All Star nominations

It’s that time of year again, when the great, the good and the journalists get together to decide on the All Stars. Nine nominations for Waterford this year:

Aidan Kearney
Tony Browne
Ken McGrath
Michael Walsh
Stephen Molumphy
Dan Shanahan
Eoin McGrath
Seamus Prendergast
John Mullane

The All-Ireland champions are guaranteed six or seven, which is normally a source of irritation for those of us wishing it were a more diverse mix, leaning away from those who already have the ultimate prize of a Celtic cross. Still, there’s no arguing that Kilkenny are lording it over the rest of us at the moment, so seven statues will be the least they can expect – and all they can expect; I don’t recall anyone ever winning eight.

Which leaves eight to be distributed among the others, and I expect Waterford to pick up three, with Limerick only getting two despite having more nominations than us. The epic part of Limerick’s season against Tipperary is so long ago as to be almost last year, so I don’t think they can rely on it to be fresh in the memories of those picking the awards, certainly not as fresh as their rather limp capitulation in the All-Ireland final. They did beat us to get there, but that defeat will only be held against the full-back line – note the absence of Clinton Hennessy and Declan Prendergast.

Waterford had some sensational arrivals on the scene in the shape of Aidan Kearney and Stephen Molumphy, so I expect them to pick up awards, alongside Dan Shanahan. Michael Walsh might squeak in ahead of one of the rookies, but it certainly won’t be more than three. Limerick will get at least two, maybe three, with only Andrew O’Shaughnessy a cert like Dan. Of the remainder, Damien Fitzhenry will pick up a sort of Lifetime Achievement award, with one or two token awards given to someone from Cork or Galway.

And Hurler of the Year? There can be only one . . .

Hurling Blog

For the sake of my sanity – oh, how much more crap could I write about, but I’d never leave the PC – I decided right at the start of his blog to keep it strictly Waterford related, and as an archive for anything I write for Shankly Gates.co.uk. For a broader hurling perspective, check out a site I stumbled across recently, Hurling Blog.

A Farewell to Alms

Much has been made of the need to be sporting in the aftermath of Kerry’s thumping victory over Cork in the All-Ireland football final, with some people embittered over what they felt were ungracious comments by Kerry coach Pat O’Shea, and Cork captain Derek Kavanagh going so far as to accuse the Kingdom of gamesmanship.

I’m not concerned here with the ins-and-outs of these accusations (mainly because I don’t want to be caught saying anything nice about Kerry or Cork), but it got me thinking on something that has been vexing me since I first twigged it way back in 1994, and that is the art of winning and losing well.

I’ve never been very good at competitive stuff – I gave up hurling when I was 14 – so I don’t have much experience of dealing with winning and losing. But the one thing I am good at is quizzes, and for three years at the end of secondary school I was the team captain in the Cork Examiner Munster Schools Quiz, now known as the TCH All-Ireland Schools Quiz.

(I note irritably that there is no list of winners on that website, because we went all the way when it was a Munster-only contest back in 1995. Looks like my finest hour will be forever lost to the Intraweb generation.)

Anyway, the reason the fallout from last Sunday’s match reminded me of smelly school halls and dodgy microphones in the mid 90’s was the concept of magnanimity in victory and dignity in defeat, particularly the latter. Having despatched a team one year – probably the first time out when we reached the quarter-finals – we settled down for the other contest on that evening. It was a good call, because one of the teams utterly imploded in a manner befitting Limerick against Offaly in 1994. Only needing a handful of points in the last round, a couple of conferred answers being enough, they contrived to get every question wrong while their opponents got every question right. It was horrible, and what made it all the worse was the manner in which the captain of the winners-by-default leapt to his feet at the moment the captain of the losers got the last question wrong.

He meant well, his body language suggesting a genuine degree of sympathy with a team blowing it so spectacularly. There certainly wasn’t any arrogance. It wasn’t as if a team as poor as them were going to win the thing outright (ahem). But it looked utterly, utterly wrong. Had I been sitting on the losing team his ‘gesture’ would have come across as kicking a man when he was down.

