Tipperary Hurling Tipperary GAA Premierview

Groundhoggery 20.07.06 Bartizan

The groundhog is back. But unlike Punxsutawney Phil who comes out of his burrow on the fetchingly named Gobbler's Knob on February 2 every year, it is the great good fortune of the hurling denizens of Waterford and Tipperary that they must see this creature twice in seven weeks this year. This match-up is one of four groundhogging fixtures over 2 days, as hurling is shunted to the GAA sidings once more. God forbid that there might be a footballer in the country who might not get a Sunday to himself. Thurles will see a full house, and hear the Rebel Yell, while Croke Park will once more be at a funereal 40,000 capacity, more Billy Joel than Billy Idol.

Favouritism has tilted between the teams like a summer seesaw in Tramore. Tipp down, then up: the bookies initially shaded it for Waterford, by the odd punt in 21, as it were, before it settled at evens for a spell, and now Paddy Power have Tipp at 10/11. That's a small swing, but an interesting shift for all that. You might have thought that Tipp distanced themselves from their neighbours across the Comeraghs seven weeks ago, and by some daylight at that, but the bookies are marking it differently. For Waterford have absentees returning, greater match practice, and the rust scoured from their blades. Tipp swords have been in scabbard a while, Redsergate may still be swinging in some far field, and the sense that the Munster Final was a half-throttle affair all edge it for the Déise. So, some fifty days on from our last joust, how lies the land between us?

Have Waterford improved by a sufficient margin since our last meeting? They need to find nine points to win. Their wides were in double figures in both halves, right enough, and some of these - Hail Marys from Dan in the first half, and scutchy frees from Flynn in the second, for example - were on the headnodding side of scandalous. But apart from the second half of the 2002 Munster Final, when every brilliant point seemed to beget a better, Waterford are often wasteful. They remind me of a plasterer I once spent a summer mixing stuff for. Speed was his mantra; no sushi chef ever had faster hands. But for every trowelful he sluiced onto the bricks, half of it skated down the wall, where it gathered in apologetic pats at the base. I'd be driven distracted by his haste, but what did I know, being fitted only for a hod?

So, Waterford will likely either rack up a cracking total - 2-22 is not beyond them if Brick Walsh at full-forward (good name for a plasterer, that!) and Eoin Kelly of Mount Sion are in the mood to sharpen their trowels. Or like love in the old Richard Hell punk classic, they may "come in spurts" and end up once more as the "Blank Generation" his Voidoids sang about. They are a funny old team, Waterford. Haste and waste have been their bywords in Croke Park of late; you need to go back to the Galway game of 1998 for their last win there. They had Kilkenny beaten once in the interim, if they but knew it, and have had Cork in tight corners taking a standing count more than once. Ultimately, and sometimes unluckily, they cannot seem to close a game out. Even with Paul Flynn carrying a leg, they will not get many better chances than this year.

Tuesday night comes, and Babs draws up his starting fifteen. The team sees a single change. The selection of Francis Devanney is, on the face of it, a perverse choice. He has not seen any game time in Championship 2006. He was heavily involved last year, but apart from the game against Clare which was his best performance by far - a smart point in either half, and a ton of work around the middle - he was anonymous. He was absolutely cleaned against Cork in the Munster Final, but he was not alone in that. Let us not forget that the man he replaces was no scoring machine either (in fairness, a total of one point in 2 games would not keep you on a club team at number 11). What's more, even without the controversy about Redser's being dropped off the panel, the Red could not have expected to start on Sunday. So a change was inevitable at 11. For us to be blooding a 21-year old who is a natural forward, with a good club pedigree this year must be a positive. Devanney, while he will never win the Hurler of the Year accolade his near namesake Liam picked up with Tipp in 1960, is a good lad to bag a goal, and will be suited on a loose centre-back like Murray. For I figure this match will see Ken McGrath at 8, and not holding the fulcrum at 6. In fact, to add to that, I see Ken tearing up the middle of the park with a yellow helmet stuck to him like a limpet. He'll see more of Shane McGrath over 70 minutes than he would have thought possible in a whole lifetime.

