SHEEDY RETURNS TO TIPP
LIAM SHEEDY’S return as Tipperary senior hurling boss was confirmed last night. Sheedy’s appointment was ratified at a meeting of last night’s county board, cementing his return to the Premier County dugout he left after winning the 2010 All-Ireland. Sheedy has been given a three-year term, but his management team will not be disclosed until next month. ‘I am taking up the role with a huge sense of excitement and enthusiasm,’ he said in a statement. ‘I come on board again just two years after Michael Ryan led Tipperary to a superb AllIreland title. He has handed over an incredibly talented squad that I look forward to finalising over the coming weeks and months and getting Tipperary ready for 2019.’ Liam Kearns was ratified as Tipp football manager for a fourth term last night with Paul Taylor confirmed as the new Sligo football boss.
FROM Tiger Woods to Liam Sheedy to James Horan, maybe there is room for a second act in sport. All that was missing as the excited gallery spilled on to the 18th fairway at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia — as it came stampeding after Tiger Woods — was a warning over the tannoy for stewards to switch to ‘Plan B’.
Back before a culture of health and safety and litigation took hold in this country, those two words were the signal that Croke Park’s centre would not hold: the fans were coming on.
And then the new Tiger — just like the old Tiger, except with the beginnings of a bald patch under the Nike hat — popped out from amongst the throng. It was a scene reminiscent of the age-old one in front of the Hogan Stand on All-Ireland final day when a straggling player, caught up in the hero worship of supporters, belatedly bursts through the security cordon to make his way up the steps of the stand, where the cup is waiting.
Here was a modern response to F Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless social musing: ‘There are no second acts in American lives’.
Four back surgeries and five years since his last tour victor. He went from 1,199 in the Official World Golf Ranking in late 2017 to number 13. Second acts? His fall from grace resembled more a bad soap opera than theatre.
His bedpost had more notches than Robinson Crusoe carved out on a wooden cross to count his days on a desert island, and his marriage fractured as a result.
There was the police mugshot and an arrest video that travelled the world. It showed him blurry eyed and half-conscious on a cocktail of painkillers and sleeping pills to dull the round-theclock pain of a back injury that inhabited not only his waking hours but his sleeping ones, too.
His winning return is such a stirring story that he admitted he nearly broke down in tears on Sunday as the unprecedented scenes unfolded around him on the 18th hole.
Second acts? The phrase ‘never go back’ is part of the lexicon of Gaelic games, with its implicit warning about the folly of trying to relive old glories, whether as a player or manager.
Liam Sheedy and James Horan clearly see themselves in the Tiger Woods mould, that a return to arms can come with a fairytale finish. The former sets out again to try and deliver his native Tipperary to the Holy Grail of All-Ireland success, just as he did in 2010; the latter, to try and do the same with Mayo’s half-century and more obsession after the near misses of 2012-2014.
On a weekend when crowd invasions went viral, it was possible to draw a line between a golf course in Atlanta and a Thurles venue that Sheedy knows only too well. At Semple Stadium on Friday night at Féile Classical, middleaged punters relived their youth and in an act of daring, clambering from their seats in the stand to go dancing around the stage as Hothouse Flowers belted out a rendition of ‘Don’t Go’.
Here was a step back in time with Irish acts like Something Happens, The Stunning and An Emotional Fish. A concert with a classical backing track to the bands who turned the home of hurling into an Irish version of Glastonbury in the early 1990s.
Which revived memories for anyone at the original instalment, this parish included. Memories of sitting with incense sticks in the openings of a pair of hiking boots in the Hare Krishna tent on the official campsite.
Memories of sitting in the same field listening to Dolores O’Riordan and the Cranberries on the wind, long before the Limerick hurlers put their own claim on the same band this summer. Back then, not having a concert ticket was no excuse not to travel down and make a weekend on the campsite just for the hell of it.
Little did I know I would be returning to the same Semple Stadium venue to witness the headline hurling acts for the next 25 years or so. Féile Classical was full of people chasing their own second acts, if only briefly.
Why would Liam Sheedy go back in and risk his legacy? It’s in his blood. Someone who made the shortlist of three for the GAA director general job, who has responsibility for Bank of Ireland in Munster, spent part of this summer in a loose role helping Antrim in the second-tier Joe McDonagh Cup.
To understand what the game means to the family, just look at the footage of his brother John — a selector on the Tipperary Under 21 team — at the final whistle of their All-Ireland final against Cork last month, when the management team joined another memorable pitch invasion.
‘Like a young calf let out for the first time at the final whistle,’ quipped Liam as he posted the video on social media.
It’s the same reason as James Horan has let himself be nominated for the Mayo post for a second time after being encamped in a Sky Sports studio this past summer and more.
In terms of successful second acts, just look at Cyril Farrell’s back-to-back All-Ireland double with Galway, Mick O’Dwyer’s achievements with Kildare or Jack O’Connor guiding Kerry to an All-Ireland.
‘There are no second acts in American lives’ is actually a misquoted and misused version of the original line written by Fitzgerald, which first appeared in a 1932 essay on New York entitled: ‘My Lost City’.
The complete sentence reads: ‘I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York’s boom days.’
So what the author was saying: if he once believed there were no second acts — he was wrong.
Perhaps Woods and Sheedy and Horan might appreciate more another line from Fitzgerald. It’s the last line of The Great Gatsby and focuses on the role of the past in the dreams of the future: ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’
Why should Sheedy risk his legacy?