Further into the vortex

Come on Tipperary hurlers, play the game. Waterford and Cork’s hurling panels have both staged heaves against their manager, and now Clare and Limerick are doing the same. That Sheedy fella must have some skeletons in his closet that demand a principled response. Won’t someone please think of the children?

Turning the dial away from Silliness FM, the week’s events on Shannonside represent an escalation in a process that manages to be both inevitable and impossible to predict. It would be tempting to dismiss either spat as unrelated incidents, that the respective County Boards should simply back their managers to the hilt and that’ll be the end of the matter. Indeed, Clare already seem to be going down that road with chairman Michael O’Neill being rather bright and breezy about it all.

Tempting, and entirely misguided. International rugby squads once famously assembled the night before a match without much in the way of anything as shallow as training or preparation, and this was probably true back in the day for inter-county squads. This meant that camaraderie was purely based on internal county loyalties. Nowadays though, GAA panels spend months on end in each other’s pockets. No doubt Justin McCarthy would be of the opinion that there is no ‘panel’ once the season ends and he can start from scratch the following year. Strictly speaking he’d be correct but you can’t expect players, especially ones from a county who were lambasted by all and sundry like Limerick’s were after losing to Tipp last season, to so casually walk away from each other.

It’s a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. When the back door was introduced, the GAA didn’t foresee that county panels would become so much more militant as a result. And it’s only going to get worse.

The wretched of the earth

Eamonn Sweeney is as curious a hack as there is going. The first time he entered my consciousness was the publication of his book There’s Only One Red Army, a paean of praise to the virtues of following Sligo Rovers. I haven’t read the book, and my kneejerk reaction on reading the reviews was that this would be a typical blast from a chip-on-the-shoulder League of Ireland diehard who can’t understand why the domestic game isn’t carrying all before it and it must be the fault of the beastly GAA with their bog ball and their bog hockey.

Still haven’t read the book, so there’s a remote possibility that my initial prejudices were correct. But they’d be very remote as Sweeney has written some very complimentary things over the years about the GAA in general and Waterford in particular. Indeed his defence of Waterford in the face of Brian Corcoran’s withering comments about us in his autobiography was enough to make a grown man weep. Predictably I haven’t been able to find them online, but the most memorable comment was to the effect that Corcoran may have thought Waterford would try to drag the game down to their level but that Waterford had dragged the game up to a level that Cork couldn’t reach in the 2004 Munster final. I never had any great issue with Corcoran’s comments – one must assume they were what he thought at the time and all you can do is either agree or disagree with the sentiments – but it was nice to see a prominent hack leap to Waterford’s defence.

Having established Sweeney’s credentials as a latter-day sporting Renaissance man, time to plunge the knife. He was writing this week about the attitudes towards the League of Ireland (h/t to FootballPress, not that he’d appreciate it). It’s hard to dispute his central contention, that it’s not enough for certain sports fans to ignore domestic soccer and how many people get a good kick out of giving the League of Ireland a good kick. I’ve done it myself more than once and, having recently observed first-hand the aching sincerity of people following the Blues, can admit to feeling rather guilty about it.

Two things stuck in the craw though. Let’s take the shallowness of following teams in England as a given. It’s certainly true that it is relatively easy given that few people choose to support the bad teams. But if Liverpool FC were to implode and vanish from the earth, Colm Cooper and his ilk wouldn’t turn around and satisfy their love of soccer with . . . well, who would Colm Cooper support in the League of Ireland? Limerick United / City / 37 / FC? Having grown up in a GAA household, albeit one without any trace of supremacism, it never entered the heads of our parents to bring us to soccer matches. Chiding Colm Cooper for hankering after Anfield while not following the domestic game is akin to criticising a Protestant for going to St Peter’s and not getting Mass.

Secondly, and this is the elephant in the League of Ireland room, why is there no questioning of those who now go cross channel where they once went to the likes of Kilcohan Park? While perusing the match programme for the St Patrick’s Athletic game, I was gobsmacked to find that there were five thousand people at the quarter-final against Drogheda United in 1997. Those are the people Eamonn Sweeney should be chasing to account for the gap of at least 4,300 on the match against Pats. You’re unlikely to find them at a league match in Walsh Park.

While it’s reasonable for Eamonn Sweeney to be irritated by those who would “recommend that [the League of Ireland] be liquidated altogether”, some of those people would be genuinely concerned at the seeming death-spiral of professional soccer in Ireland. In their book Why England Lose: and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski noted that people ‘reward success and shun failure‘ (another book I haven’t read. Oh the shame). You don’t have to hate the League of Ireland to propose outlandish schemes to fix it; carrying on the way things are doesn’t look like an option if you want the League to be a success, or at least successful enough that people reward it with their bums on seats.

