Tipperary Hurling Tipperary GAA Premierview

Tribune Archive 15th May 2005


Seeking one more shot at it
Enda McEvoy

ITis the first Sunday of September 1991. Prior to the All Ireland minor final, Tommy Dunne changes the hurley he's used all year for a new model.

Turns out to be a bad idea. He misses a couple of easy frees in the first half and, as the afternoon wears on, Croke Park gets warmer and stuffier, its wicked old arms reaching out to suffocate the young and unwary. Dunne feels weak and tired. In the closing stages, with Kilkenny under full sail, he loses an opponent who proceeds to land a point.

Four points up with 10 minutes left, Tipperary, the favourites, mislay their way completely and are beaten by two. Dunne's Croke Park experience can only get better. And it will.

It is the second Sunday of September 2001. The All Ireland senior final is awaiting its opening score. A ball breaks near Tommy Dunne, who's in one of his six terms as Tipperary captain. Aware of the importance of laying down a marker, conscious that sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, he gallops down the Cusack Stand side and he drives . . .no, he caresses - the sweetest, smoothest, most glorious left-hander over the Canal End crossbar. Marker laid. Dunne is man of the match, All Star, Hurler of the Year, everything. Destiny achieved. It doesn't get better than this. And it won't.

It is a Saturday evening in Killarney, July 2004.

Approaching half-time in the All Ireland qualifier against Cork, Tommy Dunne wins a good ball in the middle of the field and smuggles it down the wing. It's the kind of chance he has nailed hundreds of times. This time, however, he tops the sliotar.

The chance is squandered.

He fades in the second half, is moved into corner-forward and registers a wide ("a terrible effort") from much the same position where he'd split the posts against Galway in 2001. Cork go on to lift the McCarthy Cup. Dunne goes home, ponders his inter-county future and concludes that he no longer has one.

He told Ken Hogan exactly that last November. Didn't see himself being able to make much of a contribution for Tipperary in 2005. Didn't think he could make much of a contribution even if they wanted him to. "And they mightn't." Hogan left it till early March to make the call and invite him back. Dunne couldn't bring himself to say no but wasn't quite sure he wanted to say yes. "Desire is not quite the issue. It's that you don't know if you're up to it any more. That's the biggest thing. You still don't know."

He knew a little better after his first training session back, at Semple Stadium on St Patrick's Day. Trotting out onto the field, he told Philip Maher that it felt like he was starting all over again. But the steps came back to him more quickly than he imagined. While Hogan didn't put the panel through hoops, Dunne was at least able to cope physically, a reassurance in itself. "That inner voice thing. That's always there. You don't ever want to finish on a downer. You always feel that there's another good day in you. And it's not necessarily that there is, but you want to get another good day. And you're not going to get it sitting at home."

Good times, bad times, Dunne has had his share. He frequently had it hard from supporters who saw the languidness but missed the thoughtfulness. Quiet and introspective, he frequently made it hard on himself. And his underage CV, with its two Tony Forristal medals at under-14 level and three Nenagh Co-op medals at under-16, provided no armour-plating following Tipperary's defeat by Clare in his first full . . . short - championship season in 1994. He can't remember or isolate any particularly hurtful barbs. He can't but remember the feeling of "letting down the whole team, letting down the whole county. Souldestroying."

For the few who cared to search, explanations existed.

The "big personalities", as he terms them, of the Babs era were still around, whereas Dunne was a kid dropped in at the deep end and expected to make a difference. "No matter who you were, it was always going to be difficult to be comfortable with that group of players, with so many great players around you." It took until 1997 before he felt genuinely comfortable in his blue and gold skin, and that primarily because of what Len Gaynor, the new Tipp manager, had told him at the beginning of the year.

Gaynor wanted him on the team. Gaynor needed him on the team. "That was the first time I'd had any positive interaction with a manager."

One match you could play all over again, Tommy. "Just one? That's a very good question. [Pauses. ] Ah. The Munster final of 2000. I knew there was an obvious one. We hit 17 wides and missed two penalties. Need I say more?"

Just a little, actually. Tommy Dunne magicked up two goals out of nothing in the second half against Cork that day. Would the Tommy Dunne of a few years earlier have done the same? "No way.

Because I didn't have the same character a few years earlier. Or I probably wouldn't have still been on the pitch at that stage. It's just experience. You learn to keep going, keep going, keep going."

