30½ v 1½

One of the more prominent themes about Waterford’s challenge to Kilkenny’s hegemony is that every other county will be rooting for the Déise boys come the first Sunday in September. This theme was challenged by a poster at KilkennyCats.com, suggesting all manner of reasons why people would be rooting for Goliath over David, and listing person or persons unknown who not only subscribe to this view but seem to form a majority of those canvassed.

One is tempted to suggest that this is evidence that you can get any answer you want if you phrase the question correctly. Ask anyone whether they’d rather see cool, clean, culchie hero Henry Shefflin come out on top against a terrace-baiting, jersey-kissing, townie yahoo like John Mullane, and even a few Waterford folk might plump for King Henry.

There are legitimate reasons why someone from a non-participating county might want Kilkenny to win. In the same way that people might root for Michael Schumacher in his pomp or Tiger Woods when he can walk, so people might root for Kilkenny. To see the excellent excel can be a great thrill to the passionate neutral. In addition, it would be naive to think that Waterford haven’t acquired a contingent of detractors over the years. The aforementioned terrace-baiting and jersey-kissing grates with some, the soccer tinge to much of the crowd annoys others. Clare people can’t forgive or forget what happened in 1998. Tipperary people must view Waterford as the single biggest barrier to success having lost five times to us in recent times. Whether you think any the above are reasonable reasons to want to see Waterford fail, they still exist.

For all of that, it seems unlikely that anything other than a small rump of malcontents (© Dessie Farrell) wish Waterford ill next Sunday. I base this not on a belief that any animus to Waterford can be washed away by a flood of Déise tears or any other romantic deus ex machina. It’s that looking back through my own observations on minnows come good over the years, people in the GAA always root for them – to begin with. The examples in the last two decades are legion, but I’ll limit myself to one example – Armagh in 2002. With the relative infancy of the internet leading to sad ignorance on how to handle people online, I imagined to get embroiled in a long-running feud on the GAA Discussion Board with a rather nasty character from Armagh. I swore before their matches with Dublin and Kerry that I would not cheer for them, but in the end found myself swept up in the euphoria of their release from eternal failure. I would be certain that people up and down the land would feel similar given the relatively trivial nature of their respective desires for Waterford to lose.

That doesn’t mean you have to cheer for the minnow in perpetuity. Minnows either become puffed up by their own self importance, thus no longer qualifying as ‘minnows’, or they get mown down by the next generation working their way up. Thus on both counts did I feel justified in cackling with delight when Wexford downed the Orchardmen a few weeks back.

It will be 31 v 1 next Sunday. Here’s to being on the other side of the equation in the not-too-distant future.

I have a dream . . .

Shamelessly lifted from sid wallace over at AFR.

Two score and five years ago, he said, we had a dream. We dreamt this dream in the symbolic shadow we stand today, although then it was a corrugated shed that only covered half the length of the pitch and we had concrete seats that were very cold in winter. Many of our forefathers suffered very bad cases of chilblains sitting here. Our womenfolk endured kidney infections. But they too dreamt the dream. This momentous decree of 1959 came as a great beacon light of hope to thousands of downtrodden Deisigh who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their humiliation.

But forty five years later, the Deisigh are still not free. Forty five years later, the life of the Deisigh is still sadly crippled by the manacles of gloating from the yokes across the river. Forty fiveyears later, the Deisigh live on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of All Irelands. Forty five years later, the Deisigh still languish in the corners of Munster hurling and so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our county ground to cash a cheque. When the architects of our Association wrote the magnificent words of the Official Guide, Parts 1 and 2, they were signing a promissory note to which every Gael was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, blaas as well as cats, would be guaranteed the “Inalienable Rights” of a ticket to the All Ireland. It is obvious today that the Association has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as the blaas are concerned. Instead of honouring this sacred obligation, the Association has given the blaas a bad cheque, a cheque which has come back marked “insufficient allocation.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient tickets in the great vaults of opportunity of this Association. And so, we’ve come to cash this cheque, a cheque for €140 that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice or at the very least two tickets to the Upper Davin.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the Slievekeale Road in the queue which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. We must not kiss the badge on our jersey. We must not be photographed with our babies. We must not roll around the ground with our manager, and we must not give two fingers to the crowd. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with Deise force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Deise community must not lead us to a distrust of all Cats, for many of Cats, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. Their jobs are our jobs, their schools are our schools and their tickets are our tickets.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back. The queue is too big for that.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mount Sion, go back to Ardmore, go back to Saint Saviours, go back to Stradbally, go back to Ballygunner, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Western towns, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the Deise dream.

I have a dream that one day the Deise nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that there are only 15 men in the other dressing room the same as us.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Ballybricken, the sons of the Deise and the sons of Ossory will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood and order a kebab without a row breaking out.

I have a dream that one day even the village of Mullinavat, a hamlet sweltering with the heat of bitterness, will be transformed into an oasis of blue and white.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a county where they will not be judged by the colour of their tattoos but by how many All Ireland semi finals they have contested.

