Gordian Knot would cause bad luck to befall his armies. Alexander had to attempt the puzzle.
Making his way to the acropolis, Alexander was followed by a great crowd. Anxious, they gathered to see the great king struggle with their famed puzzle as all had before him. The townspeople were not disappointed. For nearly two hours Alexander racked his brain for a solution. Finally, in a fit of frustration he asked of his advisors, "What does it matter how I loose it." He drew his sword and, in a single spinning flourish, sliced the Gordian Knot open to reveal the ends hidden inside.
That night a wicked storm descended upon Gordium. Thunder raged and lightning crackled. Oracles and soothsayers gathered around. Alexander and the seers interpreted the storm as a sign that Zeus was pleased and would grant Alexander’s armies victory. The next day Alexander left Gordium and conquered the world.
Alexander solved his puzzle by approaching it in a new way. He was innovative. He was a thinker and a strategist, deserving of victory. The oracle had foretold that he who would "luein the knot" would conquer. True to form as oracles are today, the oracle’s prediction was ambiguous. In ancient Greek, the word luein meant "loosen" and "untie" and "unfasten." It also meant "solve" and "resolve" and "break up" and "cut" and "sunder." Everybody chose to interpret the oracle in the most obvious manner. Everyone except Alexander. He alone questioned the rote of loosening a knot without ends. The rest is history."
As Babs seeks to conquer, history is his to create. His approach to knotty issues has always been the same as Alexander's. The manner in which Alexander severed the knot may now be referred to as lateral thinking, but as the story at Gordium shows, there is nothing new under the sun. In his previous stint, in order to revive Tipperary fortunes, Babs brought suits and self-respect and supporter's funds. All of these are common now, but it was his actions that codified them, and accelerated their acceptance. To re-vivify UCD, he encouraged self-expression, and brought from players qualities they themselves were not aware they possessed. They were one bad call from glory in Leinster last year. Even Laois roused themselves to a League semi-final during Babs' short reign there. Even if the Laois followers now claim that "his heart wasn't in it", one wonders how many hearts have been misplaced by their own players over the years.
And then there is John Leahy, the perennial Laoch na hImeartha. This is the man whose move to wing-back in the replay of the 1991 Munster Final ignited *that* comeback. As an exhibition of smart ball to the forwards - every ball should have a message on it is one of Babs' truisms - it has rarely been equalled. His feats on that day were truly superhuman. His reaction to the imminent demise of Tipp that day was a bit like the time that Superman discovered Lois Lane has perished in her red car after the earthquake. Leahy donned his cloak, went into orbit, and set the whole world spinning in reverse, until time turned, and the cracks that earlier appeared in the dam were undone, and the floodwaters that threatened the reputation of his team and manager were stilled.
I am well aware of Leahy's frailties - he'll never be a keeper, for one thing - and he'll never be mistaken for King Solomon in a police line-up, but he is not there for words of wisdom. He is there for passion, for savvy, for charisma. If a player pulls the Enfer jersey over his head, and is not prepared to go to hell and back for John Leahy, then we are at nothing anyway, as we say down my way. As Nicky says in the quote that opens this piece, Leahy and Babs need to be facilitators, and their actions should be conducive to creating an environment where teams can prosper. The forwards' coaching should be interesting, anyway. Babs reckoned in his newspaper column that given six months working with Redser he could remould him. If he does, that is the Tipperary centre-forward position nailed down. We are still poor in other pivotal roles, but Babs knows this as well as anyone, and you can be sure he has been making notes with a bookie's stubby pencil.
And now to Tom Barry. A product of Thurles CBS, and a fine underage hurler, with some time on Tipp panels to his credit, he won a county title with Sars in 1974, and has remained committed to the club in various capacities, most recently as chairman. A work colleague of mine, who was in school with him, considers him clever and adroit, and a good judge of a hurler. He has been the surprise package of this selection process, and that is no bad thing. My guess is that he represents gravitas and the calm word, and may act as a counterweight to the volatility of the other two. One correspondent on the Premierview forum wondered if he was there to keep "tabs on Babs" for the County Board. I doubt that, though I only know the man by reputation, and in any case, Babs would hardly countenance a snoop on his backroom team.
While we're at it, the process of putting together the management team has been fraught and protracted. Names were bandied about - Nicky, Skippy, Big Dec - and then blown away like dandelion down in high summer. But the committee didn't stint on mileage, and didn't spare imagination. Considering that the makeup of the eight-man team committee was disproportionately made up of North Tipp area representatives, it is surprising that there is no selector from the North. Surprising, and refreshing. Managerial and administrative decisions at all levels in Tipperary hurling have been hidebound by divisional paralysis for so long now that it is startling to see some clear-eyed thinking on this. So, kudos to the County Board. It cannot have been easy to press the claims of such a combustible candidate, a man who has excoriated the County Board in cold print not 18 months ago. But Babs & co. offer one immediate boon for the coffers of the County Board: I'd imagine that the announcement of the new management team will add 5,000 to the gate at the county final on Sunday. If nothing else, there'll be thousands of fellas there craning for a look at Tom Barry. A glimpse of Babs in his pomp - though I often see him strolling in the Phoenix Park in any case - would be worth the twenty euro admission alone.
And now for the problems they and their charges face. This Tipperary team tends to go lame late on in races: the finishing post is often a furlong too soon. This will need to be addressed. The best of the underage talent will need to be blooded. If Leahy could line out at 19, and Eoin Kelly at 18, then the tyros must get their chance. The captaincy nearly did for Babs in the past; even now, there would be few men in Cappawhite who would partner him in a fourball (if he got Eugene back hurling for the county, it might mend some minds). The captaincy is a thorn that needs to be pulled. The prerogative of the county champions notwithstanding, it is interesting to note that two of the best candidates come from home clubs of the selectors: Brendan Cummins and Eoin Kelly. After Sunday, a case may be made for Eddie Enright, and perhaps for a resurgent Seamus Butler, but can anyone seriously argue their merits over, say, Philly Maher?
