Drawing blood and healing with bandages

KILLINAN END

“Behind the smokescreen of banter and bluffers’ bonhomie that precedes and surrounds every serious meeting of Cork and Tipp, resides a profound mutual need, or lust, for domination – if not, indeed, downright tyranny” - The words of the hurling writer Kevin Cashman from more than three decades ago.

The same man was prone to flights of fantasy in between those irritating nuggets of truth. However, while the Tipperary-Cork conflict has been romanticised in the ‘Cork bet and the hay saved” mode, it has rarely been plain sailing.

An All-Ireland Final meeting is timely as the rivalry itself has been a casualty of the whole back-door system. Tense days with everything on the line have been diluted. Cork-Tipp mixed tribal pride with self-regard, laced it with venom, and made a heady cocktail. Maybe Tipp’s most consequential encounter with Cork was the dramatic 1949 series.

Just five Tipp players from the previous year lined out against the Rebels. The new broom brought untold success. Tipp won as many All-Irelands in three years as in the previous quarter of a century. Jim Young and Sonny Maher got the line during an elemental struggle that needed a replay and extra-time. Mossie O’Riordan’s shot allegedly entered Tony Reddin’s net only to bounce back out off the back stanchion. Nearly four decades later, Pat Fox’s effort most definitely entered Ger Cunningham’s net and was not given either.

The 1949 win was a new dawn heralding the arrival of Tony Reddin, Tony Brennan, John Doyle, Pat Stakelum, Mick Ryan, Jimmy Kennedy, and a litany of other names to be spoken of in hushed tones for decades. Tommy Doyle’s performance on Ring was so good that even time struggled to enhance it. Underneath the surface, however, menace lurked.

Priests have often stirred the hurling pot. Many moons ago, a Thurles man recalled nostalgically a priest from Moycarkey who used to prowl the sideline with hurley in hand “frothin’ for a row”. In the aftermath of that 1949 Tipp-Cork encounter an anonymous contributor styled ‘Munster Priest’ wrote to the Sunday Independent complaining about the exchanges. The letter claimed that “from the beginning of the game these modern gladiators, armed with hurleys instead of swords, attacked each other with a zest that would have put to shame the heroes of the Roman arena”. In the abstract of course the average hurling fan loves this sort of stuff. This man committed the schoolboy error of referencing specifically several Tipperary players treated for head wounds.

The following two weeks’ Sunday papers featured a tsunami of whataboutery from Cork including a communication from Jack Lynch. It was around this time that Reddin – after a clumsy tackle from the same Jack – warned of an impending by-election in Cork should the same incident recur. Maybe that had him on the defensive.

This rivalry gave the GAA its most iconic image in 1957 when Christy Ring left the pitch at the Gaelic Grounds with his arm in a sling. Ring walked past Mick Mackey - surely the most famous umpire in hurling history. This was like having a Michelin star chef setting the table. What did Mackey say to Ring? Good authority from Leeside has it that Mick remarked “you didn’t get half enough of it”.

The wildness of the Munster Finals of 1960 and ’61 have been well documented but one of the next major flashpoints was more low-profile. By the early ‘70s the balance of power had shifted. Donie Nealon had enjoyed a fine long career in Blue & Gold, and never tasted defeat to Cork. Hence the Rebels danced with unseemly joy at a League semi-final win over Tipp in 1969, their first since Ring/Mackey’s pleasantries. Their new ascendancy was confirmed in the 1969 and ’70 Munster Finals, the latter by the skin of their teeth. When the counties met in a December 1972 League match in Thurles it was from a position of parity, recent All-Ireland winners both.

This game cemented the view that the veneer of civility and decorum is most delicate. In a match where the flaking was done with wild abandon anyway, Liam King was struck. All hell broke loose with the Lorrha man himself actually chasing an offending Cork player across the Thurles sod. Tipp’s captain Francis Loughnane talked down Tipp supporters surrounding the Cork dressing-room with Old Testament intent. Pat Hegarty – prime object of their ire - was brought under Garda escort to the getaway vehicle. Gerald McCarthy was another who got under Tipperary skins. Tipp’s players, it has to be said, gave as good as they got.

Two decades later, Denis Mulcahy “distanced Cormac Bonnar from his senses with a late and dangerous charge” as one report had it. Bonnar, unlike say Jim Cashman a year earlier, had to leave the pitch – Mulcahy stayed - in what transpired to be his last championship game. The Cashel man’s last League game prompted the aforementioned Kevin Cashman remark. Timmy Kelleher struck Nicky English in that 1993 League semi-final and got marching orders. Myth has it that Canon O’Brien was so offended Kelleher never hurled for Cork again. In fact, this good Erin’s Own hurler enjoyed a reasonably lengthy if – bar the 1993 League medal - unfruitful career during Cork’s 1990s’ wilderness years.

So, take any pop-up mutual admiration societies over the weekend with a grain of salt. They are about as frothy and sustainable as Cork’s ticket-hungry support.