By that stage Nicky English was in his second year as Tipperary manager. Dunne had been in Chicago when he heard the word of English's appointment in the autumn of 1998. He doesn't remember passing any remark one way or the other, not least because he didn't know English that well; theirs were ships that had passed in the inter-county night in the mid-1990s. But English's arrival was, he says, "a benchmark for me in career terms". The Tipp team caught on the finishing line by Clare in the drawn 1999 Munster semi-final and wiped out in the replay was as well prepared a Tipp team as he's ever been part of. ("I'd love to have seen how we'd have got on afterwards in '99 had we got over Clare.") An illustration. Early in English's reign, Dunne travelled to Dublin to see a sports guru, an opportunity open to all members of the panel. Driving home, nagged by the feeling that he'd wasted a day, he looked again at the card the guru had given him.

There were three words written on it in the following order. Fitness. Attitude. Ability. A lightbulb flashed. "Fitness, attitude, ability. The cornerstones of everything I wanted to achieve."

Achieve it he did on 9 September 2001. Amid the champagne supernova of the dressing room immediately afterwards, Dunne toyed with the notion of declaring that this was a feat Tipperary . . . with their young team, depth in the subs and a management who weren't going anywhere - could repeat before deciding it was neither the time nor the place. Into and through the early summer of 2002, they shaped like they would. Then Waterford blew them away in the second half of the Munster final. "That wreaked a lot of havoc with us."

The lost thread shows no signs of being recovered.

What the medium-term future holds for Tipperary is a subject he won't be drawn on; suffice it to say he's not quite as optimistic on this score as he once might have been. Tightening the structure of the county championship to guarantee clubs matches within a specified timeframe would be one step in the right direction, he believes.

Yet for Dunne the pros, individually and collectively, have far outweighed the cons. He is, he says, "so lucky to have been able to play at this level for so long, considering the way life is in general". He once lost the sight of an eye for a couple of days, he's suffered the customary few broken fingers and had a bad ankle that plagued him in 2003, but otherwise he's been blessed. And no, he wouldn't dream of suggesting he's the player he once was. "That's very difficult to accept. Very difficult. Me being the way I am, I find that very hard to understand. And to be comfortable with. It's even harder to turn it around. But you always feel you can be better."

Off the field, his planets are finally nicely aligned. His girlfriend Deirdre is back in Ireland after 10 years in New York. After years of trial and error, a meeting earlier in the year with a nutritionist who prescribed a new dietary regime (no cabbage, no broccoli, no lettuce, no tea - the latter one being the real penance) has done much to help him regulate a longstanding bowel disorder.

Dunne turns 31 next Saturday. A new phase of his life is about to begin. A phase that will not be consumed by hurling.

It is the third Sunday of May 2005. Tommy Dunne will start on the bench at Semple Stadium this afternoon. If he's not required, grand. If they do bring him on, that's grand too. Or would be if he didn't have to hope to God he can play well. "It's as simple as that. If I can play well, then I can offer something to the team."

One more shot at one last day in the sun.

GUINNESS MUNSTER SHC FIRST ROUND PREVIEW TIPPERARY v LIMERICK Semple Stadium, Thurles, 4.05 Referee D Kirwan (Cork) Live, RTE 2

First, the crowd. Word is the Munster Council will be doing well if there's 25,000 here. If that transpires . . . and some projections are as low as 15,000 . . . that's an awful indictment on all concerned, but especially the Tipperary public. You would at least think curiosity would override pessimism, and that the seven men who started and won an All Ireland "nal only four years ago would be entitled to the bene"t of the doubt and support but, judging by ticket sales within the county, that isn't the case.

There are many similarities between followers of Tipperary hurling and Liverpool FC, such as the prospect of an unlikely cup run. Meaningful renditions of You'll Never Walk Alone aren't one of them.

There are causes for concern for Tipp but none are terminal. Philip Maher was not his commanding self this past league but he's a championship player; the TJ Ryan experiment will hardly be the one to diminish that standing. David Kennedy has earned his shot at redemption; while no Tipp supporter should settle for the DK of 2002, he didn't let them down the three years previous to that. John Devane and Benny Dunne, while more natural defenders, are capable of doing a job in attack. The big fear is the negativity within the county has engulfed the team. If this becomes a battle . . . and Limerick will look to make it one . . . have they the spirit to withstand it?

In truth there was four points rather than just one between the teams when they met last June but with Padjoe gone, Limerick have more faith in their setup. We wonder do Tipp have more in theirs.

They've lost John Carroll since, Limerick have won back their footballers. We like the look of the Limerick backs, Andrew O'Shaughnessy (right) has shown glimpses in recent weeks that he might yet ful"ll his potential while Donie Ryan could take this game over. Home advantage will count for little either; Tipp lost three games this spring in Thurles.