Another potential problem is that neither Babs nor Leahy have ever been afraid to call it as they see it. For instance, Seamus Roche, the referee, got both barrels from Babs after his performance in the Kilkenny/Galway game. It might have been politic for Babs to keep schtum, and keep the man from Kilsheelan onside, but he ventilated as only he can. (This is one of the downsides of this appointment: Babs cannot continue his current column with the Sunday Times. Even those who dislike Babs (and they are many) would buy the paper for his predictions and lacerations). As a postscript to this tendency, I met Mark Foley, the former Cork hurler, in Timoleague over the New Year of 1992. He is a dentist in nearby Clonakilty, and we had a good chat about that day. The weekend I met him, Dennis Bailey scored a hat-trick at Old Trafford, as QPR beat United 4-1. Bailey remains the last Englishman to score a hat-trick against United at home, and at 37, now plays in the Dr Marten league. The problem with Tipperary in 1990 was that, like United with Dennis Bailey, they did not see Mark Foley coming. To Tipperary, Mark Foley belonged in the Dr Marten league as well. His 2-7 from play that day fairly answered them, even if he, like Dennis Bailey, disappeared without a trace. In Mark Foley's case, he drifted into that liminal world where his fame is now eclipsed by his Limerick namesake. But nobody better embodies the anti-vanity of the Babs years. Canon Michael O' Brien may have been disingenuous: he spun Babs' comments. But if Babs hadn't been calling the odds on RTÉ the night before, then the Derby might have been run to form. So, lash down the loose cannons on deck.
A niece of mine recently received from her indulgent father a present of a Cinderella dress, bought at a Walt Disney shop. This dress is cleverly made, being totally reversible. One side is grey and dowdy, and designed to appear frayed. This is the apron in which Cinderella endures her daily drudgery. It even has a pet mouse in the pocket. Turn the dress inside out, and the other side shows the full-on finery you would expect of a night-time princess. Despite the fact that magic mushrooms are not in season, when I saw that dress, I found it emblematic of the current Tipperary team. They are currently draped in aprons, when, with someone to turn them inside out, they could be dressed in the finest raiments.
Actually, if I'm honest, in my idealised world, the fortunes of the Tipperary team would be personified by that lad in the Miller ad on TV who is at a party on the porch. When he runs out of beer, he hops onto his bike, freewheels down the hill, gets a six-pack without apparently paying, and then freewheels back to his waiting girl. Unfortunately, it is a while since the Tipperary team was a freewheeling force; we could date it to the release of an acoustic classic by an American contemporary of Babs: "The Freewheeling Bob Dylan" album of 1963. Babs was in clover then too. All-Irelands won, and more to win. Tipperary hurling has more recently taken the human form of Sisyphus rather than conforming to this contemporary Miller's Tale. It has been an uphill struggle in recent years, and the rock seems to keep getting heavier. Babs needs to get us freewheeling soon.
So there you have it. Tipperary are to be managed by Alexander the Great, Superman, and the Invisible Man. As triumvarates go, that one will take some beating. It certainly fair puts John Allen and Brian Cody in the ha'penny place. According to "Morning Ireland" on RTÉ Radio 1 this morning, Brian Cody was seen paying money at the turnstiles in Nowlan Park last weekend. Kilkenny may be about turnstiles for the manager, but Tipperary should be about turning on the style for the manager. And with that awful play on words, I leave you. But not before I remind you of the words of P Shelley, the poet rather than the player:
"If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"
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After the last column, when I talked about last bales, I little thought that our summer would end so soon. The day after Galway, I went around in a daze, cursing sporadically, suffering a kind of Tourette's Syndrome, Tipperary style. But life went on. It reminded me of John McIntyre's words about the aftermath of Munster Final Day, 1984:
"It seems mad now but I went out that evening and played a challenge for my club against Holycross. Then I made a dash home to watch the match on The Sunday Game. And the next morning I was up at seven o clock to draw in hay. Whatever about the Munster final, the bales still had to be brought into the hayshed. I got no special dispensation."
Well, I get no special dispensation either. This column will not raise itself. However, I'm not going to bore ye with more talk of bales, roundy or rectangular, or even of the ricks my grandfather made. Instead, this column intends to read the runes of our season. I leave it to the reader to determine whether it is an audit or an autopsy.
The day of the Galway game started with an omen I could have done without. The taxi driver taking us to Croke Park told us about Niall Quinn being arrested on a drink-driving charge the night before. Evidently, poor old Niall decided to follow the Puc Fada competition with a Deoch Fada competition. I was guessing that the Tipp terrace would be down one soldier that afternoon, and so it proved. It might take a lot of Daz to remove this stain on his reputation, but as none of us is whiter than white, we'd better keep the moralising (and the awful punning) to a minimum.
The queue for the bloody ticket kiosk opposite Gills pub was longer than a wet funeral in Cloughprior. John Leahy was in the queue, when by rights he should have been chauffeured to his seat in the Hogan. He was looking as roguish as he did on that stellar day when he launched scud missile after scud missile over the Galway bar. Who can forget when he gave the thumbs up to Seán Treacy? Anyway, into Croker with us, for a couple of metric pints under a dishcloth sky. The stadium wasn't even half-full when MacSuibhne threw in the ball, but a big Tipp crowd had travelled, buoyed by the second half against Cork. It was just as well we were there in numbers, because Tipp were playing against the supporters of three counties. "Tis grate to be hated" as a neighbour of mine is wont to say.
Tipp opened in a blaze as they had against Limerick and Cork. Points fizzed over from play. Eoin Kelly's scores spoke the semaphore of desire. He and Paul have lit up this season, and deserve to figure as All-Star brothers again, as in 2001, come what may at the business end of the championship. The first half was all Tipp, really, but the points
Galway gained to close the gap from seven to five were to prove crucial. I have heard and read those who pleaded a case for Galway supremacy on the basis of the multitude of missed chances they had in the opening half. I find it exasperating that the number of wides a team racks up may be taken as a measure of anything, except as just that: an index of how many times you failed to score. The wides count is shorthand for how many times you failed to fulfill the sole objective of the game, which is to say, score. A wide is a failure. 12 wides in the first half is a dozen failures. Failure cannot be conjugated as success; it is like multiplying by zero. That is why it really riles me when people say that Galway were the better team in the first 45 minutes on Sunday. It is simply unfathomable to think they were. Tipp, on the other hand, were never more accurate in recent years than in the first half on Sunday. Benny's brilliant point. The cute effort by Paul Kelly via Eddie Enright's sideline cut. Eoin Kelly's "Look, Ma, no hands" efforts.
The only really bad effort was Eoin Kelly's goal attempt from the 21. It peeved me at the time, and here's why. It reminded me of that great scene in the film "LA Confidential" where Captain Dudley Smith says to Jack Vincennes:
"I doubt you've ever taken a stupid breath".
