Finally, it’s a summer loaded with All-Ireland contenders
CHAMPIONSHIP 2017? Nobody saw the shocks coming – certainly I didn’t. It’s great to think that there has been such excitement already with the qualifier draw still to be made. It’s usually at the All-Ireland quarterfinal stage that the season cranks up.
Since the turn of the millennium, the greatest team of all time has had a vice-like grip on the game. Kilkenny have been so dominant under Brian Cody, the question we’ve kept asking is whether anyone else can get to that level.
Finally, we have a Championship that is about so many other contenders.
After years out of the limelight, Cork and Wexford have stolen the show. The young players, in particular, on those teams have been a breath of fresh air. Look at 19-yearold Mark Coleman, he’s a defender who looks born for the big stage.
Or Conor Lehane who has delivered on all his promise. The new wave has all been about pace, athleticism and quality hurling. Lee Chin and Conor McDonald have captured the imagination of Wexford fans and Galway have the likes of Conor Whelan showing the way.
Then you have Clare who have tip-toed into a Munster final. Great young players like David McInerney and Tony Kelly haven’t gone away and could have a big say yet.
A Munster final against Cork will bring back memories of 2013 and the All-Ireland final that was supposed to represent a changing of the guard. Instead, it proved to be a false dawn. I think there is more of a 1990s feel to the hurling landscape right now, when the spread of counties winning generated such colour and excitement.
There is such a youthful exuberance about the game now. Limerick gave Tipp a trimming in the Munster Under 21 championship and I saw a very mobile Wexford team win well against Carlow.
The game really seems to have caught the imagination of young people across the country. I don’t think it’s ever been as popular or in a better place.
Then there’s the pre-Championship favourites – are Kilkenny gone or is there one more sting in them?
All-Ireland champions Tipperary were only beaten by four points in the end by Cork – perhaps that wasn’t such a bad display in hindsight. Combined with the rumour mill, I think the whole thing will only bond the squad closer going into the qualifier draw.
If there is a team at a crossroads, it’s Waterford. Can they come back after the manner of the Munster semi-final defeat against Cork?
They gambled on not having a game for 11 weeks – and lost. They blew their League quarter-final chances with the team they put out against Galway. Not having club matches as well was another wrong decision. I think it’s going to be very hard to come back from it.
They did try to hurl man-to-man for a while rather than operate with their usual sweeper. When Cork lost Colm Spillane, then they didn’t know which way to go about chasing the game.
ON an extremely warm day, the likes of ‘Brick’ Walsh and Kevin Moran really found the going tough. They didn’t seem to have it in the legs. Taking off Austin Gleeson was a big decision – and it wasn’t the right one. Last year he won an All-Ireland U21 title playing centre-back, winning ball and driving forward.
Starting in the corner last Sunday, he was peripheral to the action. In saying that, I wouldn’t have taken him off. Brian Whelahan was honoured with a Hall of Fame award last Sunday – there is no way he would have been taken off during his own time. He has so much skill and ability that he can conjure something out of nothing.
Then there is the psychological element of giving the opposition a lift. Cork fans cheered Gleeson off the field. Waterford needed a goal with six, seven minutes to go. The obvious thing was to shove him in full-forward. You need to leave your best players on the field.
It was as if Waterford didn’t know how to change the game around. As if they forgot how to push up with the defensive style they’ve had in recent seasons. Maurice Shanahan was inside one-on-one on at least five or six occasions but Waterford didn’t hit the ball in to him.
Look at the manner in which the U21s won the All-Ireland last year. I’m not suggesting senior is the same thing, but the players themselves looked so frustrated in what they were doing. Stephen Bennett’s subsequent suspension for going at Damien Cahalane was rooted in that frustration.
Waterford now need to throw caution to the wind and introduce a few new players. It has gone stale now. Credit to management for recognising that and acting very quickly to appoint Eoin Murphy as a new selector. Fergal Hartley’s involvement, too, is significant.
He is a very pragmatic and is massively respected in Waterford. It’s like an end of season change in the middle of term.
The Waterford thing is so public because there are so many big characters attached to the game, from Dan Shanahan on the line to Derek McGrath’s brother-in-law John Mullane analysing it. McGrath revealing he had taken parental leave from his teaching job only added to the focus.
For a team that hasn’t won the All-Ireland since 1959, there is a massive spotlight.
The team of Shanahan and Mullane were so popular for playing off-the-cuff, brilliant hurling, but that romantic notion about the game seems to have been lost. Supporters want it back.