I have a dream today!

Do not adjust your set

If the final whistle goes on Sunday week and Waterford have won, do not be surprised if the picture goes wonky as Donie Mac Giolla Chúda does his nut:

Kudos to deiseyopman for posting this clip.

Of mice and men

Harold Macmillan famously noted that the thing most likely to upset the political applecart was “Events, dear boy, events.” He came to mind yesterday evening when I was firing up the laptop to compose a scornful lament for the Cork footballers, centred around the notion that if their campaign to oust Teddy Holland was based on their desire to have the very best shot at success then how much less than 1-5 in 65 minutes would they have scored with him at the helm?

Then Cork ripped off 2-2 in the last seven minutes, something that didn’t just knock me out of their stride as this old revision on Wikipedia shows.

It would be a particularly one-eyed supporter who could watch the manner in which Teddy Holland was dumped upon by the Cork panel and not notice the parallels with what went on between the Waterford panel and Justin McCarthy. The comparison isn’t exact. The Cork footballers reacted not just against one man but the entire Cork County Board, an act that effectively set them against the entirety of Cork GAA – people can point to the crowds that turned out in support of the footballers, but that would be to advocate governance by rent-a-mob. And Teddy Holland would not have been human if he didn’t look at the shambles Cork were for 65 minutes against Kerry and not feel a little bit smug at seeing the bastards squirm. Justin McCarthy, on the other hand, must have known he had lost the players after the performance against Clare. Unlike Holland, it couldn’t be said that he hadn’t a fair crack of the whip.

Still, the whole thing still leaves a sour taste. Amidst the general delight at Waterford’s long awaited arrival in the All-Ireland final, there have been a few dissenting voices online who felt disappointment that the team who shafted Justin were now being lauded for their callousness. Bearing in mind the antagonism I feel towards Cork – I haven’t cheered for Cork in a single match since, not even against Kilkenny and Kerry – it’s perfectly understandable that some people would look at Waterford and say “after what happened, no thanks”.

Some might argue that the end has justified the means. Kilkenny people in particular would do well to remember that a very vocal group of them were sharpening the knives for Brian Cody when he dropped Charlie Carter in 2003. Winning the All-Ireland smoothed over any and all ruffled fur, demonstrating that their commitment to fairness stopped at the point you can touch the McCarthy Cup. What happened to Justin was of a different magnitude. Managers are meant to drop players. Players are not meant to drop managers. And the end / means argument assumes that we would not have reached the All-Ireland final without Davy Fitz at the helm. The odds are that we would not be, but it can’t be disputed that the 2007 model actually won stuff. If the players don’t perform on Sunday week, will they consider their losers medals more valuable than a Munster and National League winner’s medal?

You can’t be objective with your own county. If the players had stuffed Justin in a sack and dumped him in the Pill, I’d still support them. That wouldn’t make it right though, and winning the All-Ireland won’t make it right. Won’t stop me enjoying it, but it won’t retrospectively validate what happened either.

Watch Davy go med, absolutely med! Yawn . . .

The intraweb has been trying to hold its collective sides together at the sight of Davy Fitzgerald giving it large to the Limerick IT players in a dressing room dressing down (warning, as if it’s needed – contains very bad language):

Is this anything we haven’t seen before? I once read an article by a serious cyclist where he addressed the question of why cyclists shave their legs. After many meanderings through aerodynamics or making it easier to pick debris out of your shin if you take a tumble, he concluded that cyclists shave their legs because that’s what cyclists do. The same seems to be true of managers in all sports, who seem to think the players can’t understand words unless punctuated by effin’ and blindin’. Witness Neil Warnock in a situation where he knew he was being filmed (swear words bleeped out on this one):

Warnock has a reputation for being truculent – I’ve never seen him interviewed after a defeat where he didn’t accuse the ref of being a cheat. But what of Eddie O’Sullivan? Eddie is (in)famously mild mannered in his media dealings, yet even he seems to think a team talk isn’t a team talk without some cussing (back to a bad language warning):

The Davy Fitz clip above tells us nothing we didn’t know already. Maybe Davy gives a pep talk where he derides all previous Déise teams for being pushovers, something he observed from his days with Clare and Sixmilebridge. Now that would be worth seeing.

Wake me up when August ends

(NB photos lifted from The Wanderer’s Irish Rail Photos. Yes, really.)

I’ve been sitting here rather pathetically for much of time since returning from England, flitting between various websites trying to encapsulate my thoughts after Waterford’s win over Tipperary in the All-Ireland hurling semi-final. You wait 45 years for something to come along – okay, I’m not that old, but memes are pervasive in the GAA; the deeds of previous generations lie heavily on the current one – so that when it does, it can overwhelm. It’s like Godot has turned up.