Now, I have to say at the outset that Eoin Kelly is not only the smartest hurler in Tipp, but the sole reason we were even near the quarter-final. So I am not for a second blaming him for our loss, because he, like Jack Vincennes, does not deserve to be shot down. However, I think he made a fundamental error in this instance, unless he was acting on express instructions to go for goal from any 21s. (In which case Ken Hogan, who has taken plenty stupid breaths, and would take several lungfuls more as the game progressed, is to blame). A point would have put us 4 points to 1 up. Having missed, Galway went straight down the field and pointed to go 3-2. It was a critical miss in the context of the game, just as the penalty miss against Cork in the Munster Final was, but where Eoin Kelly *had* to go for goal in Cork, there was no reason to in the Galway game. It was early, we were cruising, and I thought it showed Galway a respect they hadn't then earned. Much as with the Cork point after that penalty miss (a thing of beauty, while I am at it), the point that Galway got reined Tipp back in after an incandescent opening.
Half-time brought time for us to lasso our thoughts. We were well on top in all sectors except the half-forwards, where Colin Morrissey and John Devane were all at sea. We had a right to expect changes in personnel, all the same, as the half-time tinkering so far this season had yielded results. I spoke to a Galway friend during the break who felt that Galway needed goals, but he could not see any point of origin for them, with Cerberus guarding the gates. When our sturdy full-back went, however, an early goal was poached on the new man's watch. From this vantage, thinking of half-time and its consequences reminds me of the
Mahers of Borris-Illeigh. How the cousins have been cursed this summer. Martin, "The Dancer", as Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh labelled him in his debut season on account of his prowess at sets, breaks a leg in a club game. Philip, coming right back into form, ruptures something called a "C joint" in his shoulder, thereby missing the second half of the Galway game. If there were "A" and "B" joints to tear, he would have done them too, because at this stage in his career, he has suffered a full alphabet of injuries. So the cousins were to miss the North Final as well, a club wrenching to match the county sundering. But if they did miss a flake off the townies, who would rule out a later tilt at their mortal enemies, Toome, who will surely stay standing when others fall?
The second half was a cracking contest. As the stadium filled with the followers of Limerick and Kilkenny, and Galway struck for an early goal, the noise levels ratcheted up, and thoughts of a semi-final shrunk. But Tipp tugged the elastic again, and it was a 6-point game once more. And
then there was Redser, whose second half is a cameo of the Tipp collapse. Poor ould Redser. Hops onto the pitch looking trim and hungry. First touch, bang, point. Second attempt, radar malfunction. Still, one from two, better return than any starting half-forward. Strike 3: flagged wide. He is aghast, runs to the ref, pleads his case, runs to the line, is ignored by the linesman. He looks around for divine intervention, but God is on another call.
In the middle of this, there is a melee in the goalmouth, and Damien Joyce's hurl connects with Liam Donoghue's head. After clearing the ball, Donoghue comes back and sinks his elbow into Redser's ribs, blaming him for the slap on the head. So, Red spends 25 minutes on the Park, and the itinerary of incidents would fill a season. He is beaten by the keeper like a redheaded stepson (it had been 12 years since Donoghue had been picked in goal for Galway; typical of Red's luck that he returns in time to clobber the Thurlesman). We all remember Nicky's lament: "If I'd ducks, they'd drown". Poor Redser's ducklings met a similarly watery fate. And yet, despite it all, Red is catching more ball than the rest of the line combined. He is good value, Redser, you have to hand him that. He has made an important, if intermittent contribution to Tipp this year. But he is not the Messiah. His faults appear ingrained at this stage: he lacks real pace and has a shooting ratio that reminds me of Tim Henman's first serve percentages. Anyhow, what happens next? Hogan curls his finger, and Red is summoned ashore. Raving madness. For that, and the humiliation of David Kennedy against Cork, Hogan should go, in my humble opinion. In fact, Hogan and his selectors stand indicted for other lamentable moves, such as his decision to move Conor O' Mahoney to full-back at half-time. It was in the 1984 Munster Final already adverted to that Seamus Power was pulled from full-forward to full-back, a move that some said cost Tipp the game, seeing as Power was lording it over Donal O' Grady at the time of his move. I wonder was this the reasoning behind Hogan's odd decision not to bring John Devane back from centre-forward, a position where he was struggling? It seemed odd to blood a rookie like O' Mahoney instead when he could have slotted Devane - a man who won a Fitzgibbon "Player of the Tournament" award at full-back, lest we forget - into a position he knew well, and played well in only a few short games before.
The second half was not merely about the travails of a terrace hero, though. It was about a Galway team who filled a void at centre-field left by the Eddie Enright's absense, and who grew into themselves. They're a funny old team, Galway. They are, as one of the Premierview contributors put it one day in a delicious malapropism, very Jackal and
Hide. He was right, though. From '86 to '91 they were, at their worst, bonecrushers and spillers of blood, but undisputed masters of the open plains. A decade later, they had turned into prairie dogs, straight down the burrow when the prey was circling. I woke on the Sunday of the game to see the execrable "Park Live", and there on the same couch was the entire half-back line of Jug Ears, White Boots and the Honorary Yank. Only joking, no disrespect meant to one of the finest lines of hurling I've seen. But not a Tipp man in sight, until Tommy hove into view in a recorded clip later on. What would I have given to have stuck Leahy and Bobby Ryan on the sofa with them, and let them off. As it was, and seeing it was breakfast time, Ger Gilroy let them make waffles using the usual recipe, three parts platitude to one part insight.
But back to the game and its conclusion. A brother of mine put it well: the end of the Galway game was like falling asleep in the bath at home, and waking up to find a kidney missing. To see their centre-forward - and Man of the Match - charging away from a ruck of players, ball on stick, as full time sounded, seemed curiously apposite. The manner in which he then became entangled with a Tipp man - who was this, by the by? - who lashed all around him after the whistle blew, seemed like a throwback to 15 years ago.
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The Last Bale 12th July 2005
I write this introduction at some remove from the Munster Final itself. Apologies for my delay in posting it to the website. Parts of the column itself were written in advance of the game, and parts composed after it. The column concerns itself less with the minute-by-minute stuff of the match - that has been hashed and rehashed by this point - and more with some motifs of the Munster Final. It is, as much as anything, a series of random thoughts on my day. The column now resembles nothing so much as the last bale - in the days before roundy bales, when bales were shaped like bricks. By this time, all of the other bales have dropped off the baler, full-sized and complete, forming neat and regular rows. Now we are nearing the gate on the way out, and it is time for one last, scutchy, hind-tit bale to come trundling down the chute. The twine binding it is not quite taut, leaving the individual sections pliant, and the joins obvious, but it still resembles a bale in most respects. I am not sure how much food value it now has, but I hope it will have some of you ruminating and chewing the cud all the same.
