A prior engagement meant that I only saw the second half of De La Salle’s Munster final against Adare today. Watching them fall 0-9 to 0-2 behind, anyone in the vicinity of my exterior monologue would know that I thought De La Salle’s goose was cooked. They were going to need at least ten points in the last 20 minutes having only managed two in the first 40. Factor in the generally low scoring nature of matches at this time of year and (let’s be frank) the quality of the teams, and the initially improbable looked impossible.
Which, as I’ve noted repeatedly in the recent past, shows you what I know. Point-goal-point from the Waterford champions and the previously assured Adare were suddenly rocking on their heels. What was especially thrilling about the final third of the game was that while De La Salle never looked like mowing down their opponents, once they had gotten their noses in front there was only ever going to be one winner. And so, having never previously won the county championship – it seems the wins in 1913 and 1914 were the school – De La Salle have now won the county title and the Munster title in the space of three weeks. All Waterford is delighted for ye, not least those who have gone to their eternal reward.
And no sooner than Paul Flynn announces he has hurled his last for Waterford than two other aging warriors of the last decade follow suit. Less fuss will attach itself to the retirement of Tom Feeney and Dave Bennett, not least from this quarter. Neither will (or should) feel offended by that, but they both played their part. Better observers of the game will doubtless be able to put their finger on exactly why they never hit the heights of the likes of Flynn because for the life of me I could never work out why both were not absolute locks on the team sheet all throughout their careers (which, it should be noted, probably says more about my lack of hurling knowledge than that of the pundits).
Feeney always struck me as the brave type so useful in the full back line, willing to fling himself in for any ball, something best exemplified by his foolhardy lunge for the sliothar at a crucial stage of the 2002 Munster final. He had a wacky hurling style, adopting the policy of getting to the ball first then extracating himself from any jam by flinging limbs everywhere which delighted fans and infuriated referees.
At this point it seemed as if he could do no wrong, stepping up to his predestined role as replacing Seán Cullinane at full back. It didn’t work out that way though as it quickly became clear that he wasn’t the solution to Waterford’s seemingly never-ending problem at full back. With players like Eoin Murphy and Aidan Kearney emerging in the corners he slid rapidly out of the frame, and coming on in the All-Ireland final was really a thank you for those early days rather than a reflection of his place in the pecking order.
Bennett was never as prominent a character as Feeney, and at the risk of labouring the point it is probably a reflection of my ignorance of what hurling is really about that I never could understand this – incidentally, this is also why I don’t get involved in the heavyweight arguments on AFR or Up The Déise, for fear of being ridiculed by someone who regularly attends junior B matches; I blog because I am Lord and Master here. When he was a regular back in the late 90’s and early 00’s he was always the first to be hauled ashore when the team were in a pickle. When he was in and out of the team after that he would be the first to be sacrificed when the going was tough while more illustrious players seemed to be bulletproof. A ten point haul this year against Clare when everyone else bar John Mullane went missing was forgotten after an indifferent performance against Antrim when no one should have been judged on that match. He could always be relied upon for a point or two, and he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t wondered why a certain clubmate of his was being persisted with when you couldn’t have depended on an assist from him at times in 2008.
To me, Bennett suffered from being labelled with that most accursed of hurling scarlet letters – that of being a ‘winter hurler’, i.e. fine when the pitches are like bogs and everyone is struggling to pick up the sliothar, but too lightweight when there was proper dry turf available in the summer. This label never seemed to match the facts, but better men than me (Gerald McCarthy, Justin McCarthy, Davy Fitzgerald) bought in to it, and who am I to argue with them?
Paul Flynn made it clear in his valedictorian interview that he hurled not for the glory but because he enjoyed the sport. This certainly should apply to both Tom Feeney and Dave Bennett, as evidenced by the fact that no one is queueing up to have a chin wag with them about their experiences. They did it for the love, and for that we all owe them a debt of gratitude.
Back in the day, pen pictures were a staple of all match programmes. Even the tattiest programme would have a list of what age a player was, their occupation and what they had won. In the case of the Waterford hurling team, this would involve a buttock-clenching trawl through every club prize they had won right back to underage level, while the opposition would have their CV peppered with myriad national titles.
Happily those days are gone, and one need only look at the honours won by Paul Flynn to see that. Inter county titles include one All-Ireland U-21, three Munster seniors, one Munster U-21, one Munster minor, one National League and an All Star award. Even the seven club titles he won with Ballygunner are topped off with the long-awaited Munster crown in 2002. None did more to ensure those barren pen pics became a thing of the past.
(This is not to denigrate club success. One only need look at John Mullane’s euphoric comments after captaining De La Salle to the county title last week to know how much the club can mean to even the most decorated of players. But someone in Waterford is going to win the county title every year. The amount who have won inter county titles are numbered in the dozens.)
It is not as if Paul Flynn did it alone. It is arguable that the likes of Tony Browne and Ken McGrath made a greater contribution over the last 15 years. What can not be disputed is that Flynn was the standard bearer for Waterford’s revival since 1992. The horrors of the 1980’s are a scar that will never heal in Waterford, but 1992 was indeed a balm. Younger readers would be stupified to know that qualifying for the Munster minor final was an achievement for Waterford back in those days – getting there again would be nice, but these were times when that was as good as it got.