I vowed there and then never to commiserate with losers. It’s too easy to be generous in the first flush of victory. Conversely, to the victor the spoils, and losers should congratulate an honest winner. I got to demonstrate that before long, and I made a point after the quiz team was beaten in 1993 and 1994 to shake the hand of each member of the winning teams. Good karma for 1995? I like to think so.

At which point, back to the hurling. Three years on, and I can vividly remember a photo of Ken McGrath in the Indo accepting a consoling hand from a Kilkenny player after the heartbreak of defeat to the Cats. The following year, the same man can be seen in the photo above after defeat to Cork, in this case probably waving away the photographer but the principle of stay-out-of-my-face is surely the same.

I was reminded of all this when I saw a photo on the front of the sports section of the Munster Express after we lost to Limerick in August. There it was again, a winner thinking he was somehow being kind by extending the paw.

Am I really being so embittered when I ask winners to refrain from invading the personal space of players who at that moment would probably rather the ground opened up? I’ve heard a line, attributed to that most clear-sighted of philosophers Ger Loughnane, to the effect that he knew no-one had died but that at the moment of defeat it felt worse than anything could possibly be. There is some logic to shaking hand with the foe you’ve locked horns with for the last however-many minutes, particularly in the limpet-like marking that happens in the GAA. But otherwise, winners should leave the losers the opportunity to be the courageous ones and not view it as sour grapes should they not take it.

Hopefully we will be doing all the ignoring in 2008.

Under-21 of the best

On the day that Dublin tried (and, sadly, failed) to become only the eighth county to win the All-Ireland Under-21 hurling championship, let’s remind ourselves of a time when we could reach All-Ireland finals – and win them.

When We Were (U-21) Kings

The truth hurts

I rarely contribute to hurling discussions online. I feel a bit intimidated by the really heavyweight contributors, the type who train underage teams at their club and have informed opinions on the underappreciated qualities of Pat McGrath. But mostly it’s because threads, in what is surely a corollary of Godwin’s Law, will invariably erupt into slagging matches filled with ad hominem attacks, duels that Waterford people are spectacularly ill-equipped to engage in, what with the shortage of Celtic crosses in the county.

So while this blog is an exercise in futility in terms of people reading it, it has the dual function of being a diary of my thoughts for the ages – did I really once-upon-a-time support a Champions League-style hurling championship? – and a useful way of blowing off steam without subjecting myself to the ‘what would ya know in Waaaterfuhrd’ abuse of our betters.

With that in mind, I present a post from An Fear Rua by reg reagan which didn’t so much strike a chord with me as cause my entire being to resonate. I’m preserving it here so that it can be read in the future without the inevitable sneers that it will attract.

A meander on whinging, Waterford and why the fcuk do I bother?

What I’ve written has no real beginning, middle or end. I don’t write much on this site. Usually some oul sh*te about rugby or winding up the more republican posters. The reason I don’t write about hurling much is because it drains me even thinking too much about it.

reg reagan

There was a lot of oul whinging done in Waterford after the semi-final: a lot by idiotic WD people, bitching about “the system”; some by our considerable band of cheerleaders in the meeja (let’s be honest, we’re second only to the Dubs for the Humphries/Hogan/McEvoy love-ins) and more by non-Limerick, Munster people who fcuking despise the handyness (t’was handy enough, lads) of Kilkenny’s run-in.

I have no truck with any of it. If we want to win All-Irelands (laughable, really) we should beat that Limerick team every day of the week, end of story.

We need to have a serious look at ourselves and the Semis we lost:

1998: Should have won it, lucky KK goal and a lack of nous. We’ll chalk that one down to experience.

It gets ugly from here on in:

2002, bottled it;
2004, bottled it, full-back line;
2006, bottled it;
2007, 17 wides, full back line and, em… oh yeah, BOTTLED IT!

Anyone else see a pattern here? What the fcuk is wrong with us?

