Club Race has familiar feel

KILLINAN END

As early as mid-November the club championship is beginning to develop a familiar form.

In Leinster, Shamrocks Ballyhale threaten to emerge once again and you sense that, as a physical team, the winter status of the club hurling championship suits them down to the ground. Ballygunner’s win over Sarsfields and its nature puts them into the final as likely red-hot favourites against Éire Óg Ennis. Even on a heavy pitch which didn’t help the players there was a pedestrian look to an error-strewn game at Sixmilebridge. Hard to imagine the Clare champions standing in the way of another tilt at the All-Ireland series for Ballygunner.

Though they have won just the one All-Ireland title, and that by the skin of their teeth too, their consistency in Munster has been something else. The last time Ballygunner failed to win the Waterford championship was in 2013 when they lost the final to Passage by three points. Since then, they have won 12-in-a-row, unprecedented for a first-rank hurling county. Given that they scored 2-35 in the recent County Final when winning by 22 points against Mount Sion and also won the Intermediate title - meaning that they’ll have two Senior teams next year - it is fair to say that there is scant sign of this situation letting up any time soon. They are eleven titles behind Mount Sion in the Roll of Honour (35 vs 24) and even at this remove it does not seem excessive to suggest that they are capable of taking the top spot in the foreseeable future.

At some stage in the future the performances of Thurles Sarsfields in the provincial club championship in recent decades will be looked back upon quite positively. In the process of pointing out the competitiveness of the Blues it will be recognised that they are the last team – in 2016 – to beat Ballygunner in the provincial championship outside the final. Hindsight will also look very kindly on Borris-Ileigh’s final win in 2019 considering that Ballygunner won the next three finals by an average of a dozen points as they threatened to turn Munster into a formality as well until Sarsfields’ unlikely win last year. On the basis of last Sunday’s matches, it will take Éire Óg all their time to make this a contest but time will tell.

The confident money, however, will expect a Ballyhale-Ballygunner repeat of their semi-final three years ago when the Kilkenny champions won by the only goal of the game in Croke Park. The other semi-final is likely to be Loughrea against Slaughtneil, both of them had to endure a one-point defeat in last year’s semi-final – Loughrea to Na Fianna, and the Derry champions to Sarsfields of Cork. Both will see this as the better side of the draw and will not be without hope. Loughrea are in the familiar western role of playing the All-Ireland semi-final as their next game after the County Final.

Time was when Galway argued that their province-less situation was a severe disadvantage - more match practice would be the making of them. Yet they have all they want of it now and are running on empty. It remains quite an anomaly of the hurling championship that the ‘Galway problem’ is still alive and well in the club championship after it has been dealt with across inter-county competition. Quite why their clubs do not compete in the Leinster championship as they do at County level is an enduring mystery.

It would be easy to dismiss the records of many of the Munster counties, our own included, in the club championship in recent years and even decades. But notwithstanding their limitations on given days it has to be acknowledged that Ballygunner have cast a considerable shadow over the Munster championship. They are poised to overtake Blackrock’s record of titles won in Munster if they get past Éire Óg in the final and whatever the outcome that day they will participate in their seventh consecutive final and sixteenth overall. No other club has managed to get near this level of performance either in level or consistency. There is no obvious end in sight either.

The message this might have for other counties is that, Ballygunner aside, there is little enough to choose between the various champion teams. Maybe Éire Óg will yet prove this theory to be flawed but to do so they will need to improve significantly. But for several wides including from frees from the Tipperary champions Éire Óg would have exited last weekend. In contrast Ballygunner’s Pauric Mahoney got ten frees against Sarsfields and scored ten points. It does seem that we are looking at a Ballygunner team that is a cut above all teams in the province.

The challenge for them is to bring these standards to bear at national level and add an All-Ireland or two to the one already won.