Michael Moynihan
RTÉ have at least one winner in the tank this Christmas if you’re a hurling fan.
On Wednesday December 28 Kilkenny v Tipperary: The trilogy will be screened, dealing with the last three All-Ireland finals between the two counties, with the Cats sandwiching Tipp’s 2010 victory with two wins of their own.
Does it strike you as slightly... premature? Right now Kilkenny and Tipperary would be most people’s selections for the big show next September as well, and the programme-makers might have been as well to hang tough for 12 months.
On the other hand, why not use what you’ve got? Those three games have been at the very edge of what you can see in hurling. A journalist friend interviewed Les Kiss, the Australian defence coach with the Irish rugby team, who’s related to former Cork player Alan Cummins. Kiss said he’d only been to one hurling game, the 2009 All-Ireland final; our pal felt like saying to him, “don’t bother going to another, because you won’t see better”.
Certainly the standard these two teams have been serving up has been awesome. It hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that they reserve their very best for the biggest stage, too. Peaking in September is easy to talk about but difficult to achieve, yet these two teams have managed it the last three years running.
The narrative running through those three games has been fascinating: speaking to members of the Tipperary backroom team after 2009, they admitted freely that if, on the morning of the game, they’d been offered the level of performance their players produced, they’d have gladly accepted it.
Tipperary were outstanding that day but couldn’t find a way to win; Kilkenny did. The difference in experience was vital on that occasion, but so was one man’s contribution.
Henry Shefflin scored the game-turning goal from a penalty in that match, and his importance to the Kilkenny cause was underlined in 2010, when he was felled by a cruciate knee ligament injury in the All-Ireland semi-final and couldn’t make it to half time in the decider the following month.
Shefflin’s performance in this year’s final showed what the Cats had been missing: his involvement in that first goal was key to the Kilkenny win, while his striding away from a bash ball to point in the second half was the equivalent of an underlined passage in a classic novel.
Part of what makes the back story of this latter-day rivalry so compelling isn’t so much the lengthy references to the sixties, or the long border the two counties share, but the more recent grievances.
Tipperary supporters tend to grumble loudly when pointing to that critical penalty in 2009, suggesting it should have been a free out. Cats fans point to Shefflin’s injury problems the following year as influencing the result significantly.
Managers and players are participating in the programme, so it would be surprising to hear them echo their supporters’ prejudices. But it’ll be unmissable, just like the three instalments of the series so far.
*Kilkenny v Tipperary: The Trilogy, RTÉ 2, Wednesday 28 December, 8pm.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/1xUd56cXDcU/post.aspx
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