I’m not pushed. My future presence at the RSC will not be determined by whether Waterford can win things or not. It’s been great craic thus far, but the occasionally rancid contempt in which the GAA is held can be off-putting. Eamonn Sweeney has the experience to straddle the fence. Time will tell whether I’m too long in the tooth to learn this new trick.

Enough with the spooky parallels

If we’re going to think positive about how similar the results at Minor and Under-21 have been so far with events in 1992, then it’s only fair to note the yang of the Intermediate team’s loss to Cork tonight in the Munster final: 5-24 to 3-9 has a horrifying symmetry with . . . no, I can’t say it! Move along, nothing to see here . . .

Not my province II

Considering it is believed to be tempting fate to contemplate matches that are not yet cast in stone (see: Waterford’s supposed dismissal of Limerick before the anticipated clash with Kilkenny in 2007 All-Ireland final), would thinking about potential opponents in the qualifiers doom us to avoiding the qualifiers altogether? Ah, if only . . .

Following today’s qualifiers clashes, it struck me that there is a theme dominating what I want from each game: defeat for the Munster teams. Familiarity breeds contempt, and there isn’t a single county in Munster that wouldn’t draw an angst-ridden groan were we to draw them in the qualifiers. Just look at all the baggage that would come with drawing Limerick. There’s Justin McCarthy, the fact that we’ve played them already this year with decidedly mixed results, and we can do without rehashing the events of 2007. The seemingly never-ending clashes with Cork were great for the neutral but they need to be put in mothballs for a while to regain that sense of excitement for the committed. It’s doubtful whether the scars of ‘98 have truly healed with Clare, and after watching their limp exit to Galway tonight it’s not a stretch to say their good efforts last year were built on the back of sticking it to Waterford – as usual. And Tipperary . . . the less said about their love of piling the pain on us, the better.

It’s fair to say that all counties relish the prospect of catching Waterford on one of the days when the demons are are just below the surface waiting to be coaxed out by a poxy goal or a sub charging into the right player. It was a concept famously commented on by one the Wexford Larry’s – can’t remember if it was Murphy or O’Gorman – after they defeated us in the 2003 qualifiers. He said words to the effect that “you always fancy your chances against Waterford”, a putdown all the more galling for being true. But at least with non-Munster counties there is the prospect of something different. It’s not too much to ask for.

Town and country

There’s even more hoopla attached to the Munster final this year what with all the 125th anniversary celebrations, so the eyes of the nation will probably be fixed with even greater intensity on Waterford than usual. Over the years we’ve gotten used to Waterford being everyone’s favourite second team. The freewheeling nature of the team’s style of play meant games were frenetic and exciting. If you wanted top notch sport then Waterford was where it was at.

That status has come under threat in recent times. The shafting of Justin McCarthy certainly wouldn’t have endeared them to people, nor would the fist-pumping and jersey-kissing so beloved of certain players. One doesn’t have to think these matters to be deal-breakers to accept that they could be source of ire to a reasonable person. However, reading Emmet Moloney’s piece over at An Fear Rua, the appearance of a double standard needs to be addressed.

I’m going to refrain from fisking Emmet’s piece too much. He’s entitled to his opinion and the tone is more one of sorrow than anger – and besides, the devilish detail is  sufficiently put under the microscope in this thread. What really leapt out at me was the manner in which he referenced the hyper-kinetic behaviour of Davy Fitzgerald when he was a player.

Davy Fitz was a perfect case in point. As a player he got straight into it with referees, umpires, opposing forwards and, of course, the Tipperary supporters. And normally before the ball was even thrown in! That was his game.

Seems almost cute, doesn’t it? Except when certain Waterford players do it, the tone darkens. Not only does it send out a bad message to children – thank you for that, Helen Lovejoy – it’s what costs Waterford All-Ireland’s. Eh? The same antics didn’t harm Clare’s endeavours in the 90’s, so what is different? Emmet Moloney might be able to slide a cigarette paper between their respective displays in the manner that Michael Duignan did recently – Limerick pump each other up, Waterford play to the gallery – but from my admittedly biased point of view it reeks of a culchie contempt for townies bringing their soccer-style ways to the game.

The worst part of it all is that Waterford should be loud and proud of the presence of so many townies in the team. Too much of urban Ireland is a GAA wasteland, particularly with regards to hurling. When living in Galway, hurling was rarely a topic of discussion amongst the masses. Cork city is home to some iconic clubs yet neither Glen Rovers or St Finbarr’s have won a county title in the last 15 years. In Limerick, the once great South Liberties are now an intermediate team. All this stands in stark contrast to Waterford where city clubs not only dominate but hurling is the primary sport. The sneer from horny-handed sons of the soil isn’t going to help hurling regain pre-eminence in other urban areas any time soon.

