I decided to ignore the feast of Rugby on RTE2 last Saturday and watch the All-Ireland Senior Club hurling and footballs finals on TG4 instead. Boy! Did I make the right choice. The All-Ireland club finals were probably the best games on television over the weekend.
Oftentimes it is hard to watch a football game after a hurling game. This was not the case last Saturday. The hurling game between Loughgiel Shamrocks of Antrim and Coolderry, Offaly was excellent. Despite the fact that the result was inevitable with six minutes to go, the excitement of seeing an Antrim team win an All-Ireland title made for a great occasion.
All credit is due to both Crossmaglen Rangers and Garrycastle because the football final continued, in both excitement and standard where the hurling final finished. Crossmaglen could have scored five times in the final few minutes but the draw was a fair result. I am looking forward to the replay.
Last Saturday’s laurels belongs to Loughgiel. The Antrim club were completely on top of their game and they gave an awe-inspiring exhibition of team commitment and skilful hurling.
Liam Watson finished the game with 3-7 out of Loughgiel’s 4-13. His efforts earned him the man-of-the-match award. It would be easy to point to this massive haul of scores and say that he was the difference between the sides. But this would be too simplistic. Almost every Loughgiel player played to his best. I was particularly impressed by the two corner-backs. Their tenacious play would give any pit-bull terrier a run for its money.
In my opinion the score of the game came in the 54th minute, and for once Liam Watson had nothing to do with it. A Coolderry puck-out landed in the midfield area. Several players challenged for the ball. Somehow the ball was flicked up in the air again and when it was falling to earth for the second time a Loughgiel player doubled on it with an over head stroke. The sliotar flew 60 meters through the air towards the Loughgiel left corner-forward, Shay Casey. He cleverly tapped the ball back out the field about five meters in front of where he and the Coolderry corner-back had challenged for it.
Casey was first on to the breaking ball and without taking the sliotar to hand he lifted and struck a powerful shot that forced the Coolderry goalkeeper Shane Corcoran into a terrific save. Unfortunately for Coolderry, their goalkeeper could only parry the shot and it rebounded towards the other Loughgiel corner-forward Benny McGarry, who in one continuous action lifted and struck the ball over the bar.
It was a classic score; it was also a score of a bygone day. If any of the three Loughgiel players involved in the move had taken the ball to hand, the chance would have been lost. Antrim may have suffered because they are geographically isolated from the Munster and Leinster hurling powers but maybe one advantage the isolation gives, is that the Antrim style of hurling has not been corrupted by the obsession of taking the sliotar to hand.
When was the last time we saw an inter-county game where the sliotar was struck three times by successive players without one of them taking the ball into his hand? Not this century, I would say.
The game also draws the inevitable comparison between both of last Saturday’s finalists and the teams in the Cork County Senior Hurling Championship. This can be a somewhat unfair comparison if you make a straight comparison between the Cork clubs and performance last Saturday. After all, both Loughgiel and Coolderry have had five months more training and preparation since Carrigtwohill were defeated in the Munster Club Championship.
Nevertheless, if Loughgiel were parachuted into the Cork County Championship for the coming year, I reckon they would be the favourites. I couldn’t be as sure about Coolderry who, by their own admission, were very fortunate to get over the quarterfinal of the last year’s Offaly Championship.
The county final in Páirc Uí Chaoímh last October was a marvellous occasion. The excitement generated by Carrigtwohill’s win was equal to the excitement generated by Loughgiel’s win last Saturday. Yet, behind all the drama and the excitement hung an awkward question, how would Carrigtwohill (or CIT, if they had won) fare in the Munster Club championship? My conclusion at the time, based on the evidence of last year’s All-Ireland Club final between Clarinbridge (Galway) and O’Loughlin Gaels (Kilkenny) was that the Cork champions (regardless of who they might be) would not do well.
Newtownshandrum, with their brand of hurling that was tailored to suit the players they had available, remain the only Cork club to dominate the clubs from the rest of Ireland in the last quarter of a century. What does this say about our county senior hurling championship and the clubs that play in it?
Results suggest but do not prove, that the county championship is not producing teams that can be the best in Ireland like it always did. It is hard to be completely sure that Cork were always dominant because we only have the evidence of the 1970s and 80s (when Blackrock, St Finbarrs, Glen Rovers and Midleton won All-Ireland club titles) on which to draw conclusions. Prior to that, we know that the Cork championship was very competitive but because there was no Munster and All-Ireland club championships, there is no way we can be sure that the likes of Thurles Sarsfields, Ahane, Mount Sion and a host of Leinster clubs were inferior in quality to the Cork clubs.
The only conclusion must surely be that something is not quite right with the Cork County Senior Championship. Our intermediate and junior clubs have dominated those All-Ireland championships since they began seven or eight years ago. This suggests that the lower sections of the club scene are vibrant – at least compared to the rest of the country.
If Newtownshandrum (the one beacon of light in this poor run in senior inter-county club competition) could play a style of hurling that suited their particular strengths, why is no other club doing this?
There is no shortage of opinion on the subject and for what it is worth; I’ll throw my ‘tuppence worth’ into the mix. The reason Cork clubs are currently not producing teams that are capable of defeating the likes of Loughgiel, is not because the clubs do not have the playing resources but because the club memberships are collectively too jaded.
Almost every senior club in Cork is currently managing a serious financial debt. Just like the country’s national debt, these club debts hang, like a black, cloud over every weekly committee meeting. It sucks up valuable energy and resources to the point where a run in the All-Ireland club championship constitutes every treasurer’s worst nightmare.
This in my opinion is why the Cork clubs are not developing their style of hurling in a manner that best suits the players they have available; there just isn’t enough energy in the collective psyche to be imaginative about how to play hurling.
The majority of senior clubs in Cork are stretched to their limits by their financial commitments. While the Loughgiels, and Coolderrys of this world have been bringing teams through to the senior grade from their Feile na nGael teams of 15 years ago, the Cork clubs have been running as hard as they can just to stand still. And with the exception of Newtown in 2004, the Cork County Championship has been standing still for 25 years.