If Tipp start well, they could win by six or seven. We don't see that happening. It will be close. This past four years Limerick have a woeful record in the tight games but players like Ollie Moran, Mark Foley are too proud and simply too good to end up on the wrong side of yet another one today.

Limerick by the unusual point or two.

TIPPERARY B Cummins; M Maher, P Maher, P Curran; D Fanning, D Kennedy, E Corcoran; P Kelly, C Morrissey; J Devane, F Devaney, B Dunne (c); E Kelly, L Corbett, P O'Brien

LIMERICK T Houlihan; D Reale, S Lucey, M Foley; O Moran (c), B Geary, P Lawlor; P O'Grady, D O'Grady; C Fitzgerald, N Moran, A O'Shaughnessy; D Ryan, TJ Ryan, D Sheehan

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Hard man of Munster Sunday Tribune 2005
Enda McEvoy


'He typifies our concept of the archetypal Tipperary hurler. It is a quality of style that is intrinsically a part of the man; the rugged power, the sweeping stroke, the touch of dare-devilry, perhaps; and certainly the cold courage' Paddy Downey, The Irish Times, 1965 THE lion in winter.

He's on his second cup of tea in Hayes's Hotel . . . where else? . . . when a man who's been reading the paper over lunch at the next table passes by. The stranger is neatly dressed, a business type in his 40s, clearly no contemporary of the man speaking to the Tribune. But who of a certain age in and around Thurles doesn't know the tea-drinker and his deeds? "Write down this man was a big soft gentle giant, " the stranger says, pokerfaced. "There you are!"

responds John Doyle, laughing at the good of it. "He's said it all there now!" It's official. John Doyle, teddybear.

So all that Hell's Kitchen stuff was a myth, John? "Ah, a bit. We were never . . . well, I'll put it this way, we got as much punishment as we were supposed to have handed out.

I can assure you of that.

"I'd have to say about myself I never hit a fella with a hurley in my life. If I had, that would have been the day I'd have had to give up. Oh, I hit them with my body alright. But with a hurley, no.

And I stand over that."

Different era, different game. "It was a lot more physical then. But nobody hurt anybody. And there was no big need for frees. Fellas didn't lie down for the sake of lying down. They didn't want to give you the saying that a fella knocked them down."

Himself, he did plenty of knocking down. "I never cared about anybody, physically or otherwise, but I would beat them with my strength and my hurling ability."

By his achievements shall ye know him. Not just him, but the contours of his county's fortunes too. Tipperary had won three All Irelands in the 23 years before Doyle arrived on the scene, the unwilling baby of the team that demolished Laois in 1949.

They won eight All Irelands in the 18 championship seasons he wore the colours. They've won four All Irelands in the 40 years since his final medal.

As well as the eight All Irelands, two of which came in a mid-career reincarnation at wing-back, he won 11 National League medals, a statistic frequently overlooked. ("That took a bit of doing, now, didn't it?" he says proudly. ) He was never dropped for a championship match. He was never taken off injured. In a county where they like 'em lean and hungry, hardy and frill-free, Doyle was the incarnation of Tipperary hurling raised to the highest power.

The only addendum that needs to be applied to the Paddy Downey quote above, which can be found in the treasure trove that is the Premierview. ie website, is Tipperary have been searching for a John Doyle ever since.

For a while in the late 1990s they appeared to think Paul Shelly might be the one, although only Tipp supporters could have tried to turn Paul Shelly into a folk hero.

John Leahy, with his dash and bouldness and unwillingness to recoil from any fire, came much closer. But nobody reassured Tipperary people about their place in creation the way John Doyle did. It's difficult to imagine anybody ever will.

On the gable end of Barrett's Coachyard Inn in Thurles, four of the county's finest stare down from a mural, a sort of Tipperary version of Mount Rushmore.

Jimmy Doyle, Pat Stakelum, the Rattler Byrne, John Doyle. Maybe it's a trick of the light, but for some reason John Doyle's likeness seems to loom the biggest. To the end of his days, as long as he attends matches in Semple Stadium, fathers will clutch young sons, point and say, "That's John Doyle." Jimmy Smyth once observed of Doyle that he generated his own greatness. In a way, he still does.

His CV holds no secrets.

The three All Irelands in his first three years, the decade and a half of combat against Cork, the sheer propulsive force of the team of the 1960s.

"They played together as if they were a club side, those lads, " Doyle acknowledges.