The Munster Hurling Final between Cork and Tipp: can there be another Irish sporting fixture that is so barnacled in myth? What used to be virtually an annual event has now become an occasional excuse for newspaper colour writers to reach into their rattle bags to unwrap all their most dazzling tropes and theories. It provides photo editors with the opportunity to rummage through their scrapbooks for sepia moments to set beside fresh images from our digital age. We must know all of the stories now, even if we did not live through them, and we will never tire of their retelling. Stories of Ringy chaired, of Reddan enraged when half of Killarney was as angry as Amritsar. We read of days of thunder and searing sun, of cross-country runners with sponges and milk-churns. Of bikes, blood and bandages. It is a singular event, eulogised by writers such as Daniel Corkery and Kevin Cashman. It is, in short, a rich poem that we are still composing.
On the Sunday itself, it was sticky and close, the sky the colour of a trout's belly. I drove down to Cork with my father. He is, for his sins, a Corkman, and he lives for days like these. We got up early, and like the lads from D'Unbelievables, we got the dinner in early to get a good run at the day (well, we had the porridge and tay anyhow). We were in Cork for midday, but each town on the way down was like a staging-post on a pilgrimage. Passing from Limerick into Cork, my father recalled Michael Mortell of Charleville and UCC fame, and wondered why a town of its size had provided so few hurlers to the county, despite having a huge hurling hinterland (and, in passing, one of the finest pitches in Munster). To Mallow, another town punching below its weight in county terms, the most recent name we could think of was Fergal McCormack of the 1999 team, who had provided a very cogent analysis of the upcoming game on radio on the previous Friday. We passed Grenagh, home of Tom Kenny, and talk turned to tales of finals past, of Terry Kelly's overhead pull on a puckout, a point scored without the ball hitting the ground. Of the 1960 final, a savage game, one Matt Hassett later said was the hardest he ever played.
Driving into Cork itself, it always amazes me how proudly the city sets itself apart, and in one manifestation in particular. Nowhere else in Ireland are sports stars foregrounded and cast in concrete to the same degree as they are in Cork city. The names of hurlers past live on in the Jack Lynch Tunnel and Christy Ring Bridge: immense engineering projects named for folk heroes. (Lest we forget, Jack Lynch was a multiple All-Ireland winner first, and the sole Cork Taoiseach from the Real Capital second). Where are the equivalent edifices in Dublin, for example? Will the Corporation name the Port Tunnel as the Heffernan Tunnel, or christen the new stadium mooted for soccer and rugby as Giles (or Gibson) Stadium? I think we know the answers to those questions. And yet, Roy and Sonia too will have boulevards and parochial halls named for them in time. The immanence of sport in the life of both the city and the county of Cork is evidenced as much by these structures as by the pubs that are one of the principal attractions of the place: Cashmans, Larry Tompkin's place, and so on. All good hurling pubs, ripe with opinion and porter. From a rocky stool in Cashmans, I watched Na Piarsaigh beat Cloyne in the Cork County Final last year. It was my own stag weekend, and the day held a moiety each of Guinness and hurling, with hollow ribaldry raising the rafters. Would that life always held that savour!
And so into Cork, newly-minted capital of culture. Now personally, I think the year of culture so far has been a fiasco. Cancellation of the sole event that interested me - the ballet, believe it or not - galleries closed over the weekend, a musical line-up that failed to ignite my interest, Nick Cave apart. The list goes on. Add this to an absolute shambles of a web site, the botch made of Patrick Street, and I wonder where the money went. But that might be to take a narrow view of culture. If I open the aperture of my prejudice somewhat, I can see culture rampant in many ways. A case in point concerns a nephew of mine. Forgive me for gushing a little like Tom Humphries over his daughter and her recent camogie exploits at Féile, but this story about my nephew is very telling.
I recently received an email from a sister of mine who lives in Cork city. Her only son, aged 11, was involved with his club on a recent weekend. I'll quote her verbatim to give a flavour of her maternal pride:
"Luke had a busy weekend, he was playing in the street-leagues hurling & football under 11’s for Nemo Rangers all day Saturday, firstly a procession to the grounds with a pipe band, banners, Lord Mayor, Garda escort!
All this at 10am on a Saturday. I have to admit it was a great show, in the glorious sunshine!
His football match was first; they lost (“they were missing their star player”).
Next up was the hurling which was closer but they still lost. Mind you he wasn’t that disheartened.
We all had to wait around til 4pm for the presentation, all players got participation medals. He got drinks, party bags, ice cream. He had a whale of a time; thank God I had brought a book."
This last reference to her book tells you that no mother's patience is inexhaustible.
So there you have it: the Lord Mayor, banners and bands, an army of volunteers, all putting Gaelic games right at the centre of these children's cultural agenda. I found that very cheering, right down to the emphasis placed on taking part. Too often winning is everything, but to eleven year olds, icecream is instead paramount. Some might see this tournament as tributary to the idea of culture in the city, but I view it as central. It is part of the same city's impulse that venerates a hurler above all others.
Back to myself and the ould fella. It is early afternoon now. He has had a few pints. I am on fizzy water from Newcastlewest when all around me are drinking Clonmel champagne. To add insult to injury, it galls me that good establishments do not have the discernment to stock Tipperary Water, seeing as it is the only proper Mineral water in Ireland. To have shagging Ballygowan instead is like sipping calcified tap water. Anyhow, enough about bottled waters. We read the papers. We wonder how Peter Finnerty is paid money to toss out top-of-the-head thoughts. That he receives public money to trot out the same tuppenceworth later in the same day, in another medium for which he is also little suited - television - passes all understanding. With the papers digested, we mosey down to the station to get a bus to Blackrock. We were anxious to see the minor match, to see if the Limerick lads were as good as their billing. The ground was filling fast, and I cannot remember seeing such colour. The large Tipp flags in the terraces were a credit to the fans. Finally, a word on the venue and the pitch. For a ground that is built on a bog at the bottom of a penninsula, it looked verdant and well-tended. Credit to all concerned. It will never be a sod as sacred as Semple, but it looked elegant under the dappling sun. O2 placards were everywhere, covering the perimeters. If only their network coverage was so complete. Should it really be that hard to send a frigging text?
