Flynn out

Paul Flynn is going to miss next Sunday’s county final with an ankle injury. While this is bad news for Waterford fans as it brings the evil hour of his retirement ever closer, this is surely good news for Ballyduff Upper as they bid to prevent Flynn winning his 245th county title. Okay, it would be his eighth, but it feels like more at this stage. Can you sense the longing for a different name on the county cup?

Waterford GAA on Wikipedia

GAA pages on Wikipedia seem limited, not least the Waterford page, so I’ve added a probably overly comprehensive history of the various inter-county hurling teams, shamelessly culled from Dickie Roche’s A Story of Hurling in Waterford – I’ll get around to acknowledging it, promise. Hopefully it won’t get trashed for being too verbose, but it’s a start. I’ve also tweaked the list of senior country hurling champions so there is a list of wins by club. Feel free to demolish it with impunity – you’ll do it with or without my permission.

Ballyduff Upper Man for a day

Despite my pleasure at Ballygunner’s roasting of Mount Sion last week, I was still hoping that Lismore would do for them today. Alas, as it has been for God-knows-how-may recent championship matches over the years between those two teams, Lismore were not up to the task, going down to the Gunners on a score of 1-14 to 2-6. The damage was done early in the second half. With only a point in in at half time (0-7 to 1-3), Lismore spurned an early chance to level and watched as Ballygunner came straight up the field to score their only goal of the game. They gradually built up a seven point lead, and while the newly crowned Hurler of the Year notched up 1-1 in 90 seconds to trim the lead to three late on, Ballygunner held their nerve to book another – another! – county final appearance.

Please, Ballyduff Upper, put us all out of this fourteen year misery.

Dan Shanahan, Hurler of the Year

To the surprise of nobody, Big Dan is the 2007 Hurler of the Year, the second Waterford player to win it after Tony Browne in 1998. Amidst all the usual bitching about the sagicity (or lack thereof) of the All Star awards, this will be a universally popular choice. Well done, Dan.

All Stars – how MANY?!

I predicted Waterford would be left picking up the pieces after the Cats had been festooned with the All Star awards, and three was as many as we could hope for. So imagine my delight to discover that the Déise boys of 2007 have received no fewer than five statues, with Ken McGrath, Tony Browne and Dan Shanahan adding to their haul while Michael Walsh and Stephen Molumphy both picking one up for the first time. It’s not the same as winning an All-Ireland medal, but it’s a satisfying conclusion to a great year. Well done to all concerned.

The rage of those who have missed out should also make for amusing reading as the day progresses.

The full list of winners can be found here.

Championship draw 2008

Once again, Waterford have the honour of defending the Munster Cup and, in what will surely be viewed as karma for the ‘disgrace‘ of allying ourselves with Cork and Kerry in rigging, er, seeding of the football draw, we’ve got the booby prize of playing in the first / qualifier / preliminary round, thus giving one more game for us to be knocked senseless in. And it’ll be against Clare. Beautiful. Should we win, we’ll play Limerick in the semi-final. You could argue that that will have extra spice this time round after events of 2007, but every Munster championship game has enough spice to go around.

In the football, it’s a repeat of last year; Clare in the first round with three-in-a-row chasing Kerry waiting in the semi-final.

Oooh-ooh, halfway there!

Quote of the month, if not the year, went to my dad on the train back from Dublin yesterday. Ten to eight, and already I was checking how Stan and the boys were doing against Germany at Croke Park. “Why are you bothering,” says he, “don’t you know it’ll be 0-0? Don’t you know it’ll be 0-0 in an hours time?” A comment born of his less-than-glowing attitude to soccer, but it was eerie in its presience. And what better way to ram home the point than to agree to accompany me to the replay between Mount Sion and Ballygunner, where it was most unlikely that the score was going to be 0-0 to 0-0.

As it was, what transpired was only marginally more entertaining, as an astonishing three-goal salvo in the first ten minutes sunk the defending champions before they had even had a chance to raise the periscope to survey the danger. Each goal was more morale-sapping than the last, the first allowing the Ballygunner forward (no team sheet could be found) to waltz through the defence and score with a shot that Ian O’Regan in the Mount Sion goal really should have seen coming; the second seeing the Mount Sion defence going AWOL, the Gunners nearly screwing up as they had acres of time and space to walk the ball into the net; and the third from a free, a well-struck one but surely one Monastery man could have put a stick to it as there were enough on the line to form a scrum. When another speculative effort on goal from a free arrowed home – Ballygunner’s forward clearly spending his days well with The Master – the match was done and dusted.

Having not been at a senior club match in all of eight years – the 1999 county final, when the Mount Sion juggernaut flattened Ballyduff Upper – this was a case of dipping my toes in the water. I can certainly see myself doing it again. The bone-juddering intensity of hurling is still there at the lower levels, even in a match as anti-climactic as this one was. So I’ll be back, in the sense of being back to Walsh Park, where it’s a case of short journey in, easy parking, no hassle getting a ticket or a seat (can’t have been more than a thousand at it) and a quick getaway at the end. Heading down to Dungarvan or even further afield for the Munster club championship, should we be in it? I don’t think so.

Speaking of Dungarvan, it is there that Ballygunner travel to play Lismore next weekend in the semi-final. As per previous comments. Lismore shall have my full support (in spirit). And should they fail, Ballyduff Upper shall have my full support, they having secured the honour of being my backup to slay the other head on the Waterford hurling Hydra that is Ballygunner by defeating Abbeyside in a nailbiter on Saturday night. Fingers crossed.

Eoin Kelly vents his spleen

Passage’s finest is in fighting form according to Setanta Sports, hammering the GAA for an inter-county schedule that has left players “crippled” and labelling the All Stars “a joke” – thanks to Ollie over at Up the Déise for bringing these to the world’s attention.

His comments about the All Stars remind me of the manner in which celebrities attempt to play it cool while waiting for Jeremy Clarkson to tell them their lap time in the reasonably priced car on Top Gear, affecting disinterest until they find out then whooping with delight / looking like they’ve been mugged.

Quarter-final weekend reviewed

Abbeyside 2-11 Tallow 1-9

Ballyduff Upper 0-17 Fourmilewater 1-11

Mount Sion 2-12 Ballygunner 1-15

Lismore 1-17 De La Salle 1-15

And the semi-final draw:

Abbeyside vs Ballyduff
Mount Sion/Ballygunner vs Lismore

Three into one won’t go

The county championship is tortuously moving into the closing stages, and the only question worth asking is can anyone break the duopoly of Mount Sion and Ballygunner? The Big Two collide in the quarter-final today in Walsh Park, which should on the face of it improve the chances of one of the others winning out seeing as only one of them will be in the semi-final. I’m taking a glass-half-empty view of the whole thing though. I view them as being one and the same thing, and guaranteeing that one of them will be in the semi-final is, well, guaranteeing that one of them will be in the semi-final. Which is a bad thing. Better that both had had the opportunity of losing in the quarter-finals and ridding us of their tedious presence before the semi-finals.

As it is, Abbeyside and Ballyduff Upper are already in the semi-finals. Our thoughts and best wishes go with them and the winners of the Lismore and De La Salle match today. All of you, any of you would do!

Update: looks like it’s Mount Sion 2-12 Ballygunner 1-15. They’re zombies, keeping on coming back. Thankfully no Waterford team enters the Munster club championship until the 18th November but it’ll be no thanks to the Big Two and their local bun fight if we get in on time.

Update II: Lismore defeated De La Salle, 1-17 to 1-15, in the other quarter-final, two points in injury time snatching the victory for the westerners. You’ll never guess who got winning point, not in a million years . . .