Counties That I Don’t Hate – Down

(No 2 in a series of 2)

Picture it. Waterford. 1991. Since we had won our first ever title in 1929, we had managed to win something – anything – in every decade. Until the 1980’s, that is, when we had not only won nothing but had plumbed the depths of Division Three hurling and been massacred in our three Munster final appearances. We’d even had the privilege of watching the team implode live on national television in the 1989 final. Not a good time to be following the Déise.

The 80’s had been a grim time for the GAA. An All-Ireland hurling semi-final had been attended by a mere nine thousand souls (Galway – Cork in 1985) and the Ulster and Connacht football championships were utterly bankrupt – the champions of those provinces had not beaten a team from Leinster or Munster since Galway in 1973. It’s hard to sustain interest in a sport when there is so little competition among all teams in general and from your own in particular. Add in the thrill of Italia ‘90, and people were asking in all seriousness where the GAA was to go from here.

The first step in the rehabilitation of the GAA came from Meath, or specifically the sensational clash between Meath and Dublin in the 1991 Leinster championship that captured the imagination of a nation. It was so all-consuming that even my mother sat down to watch the fourth and decisive match. I had developed a loathing of the Royal County in the preceding years, fuelled by paternal links with Cork and the cast of, er, characters that populated Sean Boylan’s team. Every match you’d watch hoping they’d trip up, every time they’d sail close to the wind, and every time they’d squeeze through. They were behind for most of the semi-final against Roscommon but with a mixture of grit, nerve and (I can admit this nearly 20 years on) talent, they were ahead at the finish. Another failure from the Connacht crew. It was galling, and all the more compelling for that.

Meanwhile in the other half of the draw, Kerry had sucker-punched a previously dominant Cork to come out of Munster. No one was thinking they were world beaters – the hiding they had taken in the 1990 final and the less-than-stellar manner in which they had disposed of Limerick saw to that – but they were still Kerry, right? Yes, they were and while Down had a cute record of never having lost to Kerry in the championship, they were still from Ulster and thus were going to fill their appointed role as the Munster team’s bitch. Even leading for much of the game did not change that. Had Tyrone not done the same in 1986?

Then it happened. It may not have played out exactly as I remember it, but the sentiment is what matters. A slick Down move saw Peter Withnall put clear through on Charlie Nelligan and he smashed the ball to the net with aplomb. Suddenly Down were in a winning position and they never faltered in the remaining time, belief that they would do it coursing through every action. Watching it at home, I was gobsmacked. A minnow could put it up to one of the kingpins of Gaelic games and succeed.

Five weeks later Down were back in Croke Park against the evil Meed, and it was clear they meant business. The sea of red and black that rippled across Hill 16 was utterly inspirational, one Tricolour-wielding fool only slightly marring the beauty. Down duly shot down Meath, even withstanding one of those famous zombie-like comebacks. For the first time in my lifetime, a team who had no expectation at the start of the year to winning the All-Ireland had won the All-Ireland.

A year later another county would unexpectedly taste success.  I genuinely don’t think this is a coincidence. Could Donegal and Derry have won Sam Maguire if Down had not shown them the way? And why should such a transmission of belief stop at the Ulster border? Since then, I’ve always had a soft spot for Down. They showed the rest of the GAA world that it could be done. And more importantly, they showed me that it could be done, something has sustained me to this day.

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.

Tremble in fear, rugby is . . . where?

Leinster’s tremendous win in Murrayfield yesterday will doubtless bring the usual bout of GAA hand-wringing about the threat of the oval ball game to the association, concerns exemplified by Tom McGurk’s self-satisfied observation aprés match that Leinster had players from “Carlow, Louth, Kildare, Wexford . . . and Dublin” (the last place was admittedly a good quip).

And it would be foolish to deny that Leinster’s success is going to be a tremendous boost to Irish rugby. This time last year, all the egg-chasers eggs had been put in the Munster basket. Now they have another team of winners to look to, and the Grand Slam to boot. As someone whose time and energy in Gaelic games is invested in the efforts of a high profile team – in fact, I’d go so far as to say that if I couldn’t anticipate a few big matches with Waterford during the summer, I wouldn’t be bothered much by the All-Ireland at all – it would be ill-advised to ridicule rugby’s grass roots efforts.