We managed to see the second half of the minor match. Cork were better in virtually all sectors, their captain Patrick Horgan an unusually complete talent for his age. The interval between games gave us time to linger on the programme. One article told the tale of the Ó hAilpíns growing up in Australia and using their first hurls as little more than novelties. However, when they rooted in Cork, the boys took to both codes, and it is now hard to imagine the hurling wing-back line of all the city boys without Seán Óg as the elder lemon. It is hard too, in passing, to imagine a Cork team with only three city boys in it. It would not have been thought possible 30, 40, 50 years ago when selections came crusted in city prejudice, and many country lads were as good as bribed to wear the colours of the city clubs. Curious too to see 5 city or suburban boys on the Minor starters. The push into the suburbs is ongoing, and good to see. There will be a lot more of them there in the future.
In 1965, Cork were held to 5 points, while Tipp ran them ragged. At half-time in the Senior game that Sunday, I was glad that Tipp had reached 5 points, because I did not want to share the same savaging that Cork got 40 years before. My father was saying that the Cork team of that era would have been beaten by the Tipp subs that day, so strong and deep was Tipp hurling at that hour. Not so now, it appeared to our sunken hopes at half-time. Conversely, the meniscus of Cork confidence had risen as high as mercury at pitchside after their free-flowing first half. With shallow bravado, I mused aloud as we sat on the concrete steps that we had given Cork a 9-point lead before, and hauled them in with some to spare. A few lads around me remembered the 1991 replay as well, but we knew we didn't have the players to do it today. But wait, what was this? John Devane filleting Ronan Curran, and streaking points over? Then punching the air, riling the Tipp crowd. Eoin Kelly scoring the most miraculous point from the sideline, under pressure, over his right shoulder and dropping it over the blackspot. Make no mistake. The Rebel yell was quitened for twenty minutes. Tipp were full-throated now, and it looked like we might burgle "De Banks". Paul Kelly was having a tour-de-force at midfield. Even if he missed some, he scored more. His stickwork and striking were back to the peerless best of 2001 and 2002, and who reading this does not welcome that? But the goal-hunt started earlier than it needed to, and Cork tagged on a couple of facile frees to keep daylight between us. We left the ground having learned more and earned more from the game than did Cork.
Some saw Seán Óg's All-Irish acceptance speech as an annoyance, or at best, an anachronism. An all-Irish speech in an All-Ireland series: who would have thought it? An all-Irish speech in a sport played under the auspices of an organisation whose first word is Gaelic: who would have thought it? I considered it a courageous thing, wholly emblematic of the man. If anyone can be said to sum up the game, it is he. The Cork crowd that stayed were treated to a breathless speech that was true to his team, to his traditions in the North Monastery, and to himself. But the reaction of the crowd was a bit like that of the dog in the Gary Larson cartoon (to remind you, this particular gem from the "Far Side" series consists of two panels. The first is titled "What we say to dogs". A man is scolding his dog, and the word-balloon contains the following: "Okay, Ginger! I've had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!". The second panel reads: "What they hear". The drawing is identical to the first, but this time the word-balloon says "Blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah." The cartoon was reprised later in Larson's career, this time with a cat. The cat fares badly, as must all cats in the Larson universe, hearing only an uninterrupted stream of "blah"; the poor cat; even its own name is outside the realm of its knowing. And so it was with the speech by Seán Óg when many heard little but "blah". Some took their cues from others, or heard key words in the speech like "lucht leanúna" and barked approval. It is a sorry pass, all the same, after a fixture played between the ostensibly truest of "fíor-Ghaeil", and attended by the proudest of Irish people, that comparatively few could follow the speech, even those who lustily sang the anthem.
Please do not read smugness or any form of perceived superiority into these comments, and consider the dog-and-cat thing a metaphorical vehicle with all the grace of a laden mini-bus. When Irish people cannot follow a speech in their national tongue, where does the fault lie? Personally I blame the educational system, Irish societal indigence, and a perverse cultural cringe for this sad state of affairs. When even the famed "lucht tacaíocta na Ríochta" had trouble with the words of their captain last September, it seemed like the "caidhp an bháis" for the proud Gaelic tradition of the GAA to me. Recently, that 2004 All-Ireland SFC winning captain Dara O Cinnéide revealed that he was the victim of verbal abuse after he delivered his entire victory speech as gaeilge last September. His words are interesting in this context:
"There were a few people who cribbed about it which I put down to a lack of understanding of our culture.
"I’m not trying to impose Irish on people or stick it in anybody’s face but I’m just glad I got the chance to say what I did on one of the greatest days of my life."
I would be willing to bet Seán Óg would not be denied his hour for the same reason.
Seán Óg recently came to give a speech to the first-years at my old secondary school - not far from where a car crash could have claimed his career, or even his life, only 3 years ago - and impressed all present with his intelligence and dignity. This is not news, but when I hear him referred to as a "refugee" as I did on the City End terrace, and when I hear of the slights thrown at the current Cork players over appearance money and so on, my heart sinks at the endless ignorance of people, even my own. When the fightback was on yesterday, and Tipp were charging after the goal and the game, who was there sweeping up behind the lines? It was not the man with the Vaselined eyebrows, who had spent the day acting like the arse end of a pantomime donkey - with Webster as its head - but Seán Óg, glorious and unassailable. Assuredly no easy stylist, but a man that rides tackles like no other, and never stoops to roughhouse stuff. Yesterday's was a marquee performance from him, and from his clubmate on the other flank, and all three in that line are nascent legends, without a trace of grandstanding from any of them.
Gemini, the star sign of the Twins, is apparently governed by the quick and lively planet Mercury, the messenger of the gods. "Quick" and "lively" are words that we have come to associate with Ben and Jerry O' Connor, but it would appear that Mercury was not in alignment for the twins on Sunday. As sure as their names evoke ice-cream, it can fairly be said that they melted in the sun that Sunday. To that meltdown can be added Tom Kenny, hyped by Gerald McCarthy in the newspaper beforehand - the curse of the Sunday star profile strikes again. The Cork midfield will be heartened if they do not face another Kelly in opposition this year. First a trimming from Eoin of Waterford, and then a cakewalk for Paul of Tipperary.
In one of the early chapters of Joyce's "Ulysses", Stephen Dedalus is teaching some schoolchildren in Dalkey. He is teaching Roman history, and it is like pushing water uphill. The kids, like children everywhere, would be happier playing outside, as they are as the chapter ends (even if hockey is their game, not hurling). But first, Stephen is asking some questions:
YOU, COCHRANE, WHAT CITY SENT FOR HIM?
-- Tarentum, sir.
-- Very good. Well?
-- There was a battle, sir.
-- Very good. Where?
The boy's blank face asked the blank window.
...
-- I forgot the place, sir. 279 B.C.
-- Asculum, Stephen said...
-- Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
-- You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
-- End of Pyrrhus, sir?
-- I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
-- Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
...
-- Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile...
-- Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a pier.
-- A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the waves. A kind of bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.
...
-- Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.
Pyrrhus gives his name to a particular type of victory, one that gains the victor nothing. Cork's victory over Tipperary was one such. Having beaten Tipperary, they now face Waterford once more, at a point when any loss is now fatal. Can these annual Asculums be allowed? The provincial champions, once they leave their provinces, leave the land of the second chance behind. Right enough, the two provincial champions are seeded to stay apart until the All-Ireland final, but is that sufficient reward in itself? Surely they must have a failsafe as well? Whatever way you parse it, the current system is not working. A round-robin League format, containing two groups of four teams each, with two teams advancing from each group to semi-finals, seems like a lasting solution. Unlike the current cobbled-together arrangement, which stands out like a structure with little apparent purpose. Like something of a "disappointed bridge", in fact.
So there it is. Not quite the pattern of Tipperary summers of yore, which had as their twin aims the saving of hay and the beating of Cork. "The hay baled, and Cork undefeated" might be this year's motto. But at leaast Tipp now have another meadow to mow. For the man from Lorrha-Dorrha it will have the added piquancy that the border with Galway brings. For his charges, it will be an intriguing contest. The team were not in the doldrums after their defeat, knowing as they do what Pyrrhus too did. The Monday night after the game saw them in Larkins of Garrykennedy having a bit of welcome downtime. A brother of mine, who was there that night, said that he was first taken aback by the amount of talent on display, by which he did not mean stickwork. Like a sailor on lookout in the crow's nest, he saw the trees before he saw the land, so to speak. But knowing a few of the lads, he had the chat with them. The pride was back, and no mistake. That is enough of a legacy from this game.
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Changeling Times. Bartizan 17.05.05
In the previous column, mention was made of Mullinahone, and it features tangentially in this piece too. That column preached patience, but my strictures on forbearance do not appear to have availed us greatly. This column is written in the fallow week between games, when managers attempt to tease out a template for the replay. In the case of Tipp, who did not appear to have any plausible gameplan for the first game - despite a lead-in time measured in months - it is difficult to feel confidence in the ability of management to cobble one now when the timescale is pinched to a mere six days.
Thurles on Sunday was a quietish place for the greater part. We came in the Cork road, and saw one of the first signs of summer: a row of cars faced for the road home. The cars bore mostly L and LK plates. I mused that the Tipp team bus should bear L plates too, - in red, on a white background - affixed to the windscreens front and back. For we had learnt little from the League. The expected infusion of new blood had not come to pass; either the patient was not haemorrhaging as badly as three consecutive League losses in Semple appeared to indicate, or the management had picked the men to staunch the flow. A sole debutant, a young man from Toome, starting at centre-forward. One of a 3D line: Devanney, Devane and Benny Dunne. They needed to be three-dimensional in this game, because they had trouble getting into 2 dimensions on the previous occasions I had seen them. Any difficulties with time and space today would cost Tipp dear, as the inside-forward line was light enough. Furthermore. the half-forwards were playing against Limerick's acknowledged strongest line.
I travelled with my brothers. Like TS Eliot's Magi, it was a long journey we made,
"With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly."
We drove almost into the Square, and hoored the car up on a kerb. Time for a swifty in "The County" and away with us into the Killinan. The Ultras had come with the flag, and it looked well, fluttering over the heads of the faithful few. For few we were. Even on our own terrace, there were pockets of green. The rest of the territory bounding the pitch was split 2:1 in Limerick's favour, in inverse proportion to the odds offered on them winning. There was a sense of confidence from them, though. Like JP's house in Martinstown, their team was taking shape. On the other hand, there were a lot of Tipp followers who had better ways to spend fifteen euro. If we got over Limerick and Clare, you wouldn't be long hearing them clambering over the backboards of the bandwagon. Bad cess to them all.
The two teams lined out as selected, a novelty in recent Munster fixtures, and it looked as if Tipp had found redemption. Lar scored a brilliant point, and Tipp seemed on top. His time in the Antipodes seemed to have done Lar good. For one thing, he now knew true north, and had seemed to set his compass to run at the posts and not the corners. We muttered darkly that it could never last, and narcolepsy set in soon after. To be fair, though, he roused himself again in the second half when brought out to the half-forwards, and earned the equalising point at the end of Tipp's best spell, an unanswered six points.
I remember reading a story about the physicist Paul Durac. Durac never spoke at all until he was about four years of age. Not a gurgle, not a vowel. His parents worried about him, thinking he would remain mute through all his days. Then the first words he spoke took shape as a fully-formed adult sentence, perfect in every particular. His parents gasped at the sounds tripping from the mouth of the savant. This story came to mind as I watched Corbett arc and lunge in the opening ten minutes. He famously spent his youth learning the grammar of the game, and passing unnoticed through Thurles at minor and under-21 level. He then opened his mouth with two points from play in the second half of an All-Ireland Final. When the spit was on the griddle, Lar came into his own. Here he was threatening to spring fully-formed into our consciousness again, a savant returned. With he and Eoin Kelly in harness, we might have a shot at something. The momentum dwindled as the half wound on.
It now seems almost aphoristic that hurling hinges on the respective half-lines. Cork won last year because no team, least of all Kilkenny, could breach the beachhead manned by Curran and the two Na Piarsaigh men. Having identified the Limerick half-backs as a tough ask, we could not have forseen quite how lamentable our challenge would be. One of the "D"s was taken off, rumours of sickness perhaps mitigating the captain's limpness. Another, the debutant, tried in three different positions without finding a groove. That the third stayed on long enough to get the goal that put Tipp ahead with normal time up was a puzzle to many, and showed that there are only so many cards in any pack. We have been toiling in the half-forward line for some time now. Looking at the line on Sunday was another case of the presence implying the absence. Tipp's discards and malcontents have fetched up in Ballingarry and Cappawhite and Roscrea, and one wonders if they could be tempted to recant or reconsider under a new regime. But for right now, we play with the cards dealt.
And yet, and yet. Limerick should have won this game hacking up. A scutchy goal, a generous penalty, and the blessing of the referee's whistle, and still Tipp almost took them in the last yards. Have Limerick's new, (and vile), lime jersies left it behind them, or will they be roared to the new rafters in the Gaelic Grounds on Saturday? Speaking of the jersey, the legend on the front: "Sporting Limerick" was apposite. There was scarcely a bad challenge in the game, excepting Shaugh's petulant strike in the opening quarter. I am leaving to one side Mark Foley's shoulder on Paddy O' Brien when the Toome man offered his hand at the start of the game. Once a jennet, always a jennet. He should strike out the "Sporting" soubriquet after that sad display - getting stoked in the dressing-room before a game should not extend to that. Tipp picked up some daft bookings as well, none more so than Redser's for interfering with a puckout, and it was these frees that were Limerick's lifeline in the opening quarter, when TJ took all alms offered.