With respect to the Devanney situation, and his apparent return to form and favour, bear in mind that this time last year his clubmate John O' Brien could not even make the Toome starting side. He has come on a ton on the half-forward line under Babs' tutelage. We must assume that Babs has weighed up the alternatives - an underwhelming Egan, Butler not yet at the right pitch, a consequent reshuffle of both forward lines, and decided that Devanney was the least worst option. I cannot pretend to be best pleased with him after last year's form - his selection does not exacly send Santy down my chimney - but it is a game that will be loose all over the pitch, and that might suit him. Now, what's this? Look at what Cork have done for the Limerick game. One replacement at 10, a straight swap of Neil Ronan for Cian O' Connor. No jersey-juggling. No hoisting Ben back to the half-forward line after his good showing in the corner last day. Minimal change, minimal distraction. And let us remind ourselves, which template has worked best in recent years? When everyone with an opinion on hurling in Tipperary - that's everyone in Tipperary - would have Devane or Butler or Egan instead, ask yourselves, who is best placed to pick the team? The hurler on the ditch or the manager on the pitch?

I take Tipp to pip Waterford in a flowing game. I would be surprised if the goal count is less than 5. Furthermore, I believe it is Galway that we will face in the semi-final. Having attended the Leinster Final, this Kilkenny side is most vulnerable in precisely those areas where Galway are strongest: the inside forward line and at centre-forward. Cork will shell Limerick, though it grieves me to say so, and Wexford have the potential to spring a trap for a Clare outfit battening on unwarranted hubris. But that's enough of predictions from this particular Punxsutawney Phil. Bring on the Déise.

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Sarsfields 22/06/06 Bartizan

The name of Patrick Sarsfield is one of the few that illuminates the night sky that is Irish history. This soldier gave his life to the cause of Irish and French kings, and has given his name to many sporting clubs, none more famous than that in Thurles which gives Tipperary its captain on Sunday. To be even-handed on the eve of the Munster Final, it must be noted that there is another fabled club of the same name in Glanmire, on the edge of Cork city, boasting a player in their forward ranks by the name of Kieran Murphy.

As children we learnt of Sarsfield's famous ambush of the Williamite arms train at Ballyneety in County Limerick, and how Sarsfield's raiding band gained entrance to the enemy camp by using that night's password when pressed by the sentry:

"Sarsfield's the word, and Sarsfield's the man!"

The capture of men and arms was swift and sure. The whole lot - cannon and powder, guns and carriages - was piled high and a fire lit. The explosion was heard in Limerick city under siege, and is thought to be the loudest man-made sound ever heard in Ireland. That sound will be as nothing to the sound heard in Semple on Sunday if Redser lifts the Munster trophy in his own back yard. The explosion in Ballyneety left craters that are still visible four centuries later. The impact on the Cork psyche could be just as deep and profound – and hopefully just as lasting - if Redser lights the fuse on Sunday.

What gives Tipperary hope at this remove? After all, five points did not reflect the real gap last year. Factor Babs and Leahy in for sure, summon memories of 1991 - little did we think 15 years of Cork hurt would follow the replay - but consider first the 20 men that will wear out the ash on the field. Let us initially parse the season so far, and see what we have learned. After the Limerick game, I noted certain improvements in the Tipperary performance over last year; since the Waterford game, I have amplified the list.

1. Fewer fouls.

Babs' first dressing room dictum is that frees hurt. The only really daft foul conceded in the Limerick game was O' Mahoney's on Lucey, and the evidence of this new discipline and forbearance on the part of Tipp was in the stats opposite Mark Keane's name. In the Waterford game, we did concede more frees, but Paul Flynn had forgotten to pack a compass. The contrast with last year is stark, though. Remember Benny Dunne conceding two scored frees in quick succession? Remember the high balls into the square from Cork that troubled Cummins and led to the concession of goals? Each score has a source. If Cork earn a point - like the fabulous one after Eoin Kelly's penalty was saved - no arguments, but to yield scores from nothing fouls - such as the one Paul Kelly conceded in the first half last year, is a sin. Go then and sin no more.