As a Waterford man I was up in Croke Park roaring for Limerick yesterday. I’ve got absolutely no connection with the place at all but just wanted to see an under-dog do it. Wanted to vicariously live the euphoria, the relief, the real passion of winning an All Ireland after a real drought. (I’d experienced it somewhat at Tyrone and Armagh victories, but that was only football!) Not the predictable, “happy” satisfaction of winning your thirtieth or hundred and thirtieth or whatever the f**k it was. Henry was going on about how he’d dreamed about walking up the steps to collect the cup on All-Ireland Sunday. If you’re born in Lismore, Lemybrien or Lisduggan you dream of being in row Z of the Upper Canal when a Waterford man is doing the same. I’m 23, I know no matter how much I achieve in my career, my family, my life there’ll be an empty hole in me if I never see them win an All-Ireland.This is something that is 100% impossible to comprehend if you are from the Big 3. I’ll broach no argument there.

As I left Croke Park after the Cork match in 2006 I swore I’d never put myself through the wringer of supporting them again. I kept my promise up to the Championship (didn’t go to the league final, I fcuking meant it this time). Then Cork in Semple. Sure what harm, I’ll go. Even if they lose, sure they’re still in it.

Bastards.

Hooked again.

No need to re-cap what happened this year, to be honest, even if we had beaten Limerick I think we wouldn’t have it mentally, on the pitch or on the sideline, to win it.

Jesus wept . . .

A bird in the hand

I ducked the issue in the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s All-Ireland final, the issue being whether I’d be rooting for Kilkenny or Limerick – ‘cheering’ for either team would certainly be too strong a word. In the end, I found myself falling down on Kilkenny’s side of the fence.

It’s not a position I’m proud of, and looking at the moronic joy of the profoundly moronic Posh Spice over at An Fear Rua made me feel more than a smidgeon of guilt. But I’m content that the result was the right one for my sense of wellbeing. As mentioned on Saturday, it has nothing to do with animus towards Limerick, either on a general level of county v. county partisanship, or the particulars of the manner of defeat – they won fair and square on the day, I’ve no complaints about the system (we all knew the rules before the start of the year) and the notion that Richie Bennis or anyone else from Limerick said anything to rile Waterford folk is ridiculous.

What it boils down to is the epic nature of Waterford’s season and the dreadfully anticlimactic manner in which it came to a halt. Had we lost to Cork in the quarter-final, then I would have cheerfully passed the responsibility for sticking it to The Man to Limerick. As it was, having finally overcome Cork, it had to be Waterford or bust. And sadly, it was bust.

You won’t have to look far for Waterford people who take a less nihilistic point of view. And some people will say that I’m engaging in a self-delusional attempt to rationalise being a sore loser. They may be right. But I’m happy with my own mind on this matter; hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir! Amen. By the time you’ve Googled that pretentious reference, I’ll have made good my daring escape . . .

Party of Five

Brian Cody’s fifth All-Ireland success as Kilkenny manager stands in stark contrast to Waterford’s run of five successive All-Ireland semi-final defeats. Still, it could be worse, and is worse for Limerick who have now lost five successive All-Ireland finals. And it’s the fifth time that the team who beat us in the semi-final have come away empty handed from the big dance. You might beat the Déise, but you’ll have the mother and father of all curses to deal with.

A plague on both your houses (but a bit more plague on yours)

Tomorrow will see Limerick and Kilkenny compete for Waterford’s All-Ireland. The world and her husband were convinced we only had to turn up to win it – but we won’t be turning up. The knife was given a bitter twist yesterday morning when my wife’s cousin arrived from England and asked what all the “black and yellow” flags were for. “The colours of the enemy” were my not-entirely-messing reply.

Yet a week ago, it looked like the Cats were going to be good guys on Sunday. I make no apologies for this stance, and it should barely require explanation – better that Kilkenny win again, an event we’re well used to, if not exactly comfortable with, than see Limerick roar past us in the finishing straight after leading them for nearly all the race (a race that’s been going for over half a decade).

However, I would emphasise that that this position is not borne out of malice towards Limerick – in contrast to my position when Clare nobbled us in 2002, when I would have cheered for the massed ranks of Lucifer’s scaly minions if it meant denying the Banner. I have no such unreasoning animosity towards Limerick – it’s even the land of my maternal grandfather, donchaknow – so as the day draws closer I find I can contemplate cheering for them, knowing that such a result will (gah) be good for the game of hurling. It’ll hurt like hell, but the alternative – the continued hegemony of the Evil Empire(s) – might well be worse.

So which way will I fall? I’ll know at 1530 tomorrow.