Tipperary Hurling Tipperary GAA Premierview

The Killinan End

4th September 2010

“Play Like a Champion Today”


It measures 36 inches by 48 inches and its coloured blue and gold. A hand painted wooden sign adorning one of the most famous stadium tunnels in American sport. Generations of young athletes have drawn inspiration from its message and succour from its presence. It signifies values and traditions which are noble and everlasting. It’s the last sight the players of the Fighting Irish of the University of Notre Dame lay their eyes on before hitting the sacred sward of South Bend. The inscription bears a simple message – “Play Like a Champion Today”.

I’m a big believer that Sport is nothing if its not about values. The values which are depicted by the “Champion” sign are what this great sport of hurling is all about. Its about self expression and excellence, about one tribe at battle with another. And in the perfect world it will be the team that plays like champions that will be victorious. Therein lies the lesson for Tipperary from the little sign which is five thousand miles away. Forget about drives and fives, play your own game and play it like champions and you will succeed.

It was inevitable that we would be back here. Standing in the rain in Thurles on the Monday night after the All Ireland last year, I heard Liam Sheedy promise that we would be back next year. I heard Nicky English make the same promise on the steps of the Cathedral in ’88. Last year was heartbreaking but dignified: - Exhilarated Sadness, the Sawdoctors might say. That the biggest cheer of the night was for Benny Dunne spoke volumes for the Tipperary supporters. Here was a tribe not prepared to turn over one of our own to the self-righteous mob. Sean Nugent lifted the roof off the New Stand with Slievenamon and we all went home to dream of another day.

Those dreams were no doubt pock marked by the nightmare which unfolded on Diarmuid Kirwan’s watch. The enormity of the injustice visited upon Tipperary by the refereeing performance in last year’s Final has been discussed to death. What is important to point out at this juncture is the danger presented by hoarding that sense of injustice. It’s a danger that could have derailed our entire project where it not for the quiet man from Portroe. Liam Sheedy immediately sent Diarmuid Kirwan to Room 101, and has made little or no reference to him since. We could have gone another road, the Galway road, still nurturing their grievances over John Denton and 1989 their sense of hope continually brutalised by harping back to the 1989 Semi Final. In hurling as in life you generally have two choices: - get busy living or get busy dying.

We got on with business, wearing an uneasy coronet:- the most celebrated All Ireland runners up in modern time. Perhaps it was a status we overindulged in during the winter months the sense that the rest of the hurling world were really only there to provide Kilkenny and Tipperary’s chorus line. Winter brought black clouds. A horrendous County Final injury to James Woodlock which has cruelly denied one of the last year’s hardest working players a shot at playing this year. Festy Kerwick was a casualty to the groin and has grappled manfully to claw back to fitness ever since. The cruellest blow fell perhaps to Paul Kelly, just when he seemed to have discovered a fresh seam of form in the forwards, injury struck. In the circus that has surrounded injuries in the build up to this year’s Final we should not forget our own wounded comrades.

The League started with the touch of farce, late snow derailing the Kilkenny game. When we finally got going it was to Donnycarney for a royal mugging by the Dubs. League form was so-so. The win over Kilkenny sans Ballyhale rests uneasily with wobbly performances against Waterford and Offaly. Casting a critical eye over Tipp at this point wasn’t all sweetness and light. Deep in the subconscious there was the search for Tipp to kick on from last September, and thus one saw the League and searched for evidence of Tipp Version 2.0, when it wasn’t to be seen the criticism was amplified. Another gnawing fear was the sense that the central positions has regressed slightly since the All Ireland. Paudie Maher, Conor O’Mahony and Seamus Callinan all found themselves under the spotlight in this context.

However all our troubles (real or imagined) were packed up in the old kit bag as we headed south to the arena by the marina. Nicky English has often spoken about the need for Tipp teams to periodically get a collective kick up the arse. It was hard to take to see Ben O’Connor in particular with Niall McCarthy at his side performing scorched earth on Tipperary. But it may have been medicinal in nature, better to blow out the collly wobbles in mid May then have to grapple with them when the hurling gets more serious in August. Its remarkable though to think, that a little thing could have taken that Cork game down a different channel, an early Tipperary goal for example which was a distinct possibility.

Massive underperformance is always an easier diagnosis to treat then systems failure. Therefore the qualifier road held out the promise of redemption. Hurling’s equivalent of the discount socks section in Heatons. We came through with two further stations of the cross to negotiate.

Could Tipp survive a tight one, could they stay the course with hell being unleashed in the final furlong.? A worthy question but one answered deftly with the comeback against Galway in the Quarter Final. I see the Galway game being used a formline, however has to take on board the 3-0 that were giftwrapped and presented to Galway that day.

Could Sheedy’s Tipp win a tactical battle? A worthy question when faced with the tactical might of Keith Barry and Bernard Dunne. Waterford tried their tactical voodoo and were comprehensively sent to the scrapyard. Another worthy question answered.

So therein lies the rub, despite the early year setbacks and the commentariat preaching that Tipp have gone backwards this year since last year, Liam Sheedy’s men have answered all the searing questions put to them. What remains now is in their hands to achieve. Lets not waste column inches in hagiographical praise of Kilkenny, the power is in Tipp’s hands, to rise to the performance of last year and tweak it just ever so slightly by retaining a measure of composure when presented by a goal scoring chance .

That’s it. That’s the whole ball game. Play Like a Champion Today.

GMB.