First rule of hype club is don’t talk about it

HE first rule of Hype Club? Don’t talk about Hype Club. Alas just minutes after their epic victory over Cork in Sunday’s thrilling All Ireland semi-final that’s precisely what Limerick proceeded to do.

In its own way it was understandable that Limerick would seek to play things down. To seek to keep it low key. To focus on themselves. To focus on their opponents. To focus on the hurling.

The Shannonsiders have been burned before, in the lead up to the 2007 final most notably. The worry is that by talking about the potential for hype, they’re playing into the very thing they’re seeking to avoid. A sort of GAA version of the Streisand effect.

The more they talk about hype the more we in the media will pick up on it. It has the potential to become something of a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more hype is a topic of conversation the more hype, by definition, there will be.

If John Kiely had the chance to do it all over again you’d certainly hope he wouldn’t do what he did in the press conference straight after the match. He wouldn’t have asked journalists not to do something they don’t really do any more and issue a stark threat against them if they attempted to do so.

It’s been a long time since a journalist was granted a one-on-one interview with a player in the weeks leading up to the All Ireland final. We all know the score. Teams do their press conference a fortnight or three weeks before the big day and after that it’s radio silence.

That much is implicit or at least understood. Emails from public relations officers usually do make it explicit – ‘no more access will be granted after the press day’ – but at this stage they hardly even need to.

Kiely’s dogmatic insistence on this, the force with which he made the declaration that he would “shut down the whole thing”, the fact those were the first words out of his mouth in the press room under the Hogan Stand suggests all this was playing on his mind even before Limerick won the semi-final.

This had to be, to a certain extent at least, a pre-planned move by the Limerick boss and, as such, it’s a revealing one. He’s clearly worried – perhaps rightly so – by how hype could derail his side’s chances of bringing the Liam MacCarthy back to the Treaty.

We do wonder though about the wisdom of this approach. Why would you point a flashing neon sign at something you – ostensibly – view as a vulnerability? It would be better surely to deal with all this in a low-key fashion.

Consult with neighbouring counties about how best to go about these things – officers or former officers from the Kerry County Board could surely offer a few words of sage advice – and do everything in your power to play it down and keep it relaxed.

Whatever you do don’t make a big deal of it. Whatever you do don’t make a thing of it. Kiely has, probably unwittingly but deliberately nevertheless, made a thing of it. Judging by Shane Dowling’s comments on the pitch after the game it’s something even the players are thinking about.

Look, maybe that’s a good thing. It’s good certainly that Limerick are aware of the mistakes of the last Limerick team to reach an All Ireland final and it’s good they’re not going to repeat those mistakes. Thinking too much about it, however, could be a mistake in and of itself.

We’re pretty sure the last thing John Kiely would have wanted this week is a couple of days of headlines about Limerick and hype and press days, but that’s what he’s ended up with.

Instead of Limerick quietly sinking into the background as the country’s focus turns to the replay in Thurles and to the final round of the Super 8s, Limerick made themselves the story.

Instead of having a pretty normal press conference it’s quite likely Limerick players are going to be quizzed about the hype, creating the sort of feedback loop Kiely wanted to avoid in the first place.

More than likely, of course, none of this will have any effect whatsoever on what happens on August 19. Inasmuch as we in the media like to think ourselves important and influential, no match was ever won or lost on the back pages.

Nobody was going to stand in Kilkenny’s way in 2007. Nothing written or said that year made one slight bit of difference. Nothing said or written this week is going to make the slightest bit of difference either.

The only slight worry we’d have is that Limerick are putting thought and energy into something largely beyond their power to prevent.

“There is no hype for us whatsoever,” Kiely said on Sunday. Saying it doesn’t necessarily make it so, sometimes just the opposite. Remember always the first rule of Hype

Club.