TIPPERARY v GALWAY
NATIONAL HURLING LEAGUE FINAL—
THE one constant has been Tipperary’s capacity to get inside Galway heads. It would prove its tipping point when their storied rivalry was at its peak in 1989 and took such a bitter twist that it became front page news.
It would become the most infamous suspension in the history of the GAA; its gravitas assured by the fact that it went from being categorised as a mere ‘ban’ to a far more scandalous ‘affair’.
Yet for all the tales of subterfuge and conspiracy; for all of Cyril Farrell’s veiled suggestion that his Galway team might not fulfil their All-Ireland semi-final date with Tipperary — a story that ran on the front page of the Irish Press 10 days prior to the game — it all boiled down to a moment of blind passion.
Tony Keady, the best hurler in Ireland, was literally walking away from his trouble after deeming that caution might be the better part of valour when he declined to tog out for Laois — who were effectively a Galway team — against Tipperary in the New York championship
He had hummed and hawed over it for an age but after failing to secure assurances that he had got ‘clearance’ to play, he was walking down the Gaelic Park pitch when he saw two shades of colour that bought the Galway bull out in him.
‘I was standing in a corner, only 30 or 40 yards from the dressingrooms. The next thing, one of the doors opened and out came a blue and gold jersey.
‘Sure ‘twas like a red rag to a bull. I think I had my boots, togs and helmet on before I even got to the dressing-room door. That’s what the sight of the Tipp jersey did to me,’ he recalled years later in an interview.
Three decades on the question tomorrow is how does the Tipperary colours play with the heads of Keady’s successors in the maroon and white?
It’s not as if there hasn’t been enough trauma heaped on them.
The pattern to the recent rivalry with Tipperary over the last decade has been well established; they have in the main produced thrilling games, with precious little to choose between the sides.
Since their last League final clash in 2008, they have met five times in major matches, four of which have been one-score games.
The other pattern of note is that Tipperary have not just got the better of it — they have won four of them — but they have also made it count.
The 2008 League final win announced the arrival of Liam Sheedy’s team, who would be crowned All-Ireland champions within two years.
Their closest call on the way to that latter triumph came in that year’s quarter-final when Lar Corbett’s late point steered them past the Tribe with an injury-time point.
There was an echo of that last year too; Galway had looked the more likely winners of the semifinal for the bones of an hour, yet it was Tipperary who would be champions.
In reverse, it is a rivalry that has offered Galway little, not even in the solitary time they prevailed.
Despite beating Tipperary in the 2015 semi-final, it was the image of Seamus Callanan with a half-acre of space to stretch his legs and take the unfortunate and unprotected Padraig Mannion for 3-4 that was used to prosecute the argument made in a successful heave against Anthony Cunningham that Galway were shy on match smarts.
While Tipperary have received a rich bounty from this fixture, pain and misery has been Galway’s lot.
Is there a reason for that? Most likely, there are a few.
The most obvious is that they are mentally fragile, not least when front-running.
It has haunted them time and again, not least against Tipperary.
They led by two points in the final 10 minutes of the 2010 and ’16 semi-finals and still came up shy by one, while in the 2014 qualifier two quick-fire Johnny Glynn goals saw them up by six with 20 minutes to lose by nine.
This is far from just a Tipperary thing; Galway have ceded match-winning positons to Kilkenny in their last two meetings — the 2015 All-Ireland final and last year’s Leinster final. And they were at it again this spring.
Tomorrow may qualify as officially the biggest game of the hurling spring, but the brutish truth is that Galway played and blew their ‘real final’ nine weeks ago.
Going into the final quarter six points up and playing at home against less experienced opponents in Wexford, Galway should have planted at least one foot back in the League’s top tier but, once more when there was something significant on the line, instead of finding a surge they opted to shrink.
The reason why they have repeatedly faded out of games they have half-won may well be one for a small hospital of doctors.
There is an argument that the spine of their defence is brittle; that they are shy of authoritative figures at full and centre-back, and could do with two Daithi Burkes. Perhaps, but that is an accusation, with the exception of Tipperary and Waterford, which could be thrown at every other team in the hurling land. And defensively, both in terms of organisation and personnel, they have beefed up. They play to a pretty much orthodox game-plan but as Aidan Harte showed in last year’s quarter-final against Clare where he was forced to sweep, when a tactical curve ball is thrown they can catch it.
Micheal Donoghue has not been backwards when it has come to trawling for talent — he has used 32 players this spring — but the reality is that he will play from the same deck of cards he had 12 months ago.
That is not necessarily a bad thing, Adrian Tuohy and Gearoid McKiernan are a year older and wiser and it is showing too.
Ultimately, what Donohue is looking for is not new faces, but new leaders.
If there is a reason why in the past, they have not been able close out Tipperary games it is precisely because they have not had enough players to drive them through when the heat is turned up.
They need others to reach the level that David Burke has sustained for the past couple of seasons, with only Daithi Burke and, to a far lesser degree, Joe Canning getting close.
The return of Christy Cooney and the continued development of Cathal Mannion has prompted observations that Galway are in the process of weaning themselves off the latter as their principal strike forward.
The hard evidence this spring would back that up, Cooney (215), Conor Whelan (3-8) and Burke (1-13) have all scored more in open play.
The real problem, however, is that there are not enough players who are willing to risk everything at the sight of a blue and gold jersey like Keady did 28 years ago.
Tomorrow would be as good a day as any to start again.
What Donoghue is looking for is not new faces, but new leaders