The League is the League

KILLINAN END

A job well done and four points on the board is the pragmatic view of Tipp’s current status in the League. What comes next is another matter.

Those of us who enjoy a dust-up will look forward to next weekend. We don’t mean ‘dust-up’ in the 1950’s Tipp-Cork sense – but more in the sanitised modern sense. Then again you never know. Cork come to Thurles with Ben O’Connor lamenting the soccerisation of the sport. Ironically, if Mark Coleman had done the soccer equivalent of striking a player on the head with his hurley he’d have seen red. That sport has, at elite level at least, developed the means to identify extreme breaches of the rules. Let us scoff only very reluctantly at the garrison game.

Limerick’s loss to Waterford guarantees that Green & White will take the field with bad intentions next weekend. If they go full tilt at Kilkenny, who will always bring huge competitiveness, a compelling spectacle awaits. The League has again become a competition of themes which change week to week. Week one saw Waterford concerning us all. After last weekend it’s a case of – to invoke the Sun’s headline after James Callaghan’s denial of UK government problems many decades ago - ‘crisis, what crisis?’ They could be level with ourselves on four points after the weekend.

Other themes emerging are Galway’s shiny new team which looks good. Early days for young players but it does appear that the manager is undertaking necessary surgery. The patient’s longer-term outcome remains uncertain, of course, but they are entitled to be happy. The remarkable players of Nenagh CBS have contributed further to the view that Tipp can now do no wrong. The well of talented youth from which the county can draw is endless apparently.

Far away from the bonfires in Burgess and the Céilí in Kilruane, the broader Tipp hurling community will be impressed that it took character and resolve ‘as cuimse’ for this great Nenagh team to get over Thurles CBS in the semi-final. And that Templemore gave St Flannan’s lots of it in the quarter-final too. The county’s vital signs are encouraging. And then there’s Jason Forde’s wrists too. We have seen this movie before however and let it be said that the noise is coming from outside. The wise words of Jack Lynch come to mind “walk aisy when the jug is full”.

Tipp’s trip to Offaly was going back to – in the words of Jarlath Burns before he handed the MacCarthy Cup to a Thurles man last year – “where it all began”. It was this county which hosted the pioneers that won Tipp’s maiden All-Ireland just a few years after the GAA was founded. Tullamore may be where things are at now for Offaly but the town of Birr surely remains Offaly hurling’s spiritual home. It is a venue where Tipp enjoyed many an auspicious occasion since those distant days when hurling’s originals lined out in an All-Ireland Final. They could hardly have imagined how the fire they kindled would develop into a great inferno in time to come.

A largely forgotten Tipp outing in Birr took place in March 1969 towards the end of the National League. Previously, Tipp had won a blistering encounter with Kilkenny at Nowlan Park and lost narrowly to Wexford in Thurles in a repeat of the previous September’s All-Ireland Final. That was Leinster’s big guns dealt with it seemed. The Offaly game seemed relatively routine and a win by 3-14 to 3-8 qualified Tipperary for the League semi-final and a subsequent defeat against Cork.

The Tipp team which played Offaly was a seasoned outfit with a few newer players: John O'Donoghue (Arravale Rovers), Noel O'Gorman (Newport), John Kelly (Cappawhite), John Gleeson (Moneygall), Tadgh O'Connor (Roscrea), Mick Roche (Carrick), Len Gaynor (Kilruane), P.J. Ryan (Carrick Davins), Noel Seymour (Kiladangan), Jimmy Doyle (Sarsfields), John Flanagan (Moycarkey), Francis Loughnane (Roscrea), Donie Nealon (Burgess), Séamus O'Meara (Lorrha), Babs Keating (Ballybacon-Grange).

What happened next was extraordinary. Offaly had lost to Wexford by nine points and to Kilkenny by fourteen in the League so Leinster looked set up for another clash of the Old Firm. Maybe Offaly’s nineteen-point demolition of Waterford in what amounted to a relegation play-off in the League’s ultimate round was a significant sign camouflaged at the time. When Offaly met the All-Ireland champions Wexford in the Leinster semi-final at the end of June the half-time scoreboard was extraordinary: Offaly 5-4 Wexford 0-5. An Offaly team including Johnny Flaherty and Pat Joe Whelehan, who became more well-known in subsequent decades, held out comfortably. The final against Kilkenny only confirmed Offaly’s form and a mere two-point margin stood between them and a monumental breakthrough. It is unlikely any Tipp players from that League day in Birr saw that coming. This year’s League’s week-on-week themes may be equally unreliable. Approach with caution.