I recently attended a Tom McIntyre play called "What Happened Bridgie Cleary" which dealt with a tragic incident in Mullinahone at the end of the nineteenth century. The Irish Times offers a neat synopsis:
"In 1895, a young Tipperary woman was stripped, doused in paraffin, and set alight by her husband, while several of her neighbours and relatives looked on. Her body burned, the life went out of it, and still they watched, waiting for the moment in which Michael Cleary, the man who had brandished the burning stick, believed absolutely: the moment in which the fairy which had taken control of 26-year-old Bridget Cleary's person would leave her and vanish up the chimney of their home."
The moment never comes, and the play revolves around the meeting of man and wife in an uneasy afterlife. While I am somewhat incautious in arguing from the particular to the general, it appeared to me that MacIntyre had divined in this awful tale a particular stamp of Tipperary implacability. This implacability is all around at present, in the deafening silence of the Premier fans on Sunday - I now know how Monsiuer and Madame Durac felt for four long years - and in the barbed comments on the boards. And still our jersey mocks us. "Enfer", it announces, with wicked glee: a French hell, which as Sartre reminded us, is defined as "other people". The "other people" will gloat aplenty if we come up short on Saturday, but I saw gumption in our fightback last weekend, and a red-headed talisman whose wheeling goal on Sunday was worth the fifteen euro alone.
Even if we prevail on Saturday, and I think we will, Clare may prove insurmountable. The Limerick half-backs are mere sandbanks in the shallows when set beside the gory rocks that fill 5,6, and 7 for Clare. Walking back through Thurles to a thankfully ticketless car, there was a feeling in the air that the action was elsewhere, offstage. We may as well make a pyre of our hopes for this year, in the hope that a changeling may emerge for next year. A new focus, perhaps a Michael Cleary who will have taken Nenagh to another Tipp title, this time as manager?
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"Patience is a High Virtue, but Virtue can Hurt You"By Bartizan
I will start if I may with a word on my name. A feature of medieval castles, a bartizan resembles a turret, projecting from a building and serving especially for lookout or defence. There is a fine example of one above the doorway of the castle in Nenagh, my home town. Corbelled out of the line of the castle, it is easy to imagine a sentry standing in it, surveying the straggling spread of a small fair town in North Munster.
The castle fascinated me as a child: it beetled dizzyingly over me when I stood in its shadow looking up. All of its silent bulges, asymmetric gaps, crumbling mortar, and indifferent ivy. It was entirely foreign to me, and it was constructed in a foreign language too. I did not then know the words turret, or crenellated, or bartizan. French words that seeped into Irish and English through the Norman advance. And that advance was not merely architectural or linguistic. Look at the Tipperary team sheet for proof. A Butler, heir to the medieval invader, the minder of the Ormond keep in Nenagh, plays with a Kennedy, who provides a stubborn bulwark at centre-back, as his forbears did fully nine centuries ago. Irish history in miniature, captured between the staples on the middle pages of a Thurles programme. An Ormond is also on the panel, seated on the subs bench for the moment alongside another FitzGerald more Irish than the Irish themselves. Men of their name never settled for second best, so we can expect a usurpation of the current order before May 15th dawns. Counted among the men on the field too are the serried native princes of Munster: O' Leary, Kelly, and O' Brien. It is a Tipperary team without a Ryan, but it is not long since men of that name played for the senior county team, and a pair of them field at minor in Munster this year.
Men continue to wonder how the pyramids at Giza took form on the banks of the Nile. But their wonder cannot be of a magnitude greater than mine as I looked on that castle as a child. It was something we grew up with, its immanence taken for granted. It had become the motif of Nenagh, adorning milk cartons and road signs and all the everyday semiotics of a schoolboy's life. Though it was falling down, inside and out, sometimes spilling a carn of rocks by the Abbey walls at the back of the castle, it was and remains a force in the centre of the town. The low door at the front was gated off. Legend had boys falling to their death from the face of the castle, and our parents foreswore us off it. But the braver boys would climb the steps within when the padlock on the gate was cracked, and poke smaller and smaller faces out at intervals to announce their gradual ascent. That this was forbidden to us gave the activity an extra charge.
The surrounds of the castle had a special significance too. The "castle field" was where boys fought after school. The fact that it was the fight site was no accident either. For it was on the road adjacent to church and castle that a fleet of stumpy yellow school busses disgorged the country boys and girls at around half eight every morning. This gave time to dawdle to any of the three schools - the Tech, the Convent, and the CBS - each equidistant from the putdown point. Here it was that the crowds gathered again after four, to mount the three steps to heaven, or in this case, Portroe, Dolla, or Toome. On dappled evenings when horsechestnuts littered the ground, a strange frisson in the crowds announced the imminence of a fight. A roiling knot of boys would gather around a pair of pale raggedy boys. They would be shunted along the walls around the field, and through the gap into the field. Shouts of "Fight, fight, fight" would go up, ringing around the castle walls. Each of us would urge injury on the other. It could be a classroom dispute or a careless insult, but now was the hour of reckoning. It was harmless stuff for the most part, bloody noses and scuffed knuckles. The apppearance of any adult would break up a fight. Even a dogwalker would scatter us; a priest in flurried soutane would send boys scuttling behind walls for fear of being recognised. None of us wore uniforms then, so our faces were the only semaphore an adult could understand. We kept our faces well hidden. There was an unspoken tension between the boys from the town and those from the country that found form in the classroom, and took expression in the castle field. Most fights tilted along the axis of place. To be town-born was a higher calling to those of us brought up in the shadow of the castle. Country lads took time to root, all of first year in some cases, as some of them were the sole representatives of a school or a parish in a particular class, but when the confidence came to answer back to the tightknit townies, the castle field became the crucible where their mettle would be tested. I will return to the contentious issue of place in another column, but I intend this column to focus on patience instead. "Patience est un grant vertu" as the Normans might have said as single stone piled onto stone.
