KILLINAN END - Kiladangan have made day
The great and the good, and those of us in the other categories, descended on MacDonagh Park, Nenagh, at the weekend to sort out the silverware – some of it at least - for the North division.
Tipp’s queen of the track Sharlene Mawdsley was there and was spotted being invited to pose for a photograph with Donie Nealon. I wonder if Sharlene appreciated what an icon she was posing with on this day. The stardust was blowing both ways there for sure. On the subject of North Tipp icons, you wondered looking at Len Gaynor in the stand how many times he has seen the Frank McGrath Cup contested - he last played in a final himself in the 1980 replay. That’d be a fireside conversation to savour.
In a Senior final that never quite managed to hit the heights, Kiladangan started well, and Borris-Ileigh finished well. There was a brief hope in the attendance that a difficult late free might open up a reenergised extra-time period, but it was not to be. Borris showed signs of potential with Devaney a constant spark, while on the other side Billy Seymour’s willingness to try for even very difficult scores paid off in the second half to help see the men from Puckane home. Their eighth title in the modern era is an extraordinary haul when you consider their many decades in the Intermediate grade when a Senior title must have seemed a long way away. Joe Gallagher played on that day against Burgess in 2008 when the breakthrough came and he now moves in exalted company indeed with that longevity.
This team in Blue & Gold has achieved a few notable wins over those years, not least that late win in a classic against Loughmore/Castleiney but it’d be hard to overlook the manner of their first North Final win run back in 2008. Remember how they trailed by eight points – 2-12 to 0-10 – with a quarter of an hour to go? Rarely can a team have reeled off a finish like that – 1-7 to 0-0 – at the business end of a North Final. It was a deeply wounding defeat for Burgess but there might be a strange solace in the knowledge that it took an extraordinary feat to take them down that day.
For a brief time on Sunday, when Borris cut loose towards the end, the mind drifted back to that day seventeen years ago but there was never such a sense of fluency about the comeback, nor did the goal that might even have won it look likely. The concession of those four early points was, in hindsight, quite decisive.
Credit where it’s due - not only have Kiladangan won eight titles in sixteen years (there was no championship in 2020) but they’ve reached a dozen of the last eighteen finals and remarkably have played in seven consecutive finals. One of the hallmarks of this championship is that teams come and go. They have their time, and it passes as surely as it came. Sometimes this window can slam shut with undue haste and you need to make the most of it. It’s maybe not quite an immutable law but one not easily trumped. Kiladangan have done both – filled their boots with North titles and also elongated their stay at the top in a manner which has few parallels in the competition’s story. Given the potential complexity of their county championship group with Clonoulty/Rossmore, Holycross/Ballycahill, and Toomevara, it was a win which has added value. In the same vein a Kilruane man nearby in the stand worried towards the end about the repercussions of a Borris-Ileigh smash and grab for the County group those old rivals share.
Speaking of old rivals, the flags were flying in adjacent houses along the old N7 between Birdhill and Nenagh as if to signal the parish boundaries of Ballina and Burgess. Needless to say, they didn’t always cleanly indicate loyalties with some inevitable mixing between the clans. Burgess have traditionally been the more successful club, even attending the big dance a couple of times in recent decades. If they will have regretted letting the 2008 final slide against Kiladangan, they will also have had more than a few what-might-have-been thoughts about that day six years later when a second-half surge left them ahead of Éire Óg at the death, but yet again it was not to be.
Conversely, they will have few nightmares about not retaining their Premier Intermediate title. Ballina threatened from pillar to post with their captain spraying his own stardust with a mighty score from defence in the second half. Burgess might have made hay a few times in the first half with Bill O’Flaherty and Joe O’Dwyer posing very different styles of threat up front. Ballina’s goal was under siege on occasion but what breaks they got they deserved as their forwards gradually took over. In the end they won pulling up. In the old days they’d have danced a Ballycommon in the Round Hill for a month to mark a North Final win over these neighbours. In this brave new world these great young Ballina men have just five days before facing the same wounded opponent in the County championship. There just isn’t enough days in the year for this hurling anymore.