JACKIE TYRRELL
Reveals the passion of hurling rivalries in new autobiography
HIS AUNT’S HUSBAND WOULDN’T FIX CARS WITH A TIPP REG...
IF Michael Ryan has a spare few quid, he could do worse than buy each member of the Tipperary senior hurling squad a copy of Jackie Tyrrell’s autobiography The Warrior’s Code for Christmas, with Chapter 18 — ‘The Oldest Enemy’ — marked for special attention.
Because this story, written in conjunction with Christy O’Connor, continues in the modern vein of breaking taboos, whether societal or sport. The genre has long since evolved from being a tale of a player’s derring-do on the field, with a homely bit of family background thrown in for good measure.
I Crossed The Line detailed the story of Wexford hurler Liam Dunne beyond the whitewash, how he spiralled into an alcohol-fuelled depression. Oisín McConville’s offfield addiction was brilliantly chronicled in The Gambler, another window into the lives of players outside the big match occasions.
The old taboo of not speaking ill of the opposition long went by the wayside and it’s here that Tyrrell dares to fan the flames of Kilkenny’s age-old rivalry with Tipperary. After the latter thwarted Kilkenny’s bid for an historic five-in-arow in 2010, the sight of Pat Kerwick singing ‘Galtee Mountain Boy’ on the steps of the Hogan Stand after the cup was presented had Tyrrell fuming.
‘It was just typical Tipperary. They win one All-Ireland and think they have it made. You almost felt they couldn’t help themselves, that they were teeing themselves up to allow us to eat them alive. And we routinely did. We could beat them 10 times in a row but we felt it still never instilled any humility in the hearts and minds of Tipperary people.
‘If they beat us once, they’d act as if they had been thrashing us for a decade. Tipperary just have this unbelievable ability to gall the hell out of us. And I think they know that too. What they didn’t realise though, was how much that attitude and arrogance fuelled us, and our drive to keep them down.
‘No matter what they did, no matter how much talent they had, we always felt we had more men. We just felt that if a Kilkenny player and a Tipperary player went into a room to sort out their differences, the Kilkenny fella would always walk out after having put the Tipp fella on the floor.’
Tyrrell takes a sentiment associated with Hell’s Kitchen and Tipp’s 1960s golden era — ‘Kilkenny for the hurling, Tipp for the men’ — and flips it on its head. And he doesn’t stop there.
His take on the 2012 All-Ireland semi-final is cold-eyed and unsympathetic. ‘Once we got a run on Tipp, we mowed them down. It was the same old Tipp again — shaping and hiding behind their bulls***. They hadn’t the balls to come out and take us on man for man.’ That boldness to speak his mind, come what may, has not endeared him to everyone in Kilkenny, never mind Tipperary, judging by some of the local grumblings. Brian Cody will hardly thank him for painting the relation ship is such a light, when this story has so much left to be written still.
But that didn’t stop the Kilkenny manager from turning up at the book launch in Langton’s and say- a few words for a player who won nine All-Irelands under his management and who he taught in primary school and watched develop at James Stephens.
Tipperary’s Eoin Kelly was there too, lending his support.
And Tyrrell’s tale is searingly honest, whether it’s documenting the principles that underpinned the greatest team the game has seen and the central part played by Cody, Davy Fitzgerald and the helter-skelter college life at LIT, or the doubts that plague someone who finished with more All-Ireland medals than Christy Ring. There’s only a few who could get away with referring to themselves in the third person: ‘JT in at number four…’ Or ‘ I am JT. I don’t imitate…’
If certain passages of his diary sound like a hurling version of bestselling self-help book The Secret — ‘I don’t have a Plan B. It would only distract from Plan A…’ — it worked for him, building up a reputation as a supreme big-game player.
That insight into how the counties co-exist is a constant theme. He tells of how of how his aunt’s husband John ‘Spud’ Murphy couldn’t stand Tipp, how he worked with cars but wouldn’t repair anything with a Tipp reg. How he once took offence when Tyrrell came back from the shop drinking a bottle of Tipperary Spring Water, asking him to pour it down the drain.
Plenty of Kilkenny fans will be tickled by such detail. Tipp’s less so. But it’s hard to think that both won’t want to get their hands on a copy for the full story.