"They knew each other so well, they were so long together. And they were big and powerful. The later bunch might have been that little bit better than the 1949-51 team. I'm not saying anything wrong there, am I?" (No. ) "But the team of the '60s, they had a bit more power up front. They had, yeah."

Of all the meat grinding encounters with Cork, Doyle nominates the 1960 Munster final in Thurles as the most fearsome, and one that was to cost Tipp dearly when they met Wexford at Croke Park five weeks later. "That was the hardest game ever. It drained Tipperary so much we were there for the taking in the All Ireland final. That's the truth. A match I'll never forget. It had everything. Big crowd, scores . . . 4-13 to 4-11 . . . a thunder shower an hour or two beforehand. My God, it was something else."

It also had Christy Ring, and the Ring of the early 1960s was, Doyle agrees, even deadlier than the Ring of the early 1950s or the mid-40s.

"The older he got, the more dangerous he got. He knew where to go. He was always in the right place, a great reader of the game. He didn't have to run 20 feet, but he was active. Hurling isn't all about running. The ball goes faster than any guy running."

Not that Doyle was a slowcoach himself. "I was nearly always out in front. Once you get in front and collect a ball, that's it. I had strength. I was reasonably good to hurl and I could drive the ball 80 yards off the ground. All of that '60s team were good at ground hurling." Had he been an opposition manager keen to keep Doyle out of the game, he'd have chosen a speed merchant to mark him.

"You'd need a fella with the pace to get away from me.

Other than that, he'd have no chance. I'm being honest with you. That's the truth of it."

Christy Ring, a notable scourge of false modesty, is doubtless nodding in approval from on high.

The trickiest opponents Doyle marked were Ring, Eddie Keher ("the best forward Kilkenny have had in the last 50 years") and the aforementioned Jimmy Smyth, all three of whom possessed the physique to complement and accentuate their skill. The late Noel Murphy of Thurles Sarsfields he nominates as a player who'd have made a name for himself anywhere else had he not had the misfortune to emerge in the right county at the wrong time.

He plays a straight bat to a question about his son Michael's ill-starred tenure as the county's manager in 2003 ("it was disappointing to be criticised the way he was after the amount of work he put in, but when players go out over the white line, nobody can do anything for a manager"). The inevitable has-Tipp-hurling-gone-soft?

poser is matched by an equally unsurprising reply.

"I'm afraid it has. Much as I don't like to say it, we've changed our style from Tipperary hurling to Kilkenny hurling. And they've changed their style to our hurling. You can see the difference the last 10 years. The type of game we're trying to play we're not able to play."

They can hardly subvert the laws of physics, pretend the rules haven't changed and go back, can they? He looks affronted. "Of course they can. There's no rule to say they can't hit the ball on the ground. No rule to say they can't double on the ball in the air. No rule to say they can't go hard into a tackle. No rule to say you can't make your presence felt on the field. No rule there to stop that." John Doyle's requiem for the land of lost content. Aladdin's Cave will not open wide to Tipperary hurling again in his lifetime. "You'd only be living in hope, " he sighs.

He'll be 75 next month. A few years back he wasn't well.

He points to the right side of his head. "A tumour. But it wasn't cancerous." In other words, the tumour lost. These days he's fine, and is only sorry that when he's eventually beckoned forward by the great referee in the sky, he won't be around to attend the obsequies. There'll be a certain amount of people, he reckons, who'll come to the funeral to "make sure I'm gone down".

What his headstone will read is a question he's never considered before. He takes a moment or two, then nods.

"As far as the GAA is concerned, I hope club and county will always remember me as giving 100 per cent."

No bad epitaph, even if it's not the one everybody would inscribe for John Doyle.

FACTFILE
Born 12 February 1930
Honours with Tipperary 8 All Ireland senior hurling medals (1949, '50, '51, '58, '61, '62, '64, '65); 1 All Ireland minor hurling medal (1947); 11 National League medals (1949, '50, '52, '54, '55, '57, '59, '60, '61, '64, '65); 6 Oireachtas medals (1949, '60, '61, '63, '64, '65)
Honours with Munster 6 Railway Cup medals (1951, '52, '53, '55, '60, '63)
Honours with Holycross-Ballycahill 3 county senior medals (1948, '51, '54)
Texaco Hurler of the Year 1964
Texaco Hall of Fame 1992
Other honours Left cornerback on the Team of the Century; left corner-back on the Team of the Millennium;
left corner-back on the Tipperary Team of the Millennium
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