Championship 2017
THE HUNT FOR HURLING GLORY
THE biggest question of the hurling year so far is whether Prince Charles is a natural ciotóg in the manner of nine-time All-Ireland winner JJ Delaney or whether Brian Cody reined in his managerial instincts and allowed the future heir to the British throne to puck a ball so poorly for the cameras in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle. When it came to Cody’s turn to showcase the ancient game on the recent visit to these shores by the Prince of Wales and his wife Camilla, the clip of the sliotar being miscontrolled and spinning off the end of his stick was quickly seized upon: ‘...and all the abuse he gave me about my first touch,’ chirruped David Herity mischievously, the former Kilkenny goalkeeper getting a rare opportunity to give his old mentor a coaching lesson.
It was easy to see the moment as a metaphor for last September, how the greatest manager in the history of the game dropped the ball in the final against Tipperary, refusing to break out of the straight-jacket of a conventional defensive set-up and drop a sweeper back, even briefly, as Tipperary’s inside line ran riot. Never before, and perhaps never again, will an inside trio combine for 2-15 from play in a senior final, John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer, Séamus Callanan and John McGrath etching their names into the fine print of hurling’s biggest day.
Perhaps there was a deeper significance of the royal visit, not to the home of All Ireland champions Tipperary but to the modern home of hurling. That’s how much Brian Cody has reframed history since the 1999 season with 11 All-Irelands.
The revolution years of the 1990s are upon us again we are told, particularly in light of the public undressing of Tipperary in the National League final, Ger Loughnane going so far as to suggest an emperor’s new clothes quality to Tipp’s 2016 breakthrough.
Nobody is doubting that a minimum of a second All-Ireland in close proximity is the basic requirement of any claims to greatness but the margin of victory in last year’s Munster final against Waterford (21 points) and the highest total put on a Cody team in the final suggests Tipperary certainly have the potential to get there.
Tipperary’s 2010 winning manager Liam Sheedy is just the latest to declare Kilkenny’s ‘decline’ as being ‘very clear’, a first defeat at Nowlan Park to Wexford since 1957 in the League quarter-final another