Being favourites doesn’t always sit well with Martin’s

WHILE ST. Martin’s have been installed as firm favourites for Sunday’s Pettitt’s Senior hurling championship final, I don’t subscribe to the view that the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

And I’m sure that the men from Piercestown and Murrintown feel the same, because they carry the regret that comes from not always delivering on the big occasion.

Indeed, my memory takes me back to this time last year when one of their shrewd mentors, Tomás Codd, made that exact assertion prior to the hurling decider against Naomh Eanna.

Prior to this season he had been involved with eight campaigns in four years across the two codes, and St. Martin’s only have one Senior title to their name in that spell: the hurling of 2017.

When he made the point last year, it was easy to dismiss it as the typical comment of a mentor playing down his own side’s chances ahead of a final.

However, as Naomh Eanna proved five days after his interview was published, that expectation that St. Martin’s will win everything that’s going in both hurling and football isn’t based on any realistic assessment of the facts.

Having said all of that, they still have to be fancied to collect their fourth crown against their neighbours, but anyone underestimating what St. Anne’s bring to a county final occasion would be foolish in the extreme.

For starters, practically all of their team have past experience of similar events, with several having taken part in countless deciders across hurling and football.

One aspect worthy of special praise is the presence of their second string in the replay of the Junior ‘B’ final in Bree next Saturday.

It means that, between the two teams, every able-bodied adult hurler in the parish of Rathangan is approaching the weekend with the chance of winning a county championship medal.

There’s not many clubs down through the years that have been able to make a similar claim, and it should lead to an incredible buzz around the training field this week.

St. Anne’s never needed an incentive to put it up to their near neighbours, and the same holds true for St. Martin’s, so at the very least we should expect a game where every single ball is contested as if it was the last.

Certainly, that 8-22 to 0-12 rout in New Ross last April will have no bearing at this stage. I was at that game, and the boys in blue were never at the races given that they had to start minus the services of their inter-county pair, Diarmuid O’Keeffe and Liam Óg McGovern.

It was a fine day and the sod was perfect, but it will be an entirely different story this time around and that in itself can be a great leveller.

After the ongoing pitch troubles, I wondered if County Board officials would take the risk of staging a curtain-raiser, but they have decided to proceed with The Courtyard Ferns Intermediate final featuring Cloughbawn and HWH-Bunclody.

I hope the weather will do everyone a favour, because the last thing wanted at this stage of the year is to see another game postponed or moved to an alternative venue at the eleventh hour.

And on that note, spare a thought for the Intermediate footballers of Crossabeg-Ballymurn and St. Mary’s (Maudlintown) who are left twiddling their thumbs through no fault of their own.

Part of the circumstances were unavoidable, with the fine win of HWH-Bunclody in hurling last Saturday putting another spanner in the football works, although they have no reason to apologise for their progress on two fronts either.

What cannot be argued against is that their football replay with the Mary’s should have been played somehow on Sunday week, and that failure has left three clubs in a very messy situation.

Elsewhere on the G.A.A. front, the proposals passed at Saturday’s special Congress in Cork will make for an interesting 2020 on the inter-county football front.

I wasn’t greatly exercised by the two-tier concept either way, but I am disappointed that the attacking mark has been introduced.

It was forgotten about all summer, and I can’t see what it adds to the game other than making it a little more like Aussie Rules.