Home comfort brings little advantage
KILLINAN END
The so-called six-day turnaround first came up for air with the arrival of the qualifiers in football and hurling.
In those days losing teams sometimes had their disappointment compounded by having to face the next opponent on perhaps a Saturday evening with just six days to recover and prepare. It was never quite clear if there was a particular difference between six days and seven days, though presumably there was, and is. For those in the business of preparing teams the extra day probably allows spacing out recovery and training sessions satisfactorily. Whether six or seven days between intense championship matches, it remains a big ask. However, there is some solace to be gleaned from knowing that your opponent is in precisely the same boat.
In the context of this discussion there’s no doubt that Waterford have been very badly treated by the fixture-setting for this year’s championship. They had to play a formidable Limerick team with just six days to process their previous game against the All-Ireland Champions. Cork will have three weeks to turn their minds to the same opponent. Any knocks picked up by Cork players will have had plenty of time to be sorted out in that time, never mind the preparation time available. For Waterford it was a case for hoping for the best. Now, recovery and preparation time either matters or it doesn’t and the ‘turnaround’ time is either important or it’s not. But assuming there is something in this then this situation is a gross distortion of fair play.
The whole point of a round-robin system is surely to root out anomalies and quirks of the draw. This should be the essence of equal opportunity. Naturally one can point to the fact that teams have different schedules with home and away matches, but if there is a perceived tougher pattern of games at least it should even out over the years. Indeed, evidence is inconclusive on the question of home advantage and whether a familiar venue does indeed confer a particular advantage on a team. When Kilkenny lost at home in the early years of the round-robin some were incredulous that you had to go back six decades to their previous home defeats in the championship.
This incredulity would have been lessened somewhat had consideration been given to the frequency and the quality of the opposition Kilkenny had faced at Nowlan Park over those decades. How many times over those years did Kilkenny face an opponent which had a realistic chance of beating that great county at any venue? Likewise, Cork’s home record, which became a major talking point in the post-1976 years with the arrival of the new (now old) Páirc Uí Chaoimh was exaggerated. After all, this was a county which lost but one Munster senior hurling championship game at any venue between June 1974 and July 1987. It is almost disrespectful to Cork to imply that the county relied heavily on home turf during a spectacular decade.
As it happened, a very good Tipperary team survived a few trips to the canvas in the early rounds of the 1991 Munster final in the Páirc before winning a monumental return bout a week later. Five years on, Cork faced an arguably even bigger challenge when they were forced to take the field with their most vulnerable team in over thirty years. The result against Limerick was absolute carnage – a sixteen-point loss despite a wind-aided one-point lead at half-time. Home advantage saved few blushes that day.
Tipp face into another cauldron of Munster hurling this Saturday. During the madness of the Celtic Tiger, the sale of Cusack Park was rumoured with talk of a grand venue on the outskirts of Ennis as an alternative. The abyss into which all economic activity plummeted eventually put paid to these aspirations. Munster hurling may have been the winner. A walk out from the centre of Ennis to this ground remains a proper old-school hurling experience. The niceties will end fairly quickly of course. It is a venue to which Clare clings proudly as one where they will go down only with their boots on.
Tipp can take comfort from having won the last two championship meetings at this ground. In no way is the team being asked to plough fresh ground. Over the entire history of the round-robin in Munster over fifty matches have been played. Only less than half have been won by the home team. About one in every six matches is drawn. What the pattern of results tells us is that better teams do well irrespective of venue. Those who struggle suffer in all locations. Tipp have shown an intensity to their play not seen for a couple of years and had enough spirit and method about them to survive what could have been an overwhelming ordeal down in Cork. It was always likely to come down to this evening in Ennis, and if the team brings absolute commitment to match its talent, they have a great chance here.