Obviously that’s the cue for some ridiculing of rugby’s grass roots efforts. For while I may be a bandwagon GAA supporter these days, I did at least play the games back in the Mesolithic, something that was essential to the development of any interest later on. Waterford should be fertile ground for the advance of rugby yet with the relegation of Waterpark, the title of being the nearest senior rugby club to the city is a close run thing between Midleton and County Carlow. When the best that Waterford has to offer is managing to lose a mere two of their fifteen games by seven points or less, the GAA needn’t be quaking in its boots.

Pride in the jersey

People had questioned our integrity, our pride, our passion, but we produced a big passionate performance today

Brian O’Driscoll, commenting after Leinster’s 25-6 win over Munster in the ERC.

Brian O’Driscoll is one of the classiest acts knocking around in sport. Quite apart from being a genuinely world class player who applies himself with diligence to his craft, he is modest in victory and generous in defeat. When asked a number of years back after another quarter-final disappointment for Leinster who he would be cheering for in the rest of the tournament, he replied “Munster, of course!” and you could see he meant it – it never entered his head to think otherwise.

Which makes the quote above all the more significant. Even someone as mellow as O’Driscoll found the constant cuts at Leinster’s supposed lack of pride to be galling. Imagine if he had read  Leinster  being described as “those British chaps from Dublin“? Imagine then his thoughts as he went out to face that bould son of Erin, Lifeimi Mafi. Pain? In the words of another fake Irishman, the trick is not bothering about the pain.

I’m generally dismissive of the notion that players can be buoyed up by the words of their opponents (see: Richie Bennis), but that doesn’t mean you should tempt fate. Munster and their boosters have being doing this for years now, and it well and truly blew up in our collective faces yesterday. If nothing else, the embarrassment factor should mitigate against such behaviour.

Of course, some would argue that Waterford are in no position to be lecturing anyone on pompous jersey-kissing antics, to which I’d say that you are right. The embarrassment factor certainly applies when the men who would die for the jersey are as good as their word on the biggest occasion. But at least no one from Waterford has ever said or implied that pride in their county / province is unique to ourselves. When the Irishmen of Leinster take to the field against Cardiff or Leicester in the ERC final, it’ll be interesting how many of the proud Paddies will be rooting for them.

Welcome to Cwoke Pawk

One of the more nauseating media spectacles in recent times was when Ireland played England in rugby in Croke Park for the first time. The levels of ludicrosity were turned up to 11 when Girvan Dempsey dived over for the first try and some wag noted that it was the spot where Michael Hogan had been shot by the Black & Tans on Bloody Sunday, thus demonstrating that we had finally grown up as a nation. Even more so than when we finally grew up as a nation when we removed the ban on divorce from the Constitution. But not as much as when we will finally grow up as a nation whenever the next requirement for us to grow up a nation hits the collective hack in-tray / inbox.

But speaking of immaturity, am I the only one who upon hearing the words “Croke Park” being uttered by a British accent does an immediate double-take? With the Munster – Leinster clash in the Fizzy Dutch Pilsner Cup coming up this weekend we’ve been hearing it said quite a lot in that accent from the likes of John Inverdale, which is quite separate  from all the times I hear it in, uh, my own house.

It’s not as if it bothers me that soccer and rugby are being played in Croke Park (well, not much). It simply seems alien to have the Brits, who for years were blissfully unaware of the existence of the GAA, to be referring to it at all. It’s like the episode from the cartoon The Critic, when Jay Sherman decided to moonlight as a trucker. He is accosted by a Sheriff Buford T Justice-style lawman and his simpleton goon and, far from being made to squeal like a pig, is lauded for his cosmopolitan city ways from the Mostly Mozart-loving hicks. It just doesn’t seem right, and it never will.