The gift that keeps on giving

Tension and drama of big Munster duels puts supporters through wringer

Jamie Barrett grew up in the shadow of the Old Stand in Semple Stadium. It’s a short walk but it felt a long journey home last Sunday when Cork cut the rope holding Tipperary’s interest to the hurling championship.

A week ago he still had hope, until his county lost by its heaviest margin to Cork since 1898. In a province of generally tight margins it was an unthinkably bad day to be a Tipperary follower.

He sat in the Old Stand just up from the Cork dugout alongside his 12-year-old son Mark. At one stage in the second half his son was in tears and asked if they could leave. “I said, ‘we aren’t going anywhere, we’ll toughen it out’. You just have to grin and bear it.”

In considerably better spirits in the same stadium was 78-year-old Matt Aherne, from Passage West, who attended his first Cork senior hurling championship match in 1962 aged 15. He is a “super optimist” but this championship has tested his faith in Cork to the limit. Asked if his doctor might be concerned about the impact of a madly fluctuating round-robin on his heart, he says, “If I am to go down watching Cork, so be it”.

Aherne travels to games with his equally fanatical son, Edward, and his grand-daughter, Rosie (12), who adores the ground Patrick Horgan walks on. Together they have been through mood swings from despair to delirium. And it’s not over yet.

Theirs is a team now looked on as having serious All-Ireland potential, but may be out of the competition if today’s results don’t go their way. They sit idle, awaiting events in Limerick and Thurles.

“When you look back,” says Aherne, “there were so many things. If Tipp didn’t get that last-minute point against Waterford, we were probably gone. And you look at the situation last week, the now famous Mark Rodgers 65, if that was a draw we were nearly gone as well.”

The Munster championship has been a relentless adrenaline rush. The dramatic finishes. The upsets. The fine margins and fast-changing arithmetic. It has reached the final round of group matches with four counties still in with a chance of making the provincial final, and the same four all unsure if they will end the day still in the championship.

Tipperary have fallen short of that standard but they were in the competition with live prospects until the second half a week ago saw them unravel.

And Cork have been through an emotional wringer. Aherne went to Walsh Park for the first round, when a journey that would normally take an hour and a half took three. When they arrived into the ground Cork were already 1-4 to 0-1 down. The defeat that followed made for a mournful road home. But out of that has sprung a remarkable transformation.

“If we do progress and do well later on, that game will take on a huge significance,” he says. “If we had won that game we probably would not have made the [six] changes that we made. We got stuck in traffic and it was a nightmare getting in there. Through Castlemartyr and Dungarvan especially. It was a nightmare getting out of it again.

“We met a guy going into the match who said there were seven roundabouts in Dungarvan, I don’t know was that an exaggeration. But I am nearly 79 years of age, and we still had to get into the ground with the young one with us.”

Over the last few weeks, almost 200,000 followers have surfed the waves of the Munster championship. They’ve come home lighter in the pocket and maybe lower in spirit, or they’ve come home lighter in the pocket but energised and filled with renewed optimism. Sometimes they’ve had all of that in the same week.

Denis Nestor, 45, is a committed Limerick follower who has seen his side start off with two wins and then wobble in Cork. Eight points down at half-time, they were winning the second half by 12 until the last dramatic twist in injury time. But destiny is in their hands, with Waterford coming to the Gaelic Grounds this afternoon. “I think it’s brilliant,” he says of the fast-paced round-robin carousel, “because it is slightly barbaric and dog-eat-dog and every game matters. Where there is a week between games, the dust barely settles and we are going again, and you have very little time to absorb the whole thing. It is a glut of hurling in a round-robin phase which is brilliant but personally, it is like when you are reading a book. If you are reading a great book and it’s coming near the end, you are slowing down to take it in and absorb it. And there is an element of that I think, if they could stretch it out a little bit. Maybe have a little bit more time between the games.

“Injuries do occur because of the intensity and physicality and because there is so much at stake. Longer rest periods for the players might help that and I don’t think there would be any complaints from the viewing public. I don’t think there is any issue with having two weeks between games rather than one.”