Not my province

The 2009 All-Ireland hurling championship starts this weekend, and the marquee game is unquestionably the one in Thurles between Tipperary and Cork. The more interesting one though for those of us who obsess about how the GAA is run is in Portlaoise between Laois and Galway. Taking place at the time of writing, you don’t need to be Nostradamus – or even someone could really predict the future – to see this one is going to end badly for my wee nephew’s county. Still, the prospect of seeing Galway in the mainstream of the championship as opposed to standing outside demanding the mainstream divert itself into their path is a positive development.

This isn’t a cut at the Leinster championship. It is self-evident that the Leinster title lacks the allure of its Munser counterpart, but this isn’t because of an inherent lack of competitiveness – indeed, if lack of competition were a reason to denigrate a tournament, we wouldn’t be bothering with the Liam McCarthy Cup itself. It’s that for those of us willing to defend the centrality of the provincial championships in the All-Ireland series, the absence of Antrim and Galway was a glaring anomaly that needed to be addressed.

I’m unconvinced that any open draw system will make the hurling championship ‘work’. People talk of Champions League-style group stages, but we had that a few years ago in the qualifiers and it was not a success. Waterford whipped the mid-ranking teams then had their fate decided by their efforts against Clare (an away defeat) and Galway (a home win). However devalued the provincial championships might have become by the back door, and there is no point in pretending that there has been no devaluation, there is still a frission of tension generated by competing for trophies with a century-old pedigree. It would be hard to retain any of that in a round-robin format, and the amount of dead rubbers will reach Ireland-Davis-Cup-match proportions.

Of course, that’s not to say the provincial championships are inviolate. If they are so damaged that they can’t be fixed, it would be time to replace them. Even the Railway Cups had to put out of their misery. Hopefully the fix getting its first run today will prove sufficiently robust to keep these venerable old competitions on the road.

Great-ish expectations

The footballers kick off their Sam Maguire campaign today, and no one will be under any illusions that Division Three third-placers and first round Tommy Murphy Cup exiters Waterford are about to power past NFL Division Two winners and Munster champions Cork to secure a tilt at National Football League winners and All-Ireland runners-up Kerry. Waterford’s goal for the season will be to have a run through the back door which should be eminently achievable given the quality of their league campaign – a kind draw would be nice though.

Update: a 14 point defeat probably represents a nudge towards fears rather than hopes. They would have been hoping to do better – unless they’ve put money on scoring a goal, in which case it’s party time!

Prognostications and Procrastinations, 2009 edition

I don’t make mistakes. I make prophecies which immediately turn out to be wrong

Murray Walker

Trying to map out any knockout competition from beginning to end is like trying to make a jigsaw when you don’t know what the finished picture should look like. When predicting the recent World Snooker Championship (for those worried about the future of hurling, check out snooker; now that is what a sport on its knees looks like), any pundit who didn’t tip Ronnie O’Sullivan would have looked stupid. Yet they would have been the right ones.

Still, the logic employed in last year’s debacle – that it’s useful to have your thoughts down on figurative paper so you can’t be accused of rewriting history – still applies. And  aprés Boyo Redneckus, stupid things can be justified on the basis that they were ‘for the craic’. So without further ado, let’s get craicing.

Every county has plenty of variables attached to their pre-Championship case file, and none more so than Cork. The nuclear winter from which they have just emerged would have any other county on their knees, but no county can be more terrifying on the rebound than Cork. The vast resources they can deploy and the overweening arrogance that generates mean that they can go from a complete shambles to All-Ireland champions in the space of a few months, like they did in 1999. As with the aforementioned Ronnie O’Sullivan scenario though, you have to run with the idea that the form book dictates that Cork are in no position to make a sustained challenge. When beaten by Waterford in the last round of this year’s League, Denis Walsh retreated behind the lame excuse that Cork had not had enough games – lame because they had played four games with the complete panel, one fewer than they would have had in recent League campaigns. Some times you’ve gotta accept you’re not good enough, and with them haemorrhaging the players that they went to war for at an alarming rate, that looks the case for Cork this year.

