KILLINAN END - Dublin hurling needs a spark

Hope springs eternal even before the fall of the year. Dublin hurling’s latest gambit is as interesting as it was surprising. They certainly did their business quietly and discreetly as perhaps befits the persona of the new manager Micheál Donoghue. It is a strange state of affairs that the former Galway manager traverses the country to take care of Dublin, while Shefflin has a round-trip of over 400 kilometres to manage Galway. There’s a certain madness in that when you think about it.

Almost a decade after winning the Leinster championship which included beating Kilkenny in a replay (which is not supposed to happen for a team like Dublin) this is a team stuck in a rut. An utter inability to beat Kilkenny is a problem – look at this year when they beat Wexford and then still failed to get through Leinster. Meanwhile the Model County went to Nowlan Park and won, a feat beyond Dublin.

Much has been made of the players such as Con O’Callaghan to whom the Dublin hurlers do not have access. Challenges might be about to increase in trying to hold onto existing stalwarts, for example, the hurlers’ full-back Eoghan O’Donnell who joined the football panel. If the footballers were willing to parachute him in mid-season, they must hold him in high regard. The reputation of Micheál Donoghue as an All-Ireland winning manager will help in coaxing him back home. But there are no guarantees of progress. Donoghue oversaw a Galway team a few years back at its absolute peak. Dublin are a long way from that right now.

If the manager is an import at least the team will be by and large a home-grown entity. Of course, for Dublin this is a new enough innovation and a tribute to the coaching that has been undertaken in the capital in recent decades. Time was when finding a Dubliner on a county hurling team was a dilemma. Six decades ago, Dublin reaching an All-Ireland in hurling with a plethora of talent from other counties was not unusual. It might have even been better with the likes of Séamus Bannon and the Kenny’s hurling with a Dublin club, and Jimmy Kennedy actually playing in the 1948 All-Ireland final for Dublin. Stalwarts all of the 1949-51 Tipp team but no doubt they would have had plenty of encouragement to wear sky blue.

One man who did so and is an unusual gold nugget from an area fairly rich in this regard was Jim Prior of Borrisoleigh who was centre-back and captain of Dublin in 1952. The National League that year suggested little positive about Dublin’s immediate prospects. The final was a rerun of the previous year’s All-Ireland Final – Tipp v Wexford – with the result (Tipp win) the same but the margin reduced to the narrowest. Presumably anyone predicting other than a Tipp v Wexford All-Ireland final at that point would have had some explaining to do.

Wexford’s dispatch of Kilkenny in the Leinster semi-final in Croke Park did little to dampen expectation. Dublin were such extreme outsiders in the Leinster final that their subsequent convincing eight-point win at Nowlan Park moved the legendary John D. Hickey of the Irish Independent to describe it as the greatest upset in hurling history since Laois beat Cork in the 1915 All-Ireland final. To put some further context on that Dublin win - it is well to remember that Wexford played in four All-Ireland finals in six years between 1951-56 and won the last two.

For one tantalising week Jim Prior must have mulled over the possibility of facing neighbours and county men in an All-Ireland final. Yet, the following Sunday what remained upright of the 1952 championship was truly turned on its head when Cork managed to suffocate the Tipp forward in the second-half in Limerick. That two-point win, the passage of time notwithstanding, is still arguably the single most famous victory even in the Blood and Bandage’s long story.

This story lacks a happy ending as the final, which Cork reached by beating Galway in the semi-final, was processional, at least in the second-half when Cork repeated their Munster Final trick keeping Dublin to just two points. Among Jim Prior’s eclectic bunch were a couple of Cork men facing their native county, namely Connie Murphy and Seán Cronin, Tony Herbert of Ahane, and to be fair too, its share of natives like Des Ferguson and Séamus Ó Ceallacháin, brother of the more well-known Seán Óg.

Jim Prior had played Minor hurling with Tipp in 1941 alongside the Rattler Byrne, Phibbie Kenny and Seán Kenny. A well-regarded hurling family indeed - Mick Prior was a local legend. One can but speculate as to how strong the great Borris-Ileigh teams might have been with Jim Prior on board. His subsequent move to Dublin saw him develop into one of the greatest figures in the history of the Faugh’s club winning several County medals. He died before his time in 1980 but for a short time in the summer of 1952 he was the most prominent Tipp man in hurling. No doubt he would wish Micheál Donoghue the best in his endeavours in the capital.