Charles Kickham shares with John Leahy the distinction of being a son of Mullinahone. He was, of course, the author of "Knocknagow: Or, the Homes of Tipperary", the best-selling Irish novel of the nineteenth century. Con Houlihan, who knows a thing or two about sport and literature, called it "the finest of Irish novels". Now as many of you may know, Con's favourite tipple is brandy and milk taken together. I used to see him on a barstool in the old "Horse and Tram" pub on the Quays in Dublin as he swirled the drink in a snifter made small by his huge, red hands. I fear he may have run out of milk on the particular day when he offered that judgement on "Knocknagow", for it is polemical, largely devoid of plot, and wholly sentimental. "Ulysses" or "The Real Charlotte" it is not. The novel is seldom read nowadays, even though it is freely available online. I would need a good bolt of brandy just to get started on it. Kickham himself was a Fenian who was sentenced to fourteen years in jail for felony treason in 1866. Sickly, and held in solitary confinement in Pentonville, he was eventually removed to the invalid prison at Woking. On one occasion he was put knitting stockings. As the author of the introduction to "Knocknagow" puts it: "The warder pointed out that he was not making much progress in this novel art." To which Kickham responded: "I have time enough to learn in fourteen years," We recognise the sardonic tone from a Tipperary man, but patience? Can it really be? If patience is a virtue, then Tipperary cannot be wholly virtuous today.
The last two games that Tipp have played have been with their principle Munster rival of the past 10 years, Cork and Clare. Both at Semple. But as expectations have shrivelled since 2001, the support has shrunk in direct proportion. When the Tipp team took to the field on Sunday last, there was a muted and polite applause in contrast to the raucous cheers that greeted the Banner. It might only be the League, but as Tipp have won it more often than any other team, it must have counted for something in the glory days as well. As Clare came looking for their first victory over Tipp in Thurles, a meeting with them in the springtime must once have counted for something too. Sitting in the stand, facing the pristine press box, I had a knot in my gut before the game even started. Having sat in the same spot for Cork, I was worried. While no loss to Cork can be gainsaid, the Cork game was one that Tipp would have likely won under old rules. Two points for a sideline cut gave Cork their minimum margin, and the respective dismissals of the Tipp and Cork players emphatically worked to Cork's advantage. Furthermore, Cork are All-Ireland champions. So far, so many straws to clutch at.
We, on the other hand, are rebuilding, bedding in. There is little hope of a rebirth. The Munster title, it is generally reckoned, will have to wait, and it is hard to envisage that the three of four (or five?) teams generally reckoned equal or superior to Tipp will all falter. But Devon Loch won, all the same. So Clare lined out with useful form, their fitness a given, and never lacking in motivation against their neighbours. In sumo, a sport I know a little about, both wrestlers must jump up from the crouch simultaneously at the start of the bout, and the referee can restart the bout if this does not occur. Had a sumo referee been pacing around the centre circle on Sunday, he would have had to restart the match on several occasions, as Tipp never really jumped up from the crouch at all. It took them 50 minutes to engage, by which point they had gotten a pummeling. By this time the Lohans - who one suspects would have made a useful living in sumo, just as surely as they exemplify full-back line play at its best - had been shown the line, and Colin Lynch, perhaps by dint of a blood injury, had been eclipsed at midfield, giving Tipp a little latitude. They rattled off 5 unanswered points, and got back to a score away. But in truth, they were never really in the game. Benny Dunne was immobile throughout, like the greyhound cast in bronze on the plinth of the dog track across the road. He had a lovely tan on his legs though, and it wasn't the only evidence of the training done under the Portuguese sun. Tipp played like a team that had reached the red line on the fuel tank. Anthony Daly offered this explanation as a sop to the press corps afterwards, and if it can be used to explain away the apparent apathy of the captain and his men, so be it. But what few supporters were there from Tipp were blazing after the game. Smouldering before it too, if truth be told. When Kildangan were led onto the field before the game, as reigning All-Ireland Intermediate champions, a voice near me, laced with Kickhamite sarcasm, muttered sotto voce: "At least they win when they get out of Tipp". We can take it he wasn't from Toome then. So where are we now, in Tipp? Let us start with the manager.
What of Ken Hogan? I know little of the man and less of the manager. My one recent encounter with him was at the 20 mile mark of the Dublin City Marathon last year, when he was out in the middle of the road, urging lads on. It led to a comment from my brother to the effect that I could now claim to have gotten a runout in front of the Tipp manager. And for that I thank him, because I will never wear "Enfer" on my chest, at least not in my waking hours. But I digress. There are many who feel that Ken is not the right man for the job, that he lacks the gravitas or the charisma, or some ineffable quality that Babs and Nicky had. Some feel that he wasn't even the best Lorrha man for the job, preferring John McIntyre. Does the second-in-command ever step up? Many say he cannot, spancilled as he is by association with the successes of another. But a fine contributor to another forum, one Gilabbey_St from Cork, makes an interesting point in passing about bloodlines and inheritance. In 1986, Jimmy Brohan from Blackrock coached Cork to the Liam McCarthy. His nephew Tom Cashman climbed the steps to collect the cup. And there in the background mopping up all of this experiece was Dónal O' Grady, selector. 18 years later, he ascends to a higher altar. If 14 years is a long time to be making socks in Pentonville Prison, and it is, 18 years is a long time for an impatient man like Donal O' Grady to wait for his inheritance. If it was a Tipp man that went so close and yet so far in 2003, would he have been granted a reprieve for the following year? Ask Michael Doyle. And now Cork have entrusted O' Grady's legacy to John Allen, his lieutenant. We have much to learn from our Southern neighbours, and it might do well to start with some notes on lines of succession. Let us do Ken and his men the courtesy of giving them the time that this team so obviously needs. I would echo and amplify the pleas for patience that have been made on this forum. Our battlecry must be "Remember Limerick". Through retirements and injuries, withdrawals and whatnot, the team that showed up in Semple over the last fortnight is not the team it was. The past is another country, and the borders are currently closed. John Creedon recently ran a piece on the radio where he asked listeners to offer their favourite words in Irish, At the top of the list he compiled was "suaimhneas", and next to it "aisling". In 2005, I would draw no greater "suaimhneas" than to see a Tipp team photo taken in front of Nenagh castle, but for now, I am afraid, it is a dream, and a receding one.
To conclude, I see this column as a lookout post, a view from the bartizan above the castle door. Though no longer living in Ormond, I try to keep my eye in, so to speak. What I see is often refracted through the contributions on this and other forums, or in conversations with home. Most of you know more than me, and I would thank you to remind me of it. This forum functions as so many things, a commonweal or community of common interests, and your words beg mine, as I hope mine beget yours. My name also echoes the word "partisan", so any bias is not only implied but acknowledged before the fact.