2. Handpassing.

We have left this skill maundering in our kit bags for years while Kilkenny and Cork use it as a means of escape. It is good to see it back. Think Eoin Kelly to John Carroll for his point against Limerick. Egan to Kelly for his last point of that same game. Countless other examples from the half-backs. Tidy, accurate, unflustered. And about time too. I have been banging this drum for years. Babs must have heard it.

3. Hooking and blocking.

The Limerick game summed up this added facet of Tipperary play: Redser's hook on Geary was a peach, Kenny Dunne tipping the ball off Donie Ryan's stick gave us a point, Dimi's hook in the corner in the first half led to a score. This is the Cork model, where everyone from Joe Deane back harries and hassles his man. It forces limited backs to get rid of the ball at all costs: leading to rushed passes, ballooned clearances, striking off the weaker side and so on. All percentage plays for the opposition. Shield into sword.

4. Team ethic.

After the dressing-room rumbles of last year, one of the most cheering things about the Limerick game was seeing Benny Dunne and Paul Kelly carrying hurls and fetching water. This communicated togetherness as much as anything the other lads on the field did. No harm in the "one in, all in" philosophy when a row kicks off either. You could see in the Limerick game that a bit of Newport granite and Ballinahinch shale doesn't go astray in this Tipp team. For instance, Banger got as much of it as he wanted when he came on for Limerick, the niggly hoor. That kind of stuff won't work on this Tipp team.

5. Intermediate Club contributions.

The Intermediate clubs threw up some gems this season - Shane McGrath's yellow helmet could become a totemic sight in time. It's not for nothing his father is called "Rocky". Seeing Eddie Enright in civvies as we walked back into the Square after the Limerick game reminded me that we have an All-Star midfielder in the Orient this year - a man whose replacement against Galway last year was the equivalent of the nail falling out of the horseshoe. It was only later, when the horseshoe was shed, and the king metaphorically fell on the battlefield that I realised where the root cause lay. It's hard to lose such riches as Enright and still thrive. That's good husbandry of limited resources on Babs' part, as much as anything. And he has always known the value of men from traditional Intermediate and Junior clubs, being one himself, and co-opting another as Selector.

5. The crowd.

Every man, woman and child is foursquare behind this team. The pride is back in the jersey, and notwithstanding early goals in the Limerick game, and another ambush from Dan the Man in the Waterford game, the crowd willed the team back. Once we went ahead, we never relinquished leads. In truth, in the Limerick game, Semple was worth a couple of points to us. Even lads that were plainly struggling to get to the pitch of the game were given time to settle and regroup, both by the management and the crowd. The season so far has seen no dingbat substitutions a la Redser last summer - although John O' Brien looked surprised to be called ashore against Limerick - and John Carroll, for all that the games seem to be passing him by, was given his dues by a crowd that remembered earlier heroics. The team gave the crowd great succour too. When the fat was in the fire against Waterford, and a quarter-hour of passion had brought them back to within two points, it was graft as well as craft that saw Tipp through. Diarmaid Fitz foraged out in the middle third, and sent a tempting diagonal ball into the centre. Lar revved up his hamstrings, caught the ball on the first bounce, wheeled back towards goal taking a touch on the hurl, and roofed it. It was a very fine goal for many reasons: because it answered questions about team resolve, about Lar's rehabilitation, and because it set our spirits soaring skyward from the Killinan End.

Lark Orbit, you might say.

6. Young players.

This is a young Tipperary team. How many have we over 30 now that Tommy Dunne and Eddie Enright have probably played their last games for the county? Even the veteran Eoin Kelly is only 24. The Tipp team has had youth and good legs in the closing stretches, which is a tribute to their fitness. What's more, they'll need it against Cork, who always close games well.