Nestor sat with Damien Quigley, the former Limerick hurler, in Páirc Uí Chaoimh when Cork ended their unbeaten run. He still believes in his team. “We lost a game against Clare last year and we drew up in Thurles. And we were lucky. We were lucky to draw it. I remember meeting a friend at half-time and asking him what he thought and he said, ‘I think we’re f **ked’. It’s never plain sailing in Munster.

“And it’s funny, you look at 12 months on and look at where Tipp

are now and how it turns so quickly. There is danger lurking everywhere, every game you go to. We went to Clare on the first day out and I was with two friends of mine, we were standing on the terrace and with 20 minutes to go, I’m thinking ‘how am I going to slip out of here without meeting anyone from Clare that I know’ — and obviously I was seeking them out after the game.

“Tipp aren’t at the races this year. You could see it in that Limerick game and in the Cork game as well. They gave up, they gave up with 20 minutes to go, which is very unlike a Tipp team.

“And then the big worry is Cork, what are we after doing? The monster is awake. I was down in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and, my God, the place was on fire. From the first minute, the place was on fire. I saw Nicky English saying if they survive this weekend they will win it. I don’t know about that but they are a big worry, they have so many threats all over the pitch.”

A draw in the Gaelic Grounds will eliminate Cork , if Clare win. Picture a scene where Limerick earn a scoreable free with time up and the sides level. Limerick will go through if it goes wide, but Cork possibly won’t. But Munster can’t be that Machiavellian, surely?

“I think Cork are going to have a major say on who ends up walking the steps this year,” says Nestor. “If it’s not them, they may certainly decide who it isn’t as well. From my perspective I think it would be better for Cork to be gone. I don’t think anyone in Limerick would be thinking that way, they will want to win the game. I think the best case scenario is that you go out and hammer Waterford and make a statement and you don’t worry about anyone else. I think there is a need for a 70-minute performance and I think there will be. I think there is going to be a big reaction. I think they will put in their best performance of the year so far.”

Cusack Park in Ennis was blessed with beautiful sunshine for the meeting of Clare and Waterford last Sunday, a match decided by a 65 which turned out to be the last puck. Another match that ebbed and flowed and kept you guessing to the end. Matt Aherne was heading into Thurles when the game in Ennis was into the final minutes. He checked with a man in a car who had the radio commentary. Clare were three to the good, time almost up. A draw would not help Cork. He got his next update as he was about to enter the ground.

“I asked if there was any news and a Tipp man said Clare won by a point, a dubious 65 he said. I said I don’t mind if it’s dubious or not, once they won. That could have changed the whole thing.”

The excitement was still at a high pitch in Ennis after the final whistle. Waterford felt thieved but had to go home empty handed, having also surrendered a point to Tipperary two weeks earlier in Walsh Park. But they’re still kicking. “I thought when they actually played for a while they were well able to match Clare,” says Gearóid O’Connor, a Waterford follower and former Ballygunner hurler who travelled to Ennis with a couple of friends.

“I think people see as well they are not as far behind the pack as people were portraying at the start of the year.”

He makes the shorter spin to Limerick today where they need a result to stay in the championship. Does he feel Limerick have slipped a bit? He pauses. “Now they’d be famous last words, wouldn’t they? I don’t want to hex it.”

But he is not without hope. “I’d be confident. Backs are against the wall. It is a knock-out game. If you knock out Limerick then what is the fear for the summer? There is none. Belief would be at an all-time high. The shackles get thrown off. When Waterford have a pep in their step they turn into a different type of team.”

How does he handle the stress? “The stress is nearly part of the excitement. The highs and the lows. You have highs and lows multiple times in every game. You look dead and buried. You look like you might go all the way.”

Agnes O’Shaughnessy was at the match in Ennis a week ago supporting Clare along with her husband George, 15-year-old son Alex and some friends. This is the 10th anniversary of her father’s death. Michael Hickey was a devoted Clare hurling follower who witnessed the 2013 All-Ireland win before the end of his life’s journey. While ill, he was visited by Tony Kelly.