I wrote extensively about this several years ago, so the masochistic among you can read that. The relevant issue is that Flynn had the dreams of an entire county levered onto his back. Such expectation has broken many a man, in all walks of life. Several times over the next few years Flynn would be the target of people’s wrath when Waterford failed to even meet our occasionally low standards. Losing to Kerry was not the most auspicious of debuts, and after that people were wondering whether he was all that. While he scored a skipful of goals and points on the day, the rumour mill was buzzing with the suggestion that he had put a 21 metre free wide late in the game when Waterford needed a goal. As stated earlier, it might have broken a lesser man.
Whether true or not, the story highlights one negative thing about Paul Flynn which cropped up now and again: his freetaking. The casual observer may be surprised by this comment, with even the headline writer for the Tribune falling into the trap that he was deadly with the dead ball. He was not, his freetaking style based on hitting the ball as hard as possible rather than gently guiding the ball between the sticks a la Henry Shefflin. When he was standing over a free any more than 30 metres out, many a prayer was offered up on the terraces for what should have been certain scores.
The corollary of this policy of trying to split the sliothar was his breathtaking record from frees closer to goal. There were many memorable instances of this phenomenon – his ICBM against Cork in 2004, or his nerveless effort against Clare in 1998 (the single most euphoric moment of my life) – but the most illuminating goal was against Cork in 1999, when the entire Cork defence leapt in anticipation of a trademark rocket only for his mis-hit shot to apologetically bobble under them all. It wasn’t just frees. For such a burly lad he had could turn on a six pence and for such a nimble lad opposition hurleys would be brushed aside like matchsticks as he bore down on goal. It was thrilling stuff and when his team mates finally came up to his standards, Waterford started to win things.
He always kept going, and he never talked bull to either himself or to us. Brian Corcoran would famously ridicule Waterford for always blaming anyone but themselves for failure, but he couldn’t have been thinking of Paul Flynn when he said that. In the heady aftermath of that draw with Clare, Flynn’s disappointment at coming short in an interview that evening on The Sunday Game was acute. Similarly, around that time he was interviewed by one of the Sunday papers where he confessed to being chastened by Clare’s breakthrough in 1995 on the basis that it should have been us, the team that beat Loughnane’s Under-21’s in 1992. No self pity, and a large slice of self-deprecating good humour – if even half the things he said in that interview with Kieran Shannon are accurately recounted, he’s as witty a man as has ever picked up a hurl.
Doing it for no money and precious little glory, Paul Flynn still earned no money from it but got a not-inconsiderable amount of glory. He kept it up despite all the shameful brickbats from his own side, and their should be no Déisigh who would not put their cloak across a puddle lest he should be in danger of getting his feet. Enjoy your retirement, Paul. You will be missed.
What with a lack of experience at this level and a lot of celebrating brought about by a lack of experience at this level, few gave De La Salle a chance in this year’s Munster club championship. Not even those who might be inclined to hope for a DLS win were feeling optimistic. So it’s doubly pleasing – triply so if you consider the location of the victory – for them to beat Sarsfields today in what seems to have been a thriller of a game. I’d say it was in memory of you-know-who, but she wouldn’t settle for anything less than a cup. So go to it.
Last Sunday was a noteworthy day in the history of Waterford hurling. It was, of course, the day my grandmother shuffled off to her eternal reward after 103 years on this mortal coil. Kieran O’Connor was later to be heard on WLR reading out a list of famous Salleians who never got to get their hands on the county cup as De La Salle won said trophy for the first time in 94 years. Inexplicably he never mentioned her name, despite her at-times vicious support for them. It should be noted that the support was not predicated on love for De La Salle but hatred for Mount Sion, hatred she passed on to what will surely be the next seven generations she spawned.
What made her extraordinary as a Waterford supporter – hating Mount Sion hardly cuts the mustard in that respect - was that she was probably one of only a handful of people who were present at both of the county’s victories in the All-Ireland hurling final. Doubly extraordinary was the fact in 1959 she was cheering for Kilkenny! Yep, so embittered was she at what she perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be the malign influence that Cnoc Sion held over Waterford hurling that she delved into a vague ancestral relationship with Co Kilkenny and rooted for them over Waterford.
Things had improved in 2002 to the point that when my father called in as Waterford were piling the pain on Tipperary in the Munster final, she was caught shedding a tear. She probably shed fewer tears when she buried her daughter than she did on that day.
Nana, as she was universally known when she died, would have been similarly moved had she lived long enough to see De La Salle lay claim to the county title. The tribe, whether it be your family or your team, was everything to her. She passed that on to all her grandchildren, and in cheering for De La Salle on Sunday I was carrying on that (dis)honourable tradition. Truly no one had as big an influence on me as she did. Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam.
Paul Flynn has hung up his inter county boots after 16 years, a time when, in large part thanks to his efforts, the bad days were outnumbered by the good. Okay, that was a really stilted effort at poetry, so I’ll leave the turgid prose that is more common around here until later in the week and instead provide a link to his valedictorian interview in the Sunday Tribune.
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Musings on the goings on in Waterford GAA, an ongoing effort to fall for Waterford United FC, and Liverpool FC columns lifted straight from my shindig at ShanklyGates.co.uk
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