7. Form is all.

Babs does no "meas" in bloodlines, club loyalty, past gaiscí, or letting a man play himself into form. Marinated as he is in the sport of kings, he always judges a horse on his last gallop. So it is that we have a Tipperary team unbeaten in two outings named with three changes. All of these are down to the paramount importance of training-ground and club game form. No-one could doubt that Philly Maher has been hindered by injury, and is slow on the turn: Dan Shanahan's goal was potentially game-changing last day, only to be trumped by a better one at the other end. Colin Morrissey, for all his tenacity, and the strength of his season in 2004, is still as one-sided as the Jack of Spades, and has been eclipsed by McGrath at midfield. He simply has to make room for the points that Paul Kelly brings.

8. Rivetting the defence.

Sun Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, made some interesting points in his study "The Art of War" about how an underdog can defeat a superior force. While not strictly applicable to hurling, Tipperary needs all the help it can get in this game, even if that extends to advice from the Orient that pre-dates the birth of Christ. One of Sun Tzu's principal tenets is that the underdog must attack the enemy's weakest point. In Cork's case, this is assuredly their front six. The return of Paul Ormond from the Class of 2001, and the redeployment of Paul Curran (the most underrated defender in the game?) to full-back is an attempt to implement this strategy. The Tipperary back men are all good stickmen. They have it in them to process good ball to the Tipperary inside line, thereby bypassing Cork's line of strength, another Sun Tzu maxim. Babs has rivetted the defence: it has a much better balance when compared to the six of last year. Remember Corcoran in the corner playing from the front - and Joe Deane tugging his hurl at every hands turn? Poor David Kennedy at six(es and sevens)?

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Without being blinded by Sun Tzu, it's the Tipp wing-forward line that remains a puzzle locked inside a conundrum hidden in David Blaine's pocket. Earlier this year, I described it as resembling a Fianna Fáil reshuffle: the same faces are dropped only to re-appear to gasps of surprise. John Carroll gets another go, with instructions to open up the Cork inside line with those bullocking rampages. Carroll divides opinion at the moment, but having watched the Waterford game once more on Setanta, I consider him a little unlucky. Hear me out. He followed up for the disallowed goal, and was blocked down for another, fizzing the rebound inches over the crossbar. With a fair wind the last day, there would be 2-0 against his name, and not 0-1. As it is, though, he has weighed in with single-point contributions against both Limerick and Waterford, and while that is not enough to give Cork heartburn, and while his touch has been a touch agricultural at times, I can see him put in a rollicking performance on Sunday. John O' Brien needs another 2/3 point game, and the hunger to remain. The next time I see him in Rocky's in Nenagh, I hope he is sitting on a high stool with a Munster medal in his arse pocket like his brother Paddy did in 2001. Redser needs to recalibrate his radar. So far his shooting form in Thurles has been woeful: the damage done has not been to the scoreboard, but to the tiles on his neighbour's roofs. If Sunday is his day, this might be Tipperary's hour.

Sarsfields the sward, and Sarsfields the man?

It is time to believe that, in equestrian parlance, having gotten over the tricky Limerick-Waterford combination, we have it in us to clear the Puissance wall that is a Cork three-in-a-row chasing team. With each passing year no new bricks are added to the wall, yet the wall continues to grow higher. Where is the low point on this Puissance wall? Which side must Tipp approach from in order to scale it? My best guess follows.

If the Cork fullback line was a TV series, it would be "The Ex Files", the protagonists a couple of ageing and cranky individuals called Muller and Sully. Each episode starring our intrepid heroes features a new mystery - largely revolving around how each has avoided being sent off for persistent fouling in the past couple of seasons. As befits a sci-fi series, "The Ex Files" also features a Klingon in human form, who goes by the earth name of Brian Murphy. His job is to get so close to the enemy that he effectively melds with it.

It is believed that the current series of "The Ex Files" is the last, and that the famous partnership will be dissolved at the end of the season. If you haven't tuned into this cult offering before, the season premiere in Thurles on Sunday at 4.00 PM may be your last chance.