His daughter recalls that encounter. “Tony Kelly came to see him when he was sick, he had a brain tumour, but he turned around to him and said, ‘you won’t win for a while now, you need to learn how to lose. You’re too young’. And we were laughing at him. Sure we thought this team would go on [and win more]. Maybe it’s their time now.”

When she was young her father didn’t believe she should be going to hurling matches.

“My father and my brothers would go, I wasn’t invited to games as a child because my dad was very old-fashioned and he didn’t believe it was a place for a girl. We would watch it on tv and my two older brothers and my dad would come home very depressed a lot of the time. I was a teenager when they won [two All-Irelands] in the 90s and that would have ignited interest. And then my husband has followed the team since he was small as well. And as the kids grew up we started going to the games more. It’s the family as well. We enjoy it but there is a lovely social aspect to it.”

Being in Cusack Park last Sunday, she was probably the calmest of her group, but when Waterford won their late penalty, offering the chance to level the match, she had her head in her hands.

“We were fairly confident but you just don’t know anymore in Munster. The atmosphere in Ennis was great. Clare people never get too arrogant about anything but there was a quiet confidence about it. Those last 10 minutes were quite difficult. There was lots of maths to do because you were trying to work out the score, so there was a lot of added tension when it’s like that.”

A season ticket holder, she sees the two sides. “We had a lot of Waterford fans around us in the area we were in, and we shook hands with them afterwards and said to them, ‘we feel like we stole that’. Mostly, I have had 99 per cent very positive reaction. You might have a bit of banter during the game. But I think it’s incredible. I think we’re one of the few sports in the world that you can completely mix like that and have very little [tension]. I think it is where people are wishing the best for everyone.

“You are not friends during the match. It is a kind of pantomime. That’s what I often call it. The whole thing is a bit of a pantomime. There are no bad feelings in it at all. My father would say something different about his relationship with Tipperary fans down through the years. But I don’t have that same relationship.”

And so, after five weeks of often spellbinding hurling, the final round has arrived to determine which three advance. Two moving on to the final on June 9, the other to the preliminary quarter-finals. In Cork, Matt Aherne, his son and granddaughter may have a tense few hours in front of the tv watching events in the Gaelic Grounds. It is out of their hands. “It will be an awful downer,” he admits if they don’t qualify now.

In the Gaelic Grounds, Denis Nestor will be rooting for Limerick. “We have a WhatsApp group,” he says, “and there is definitely a mood of trust in the team. That they will come right. Everyone is aware as well that empires fall and it will happen at some stage, but there’s a huge amount of trust in the team. That they have the know-how to do what it takes, until they don’t.”

Waterford’s Gearóid O’Connor hasn’t that back catalogue of success to reassure him, but he’s had worse summers.

“It’s like supporting every sports team; it’s all doom and gloom until one win and then they’re the greatest fellas ever. I think a lot of the Waterford people started to become disillusioned with it, but getting to the end of it for a knock-out game against Limerick, people are behind the team again. It’s gone full circle.”

Agnes O’Shaughnessy is preparing for a journey to Thurles. “We are a little bit nervous even though we suspect they will win. We just don’t know what Tipp will bring. And then thinking about all the permutations that are there, I think I saw a graphic with nine different outcomes but I think it’s two of the nine would mean we wouldn’t go through.”

Jamie Barrett returns to the Old Stand with nothing at stake but pride. “Well, if you asked Davy Fitzgerald last year was the game any use to him in Thurles when they came out and won, it probably saved his job. Liam Cahill could be in a similar position, a win against Clare could save Liam Cahill’s job. Now I think he probably deserves another year to be fair to him. Is it the last we’ll see of Noel McGrath and Bonner Maher in a Tipp jersey? Quite possibly. It has been a very confusing Munster championship for Tipp supporters.”

After the trouncing from Cork a week ago, there was a timely intercession with the Tipp minors winning the Munster final the next evening with the inaugural John Doyle Perpetual Cup presented, fittingly, to a Holycross Balycahill captain Cathal O’Reilly. Liam Cahill’s son, Jack, came off the bench. Within a day of one of Tipperary’s worst hurling experiences, it was a reminder that the journey never ends. And that hope can’t be allowed to either.