I’ve been subjected to a blizzard of thoughts in the last couple of days, probably a consequence of not being there and therefore lacking a firm narrative. So to try and overcome the writer’s block, I thought I’d ruminate on what went so right after those horrific failures in 1998, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2007 (and writing it down really hammer home the horror). I think we can discount the defeats in 1998 and 2006 because we were simply not good enough those years. This may sound strange given they were our narrowest defeats, but the manner in which we staggered through the Championship like a punch-drunk boxer was not redolent of someone preparing to get their hands on the McCarthy Cup. sid wallace over at AFR put Waterford’s efforts in 1998 into context when reviewing Ger Loughnane’s recollection of the Clare years:

No thought is given to the contrary analysis that Clare wound themselves into a frenzy over opponents who at the time weren’t worthy of it. Whatever about Waterford’s front and attitude in 1998, they were a mediocre bunch as was proved by the way the rest of the year played out. Even playing at half pace Clare were much too good for Waterford in the drawn game and only a series of freak events (best encapsulated by Anthony Kirwan scoring 2-1) allowed Waterford to steal a draw. The writer had little doubt that Clare would have finished the job off with a full complement of players available for the next series of games without the need to drill into players that they had defecated on their own jersey.

As for 2006, this was the year that we shipped our biggest Championship defeat since that replay against Clare. An uncharacteristically cool last few minutes against Cork when it looked like the treble chasers – or, if we are to believe Roy Keane, the five-in-a-row chasers – were about to run away with it moved us to within touching / heartbreaking distance, but that was not typical of a team that looked like it was out of ideas.

The teams of 2002, 2004 and 2007 though. Munster champions all, and League champions in one case as well. They really should have been good enough to close out the deal, especially when playing the likes of Clare and Limerick. It’s unavoidable after the events of the early summer of 2008 to not look at the issue of the managers. Did Davy Fitzgerald work the oracle? The manner in which Waterford imploded so spectacularly against a clearly inferior Clare team can easily be laid at the feet of a management team that fiddled while Urbs Intacta burned. Dropping Ian O’Regan into the Kilkenny cauldron was brave but ultimately foolhardy. And not being able to cope with a team that we had beaten convincingly mere weeks previous was not acceptable. Compare this with Davy’s battle plan, which if we are to believe Anthony Daly on the Sunday Game, and he’s a convincing pundit, consisted of the cojones-laden strategy of experimenting against Offaly and Wexford for the big tilt in the semi-final. Fail to prepare and prepare to fail. This time we were prepared.

Which is all true, but it isn’t the whole story. Who is to say that if Justin McCarthy had not had the luxury of being able to slap up a few middling (the likes of Westmeath and Laois don’t count as middling) teams that he wouldn’t have been ready for any of the semi-finals? Davy was able to toy with the notion of Ken McGrath at full back and a lot of heavy work in training at the expense of stick work, and it showed with some of the ten-thumbed efforts in those games. Justin had no such luxuries. When he sprung Ian O’Regan it backfired. Yet when he took a chance on a goalie in his late 20’s in 2005, it was the sowing of a harvest that we are still reaping today.

It’s corny to say it, but Davy has had all the luck that Justin did not have. It seemed so at the time, and history has proven that that draw was a gift from heaven. Davy had the wit to grab the chance, but a few random acts could have spelt defeat against either the Biffs or the Yellabellies and doomed Davy to unending enmity of everyone from Waterford for presiding over the end of our golden age. Luck was one of the things that got us through. Add in a bunch of talented opponents who were perhaps just a little naive in the semi-final, as opposed to teams high on their own manufactured outrage or the cutest bunch of hoors ever to play any game, and you have a recipe for success.

And luck got us through the Tipp game too.

Our time had to come. It could have come in 2002 or 2004 or 2007. It came in 2008. We don’t have the luxury of six pops at the final, but maybe we’ll only need one. With a bit of luck.

Read it and weep

Amazing what you can do with Photoshop. Hang on . . .

Saying nice things about the GAA, part . . . I

[Regarding a sports eligibility to be in the Olympics] No guidelines on the name of the governing body are given, but a brief survey of those sports that are recognised suggests that, if it is long and in French, then you stand a far better chance of catching the eye.

And why not? After all Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques has a certain je ne sais quoi that “World Underwater Federation” lacks. If the Gaelic Athletic Association is really serious about catching the eye of the men and women from Lausanne, then there is no doubt a swift change of name to Fédération Internationale des Lancer et des Football Gaelique will advance the case far faster than simply having a couple of long-established and thrillingly exciting games to offer the world.

Harry Pearson, colour sports writer for the Guardian.

“Book your tickets for the final”

Where have you gone, Come on the Déise, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you

Blogging is going to be light in the next couple of weeks as I’m on holidays. As I head away for some well earned R&R – my first holiday in three years (cue orchestra of micro-violins) – Waterford are carrying the hopes of the GAA world to overturn the hegemony of the Big Three. To wit:

No pressure or anything.