The Lee rises near Gougane Barra in the beautiful Cork Gaeltacht. After the recent dry spell, it is to be hoped that the source has run dry, or at the very least let us hope we do not hear the Cork anthem in Semple this year; we are overdue a chance to burgle "The Banks". As a child I was taken to the nearby well of Saint Gobnait, who listened to my every request for intercession. I devoutly hope Gobnait is still listening.

And to hopscotch from the sacred to the profane: if the wise men on Betfair are prepared to offer 4/1 on a Tipp win, so much the better if we triumph. The pints in the Sarsfields Social Centre don’t pay for themselves!

P.S. A word on the referee. Tricky Dickie Murphy, the Smiling Assassin. A man who has never done Tipperary any favours, ever. A man who has honed my paranoia to the point where it could be used to engrave diamonds. Now, I know that referees carry out a thankless task and that I have never whistled myself, but if Dickie never again strayed from his postal route in Enniscorthy to referee another Tipperary championship game, I would not shed a single, salty tear for him. He has absolutely scalded Tipp on occasions past. The gall I felt in 1999 when Conor Clancy carried the ball for 99 steps before being awarded a penalty will never be forgotten. At least when DJ Carey over carried, as he often did, his pace made a blur of his movement. Clancy, on the other hand, moved like a drunken pensioner doing some midnight sean-nós dancing in a parochial hall in Carna. It can't have been hard for Dickie to guess the steps once he got over, say, 15. We'll be watching on Sunday, Dickie.





Face Off Bartizan 4.5.06

The Roman god Janus is associated with gates and doors (and bartizans, perhaps?), beginnings and endings, and is represented by a double-faced head, eyes pointing in opposite directions. The people worshipped Janus at the beginning of harvest time, when they started planting, before birth or marriage, and especially at the beginnings of important events in a person's life. Janus fits our purposes perfectly as we face in two directions in this piece: towards the League just past, and towards the beginnings of a Championship almost upon us.

Having seen much of this Tipperary team in the League, whether on the road or on the sofa, I often awoke on Monday mornings feeling like Samson. Why Samson? Well, the Biblical scholars among you will remember that when Samson was eyeless in Gaza, he needed to ask a boy to guide him to the columns of the pagan temple, before pulling them down on himself and many others. Like Samson, I cannot clearly see the columns that this Tipperary team might inspire in me this season, and it has taken some prompting to guide me here. So, having been shorn of inspiration for a while, I apologise if what you are about to read has a flavour of the familiar. But with the face-off in Thurles ten days away, and the smell of fresh-cut May grass filling up my senses, enough of talking out of my Janus about blind strongmen.

Let us first go on a Tour of the Glens of Antrim. In his previous incarnation as Tipperary manager, Babs Keating's first game in charge was against Antrim in 1986. This much we know. 20 years later, we heard (and wrote, in my case) much about second comings. Driving north, after the slackness and sleepiness of the previous Sunday's display against Kilkenny, it was difficult to see any sign of a Messiah. We came to Cushendall, a town hollowed out of glowering hills. It was a miserable, drear day. Thousands had come to a club celebrating its centenary. The Tipperary doctor, a man with Antrim connections, had been prevailed upon to ask Tipperary to agree to a long trip to the Glens. Their generosity brought a good crowd despite conditions.

The stamp of legend is everywhere evident in Cushendall: Óisín is reputed to be buried nearby. And in many ways, the Babs of 2006 is like Óisín returned from Tír na nÓg; the world has changed, and the old verities have disappeared. Babs' return may resonate with an eerie feeling, echoing this image from Máirtín Ó Direáin's lament on his return home to Inis Mór:

"Mé ar thóir m'óige ar bealach,
Mé im' Oisín ar na craga,
Is fós ar fud an chladaigh,
Mé ag caoineadh slua na marbh.

(I seek my youth on the road,
I am Oisín on the crags
Wandering on the strand
Lamenting the hosts of the dead).