It doesn’t help that their first match of the campaign is against the No 1 ranked challenger to Kilkenny’s crown. Having gone toe-to-toe with the Cats for 90 minutes in that ridiculously thrilling League final, Tipperary should be feeling optimistic about their prospects. Usually at this juncture it would be traditional to inject a note of caution in to such optimism, that as  a county that routinely congratulates itself on how doughty they are because they’ve been playing hurling since the days of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Tipp will actually feel worse for the manner of their defeat because they went so near to puncturing Kilkenny’s veneer of invincibility but only ended up enhancing it. This would be superficially comforting, but from the perspective of the Munster championship it would be delusional. Tipperary looked awesome, and once the bitter taste of defeat has faded into memory Liam Sheedy won’t be slow in telling that to himself and the panel. Cork won’t be able to live with them.

Awaiting them in the semi-final are Clare. Last year’s surprise Championship package are this year’s surprise League package. They were staggeringly awful, relegated with a full round of games to go. Mike McNamara’s attack on the prospect of playing in Division 2 next year, quite apart from being grossly disrespectful to counties labouring away in the dungeons of hurling, was a pathetically transparent attempt to deflect attention away from their own failings. God be with the good old days when counties like Dublin and Waterford – yes, I can recall those days – would dutifully see-saw up and down the ranks and leave the permanent places for their betters. It’s understandable that the little matter of those McCarthy Cup’s would go to Clare heads, but with veterans of those days also dropping like flies, such attitudes are going to only make recovery harder. Last year I came not to praise Clare but to bury them, and they ended up burying Justin McCarthy. If at first you don’t succeed . . . Tipp to hammer Clare out the gate.

Which leaves the other half of the draw, the teams beaten in last year’s Munster championship by the team of whom I have just been so dismissive. Limerick will doubtless be telling themselves that the last team in their first year of being managed by Justin McCarthy, in spite of a modest League campaign, didn’t do too badly. And certainly Justin has a track record of giving teams an almighty early boost. Still, every person with an opinion on hurling in 2002 was in agreement that Waterford were a team of underachievers. The days of their hat-trick of Under-21 All-Ireland’s have faded sufficiently far into the distance that no one is suggesting that of Limerick. Indeed, reaching the All-Ireland final two years ago was seen as spectacular overachievement. There’s no evidence of spectacular improvement in the League and with Waterford’s track record we should be confident of victory.

Waterford’s recent track record, i.e. the League,  is spotty, to say the least. We beat the teams everyone else beat (Clare and Cork), beat / gave a good effort against the teams that beat everyone else (Kilkenny and Tipperary) and got beat by all the teams in the middle (Galway, Limerick and Dublin). Good luck trying to make sense of that mess. What makes it easier is the presence of Tipperary. If they really are as good as they look then we really shouldn’t have a hope against them in the Munster final. There, that’s them well and truly cursed. Roll on the summer!

Move over, Giles and Dunphy

Given this blog’s utterly cack record in the predictions department, a little bit of forgiveness will need to be sought for bigging up the one observation that looks sound. Paul Flynn’s flat townie drawl and borderline stoner gaze makes him an unlikely candidate to be a successful TV panellist. So credit to RTÉ for giving him a chance, because his penchant for incisive analysis commented upon here shone through last night on Sunday Sport. It was clear he actually watched the game, picking up on important switches and personnel changes. This may sound obvious, but it stood in stark contrast to Michael Duignan’s the-boy-done-good patter. His reference to the 1988 League and how Kilkenny and Tipperary experienced different results in the final from the group stages spoke of either a geek’s love of facts or a willingness to do some research, either (or both) of which will stand him in good stead. With Babs Keating on the radio being his usual garrulous self, it was a good day for hurling comment.

And what of the match? It didn’t seem to matter until it looked like we we were about to dish out a Kilkenny-style beatdown. Then, when Cork began another one of those ridiculous comebacks that have characterised their recent efforts, it suddenly mattered. Of the last five inter-county matches involving the 2008 panel, they gave the opposition a big start on each occasion. Only once – against Kilkenny – did they fail to overhaul said lead. Were we going to be like Galway, Clare (twice) and Limerick before us and succumb to their indomitable spirit (however much you might loathe  the clowns, you have to doff the cap to their never-say-die attitude), or were we going to be like Kilkenny and pile on the pain?

In the end, almost predictably, we were neither. It was good that we leapt out into a 13 point lead, it was bad that we let them back into it, it was good that we held on when the match approached Championship intensity in the last quarter – another thing Paul Flynn had the wit to pick up on. Two steps forward, one step back.

Time spent blogging is time not spent jamming

With today’s match against Cork being a dead rubber, only interesting in terms of the interminable strike furore down Leeside and the question of how good this Cork team are (on the evidence of their last outing, one of the answers is ‘not as good as they think they are’), I’m going to do something more productive today. Party on, dudes!