As we looked around a fine pitch, we were filled with misgivings. This was a craggy Antrim team that had caught the Galway turbocharger running on dirty petrol. 5,000 avid Glensmen had come to will a first defeat - at any level - by their county on Tipperary. A Tipperary without its talisman, Eoin Kelly, a Tipperary still bartering backs for forwards, a Tipperary betwixt and between at that moment. We were primed for a shock, what with the weather ragged, the Antrim team all pulling in the same direction and coming off an unheralded win against Laois as well. In the end it was lucky that both teams escaped the Glens without serious injury. Apart from the danger that swampy underfoot conditions posed, there were some fairly "lively" pulls at close quarters as well. Tipperary needed every score, however scutched or ill-gotten. Darragh Egan nailed frees from all points of the compass and Declan Fanning doubled on a hopping ball to leave four points in it at the finish. There was a nice cameo of John Leahy, with blue towel, running out into the action to clean the ball before Egan took the frees. Dry balls, anyone?

As wet as the weather was, I was left with a dusty whistle afterwards, so off we went to one of the great hurling pubs, An Camán, owned by Sambo McNaughton of the 1989 team. There are photos all over. There is John Kennedy of Clonoulty with his arm around an Antrim opponent as they leave the field spent. There's DJ Carey in an unaccustomed place, facing me from a poster at the corner of the counter. In another angle of the room is a framed Antrim shirt signed by the five Antrim All-Stars. To put that in perspective, the Tipp team they faced in mid-March, though stripped of several names, still fielded with four All-Stars in Brendan Cummins, Philly Maher, John Carroll, and Paul Kelly. There are no current Antrim All-Stars, though they have nuggets throughout their team. Their right-half back, Malachy Molloy, was one such. He and Carroll had a rare tussle. It was Mulloy who initiated the best score of the game. It was a Dunloy club production - a great catch, followed by a lovely short hurled pass to a man in space, next an arrowed ball at elbow height to the full-forward, Paddy Richmond, standing just off Philly Maher. His adept turn and deft strike left Cummins with no chance. The figure from whom the Dunloy clubname is taken, Cú Chulainn - a man who knew the value of an accurately hurled ball, as his name attests - would have nodded sagely at the sequence. That stamp of legend again.

The Antrim colours, as we know, are saffron and white. The spice that gives the colour its name is the most precious and most expensive in the world: the Saffron filaments, or threads, are actually the dried stigmas of the saffron flower. Each flower contains only three stigmas. These threads must be picked from each flower by hand, and more than 75,000 of these flowers are needed to produce a single pound of Saffron filaments. In many ways, the harvesting of this rich, intense spice is a fitting metaphor for Antrim, and indeed Ulster hurling. Just as it takes a lot of saffron threads to amount to even an ounce of the spice, hurling resources in the North need to be husbanded well: recent initiatives such as the Ulster League, and the arrival of young contenders in the shape of the Antrim minors may be the signs of a flowering. I do not mean to be condescending to the hurling communities in the Glens or in Belfast, who must resent patronising Southern tones, but their team was a credit to them that day.

The other game where my car won over my couch was the Offaly game in Thurles. The Killinan End was sparsely populated that day. But the pace of the Tipperary team had moved from soporific to somewhat serious. The contrast between their displays against Kilkenny/Galway and the relative vigour against Offaly reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons where an alien spaceship lands in the US, and their attention is drawn by a game of baseball. Our alien friends find the game deathly slow and tedious, and in an effort to make it more exciting, fire a device called an Accele-Ray at the assembled players. This turns the teams into a whirling blur, and the aliens find this much to their liking. Babs had obviously gotten hold of a sawn-off Accele-Ray after the previous ho-hummery of his Rip Van Winkles, because this was a Tipperary at three-quarter pace, at least by way of comparison to the re-enactment of "Nosferatu" that Limerick and Waterford sleepwalked through. Tippeary could afford a hamstrung Eoin Kelly and unearthed a gem in Shane McGrath of Ballinahinch.

But still you could not say that Tipperary had the look of a settled side. While Limerick probably know 13 of their starters on May 14th, we are still turning the Rubik cube. The half-forward line increasingly resembles a Fianna Fáil reshuffle - old faces getting fresh chances - while the centre-back position is like Lannigan's Ball, with Fanning stepping in, and O' Mahoney stepping out again. Mention of reshuffles brings us to the iPod. The iPod Shuffle had one very simple, and as it turned out, one very successful premise. It played the selected tracks randomly. A simple algorithm embedded in the device software followed say, a Pogues track with something by Marvin Gaye. Proximity did strange things to your perception. Listening to a familiar track run out, you automatically anticipate the follow-on track, only to be sidetracked by something totally different. Of course, the guys at Apple realised that the randomising of tracks was a thrill that could wear off, and that the ordained pattern is sometimes better. That's why the sequential option is offered alongside the shuffle; order restored at the touch of a button.

Watching Tipp in the League, you wondered if Babs needed to switch his selection from shuffle to sequential. Seeing some of the players in positions for which they were plainly unintended by nature or nurture is an indulgence I felt we could do without. Sometimes Marvin Gaye needs to follow Marvin Gaye, if you like. But who am I to tell this to the man who turned a Fox from goalminder to goalpoacher? Who else saw where Bobby Ryan best belonged, at least in the absence of any better man? Hence the rotation of Diarmaid Fitzgerald: in a panel that offers options at wing-back, do you take the neatest and knackiest of them and try your alchemy up front again? We will wait to see how the season unspools. We need to wait and see if, like Pierrepoint, Babs has never lost that mental guage.

Albert Pierrepoint was the last British hangman. He plied his trade, as his father and uncle had before him, with unrelenting efficiency. Over the span of a quarter-century until the mid-Fifties, he dealt with over 400 "clients". His conscientiousness was matched by his compassion: his greatest pride lay in judging the client's weight by sight, the better to measure the required length of noose. In all cases, there was a painless break between the second and third vertebrae. This grim review of Pierrepoint's career is by way of a reminder to us all. Like the hangman, Babs measured players with an accuracy and acuity that few could match, and we trust he never lost it. The Limerick game is when the noose is unveiled. It is the game towards which Babs' face has been pointing all along: no Janus he, you'd imagine. Because this League, like all Leagues, has seen plenty of bluffs and silly buggers; everyone has an excuse if the game goes west. In that, Babs is doing no more or less than the Cody who ventured DJ at centre-back last year, or the Justin who pulled in Waterford's claws in a League final before throwing down the mother of all trumps a week later.

And so to the face-off in mid-May. Limerick and Tipperary in mortal claustrophobia again. It took Evan Sweeney to filch a light-limbed goal last year to separate them (a Sweeney astray this year). There is movement in the market for Limerick, as the reckoning goes that they have improved more. Waterford await the winners, a Waterford side that seem to practice self-immolation as a training technique. This year you feel that they need to hold fire until August - a little like that scene in Braveheart where William Wallace shouts "Hold!... Hold!... Hold!... Hold!... Hold!..." as the English armies rampage towards his men. In a perverse way, Waterford's catalogue of injuries and suspensions might help them to stall the ball until the qualifiers and instead come. like Wallace's men, with a late rush. And of course Cork lay where they always lay: flattening the long. long grass. Cashmans report ringing tills for the 3-in-a-row. But mention of trebles reminds me that Cork are going to find it hard to keep hitting the same pitch this year. The first note a tenor loses is his highest note, his High C. And Clare have heft now, and revenge in mind. A new beginning beckons our faces towards a Munster championship that may not promise a vintage year, but seems set fair for surprise all the same.

To finish with a fitting tale about our hangman. Mr. Pierrepoint ran a pub that was his mainstay and chief income; even his wife knew nothing of the piecework of his other life, where he dispensed with those such as Ruth Ellis and William "Lord Haw-Haw" Joyce. Their pub was rather quaintly called "Help the Poor Struggler". It could be our motto this season: our poor strugglers in Tipperary need our help on the Killinan on Sunday-week, and we owe it to them and to ourselves to see whether they can snap into a sequence that could take them to a second successive Munster Final. The Shannonsiders are currently flush with confidence while Tipperary sags. What odds Babs to invert that order?