John Fogarty
Maybe the tune has been changed but up until the start of this year’s championship they were still at it. Trying to convince people that something is there when it isn’t.
We’re talking about the Leinster championship as the premier provincial competition.
Kilkenny’s Eoin Larkin told us last Sunday week that Leinster, not Munster, was where it’s at for the best early championship hurling.
Granted, Larkin quotes were given prior to the start of the Leinster SHC and he hadn’t yet seen the marvellous clashes between Tipperary and Limerick, Waterford and Clare and yesterday’s gripping bout featuring Cork and Tipperary.
Still, perhaps he should have known better after last year when we were told the Leinster championship would be the finest in years because Dublin had won an historic league title beating Kilkenny and because Galway were there and Galway were just, eh, Galway.
At the time, Galway were the bookies’ third favourites for the Liam MacCarthy Cup despite having failed to reach the All-Ireland semi-finals in six years.
And Kilkenny? Well, Kilkenny were being written off. This past weekend, there were chinks in their armour being spoken of but not to the extent of last year.
The truth is the Leinster championship is a contest full of unbridled hope rather than expectation among everyone outside Kilkenny that the Cats will be toppled some day. Of course, Kilkenny winning the Bob O’Keeffe Cup every year doesn’t necessarily make it a poor competition – but it doesn’t make it a great one either.
Bar a strangely one-sided Munster final last season, the southern province provided us with the better quality games and entertainment. They’ll repeat the trick this year regardless of what happens in Dublin and Cork next month.
That anticipation of the crown falling off Kilkenny was at fever pitch among neutrals before last Saturday’s game in Portlaoise when we were told Dublin smelt the blood of Kilkenny men.
The absences of powerhouses Michael Fennelly and Michael Rice had given Anthony Daly’s side reason to be optimistic.
Injuries would never come into the equation for a Cork-Tipperary championship game, though. Regardless of who’s there or who’s not, it’s still one neighbour against another. A duel that has stood the test of time.
Brian Cody says there’s a great rivalry between Kilkenny and Dublin but as he pointed out it is new in its inception. Likewise, the introduction of Galway and Antrim to Leinster just four years ago means things still need bedding down.
And yet there are more concerns being expressed about the Munster championship. That it is crumbling. That it is ruins.
Last Sunday week’s poor attendance at the Waterford-Clare semi-final wasn’t so much the attitude shown towards the teams as it was on the cost of getting to Thurles.
But it is a topic worth discussing. Speaking on TV3’s The GAA Show last week, Nicky English was asked about the state of the Munster championship.
“That’s the next step, a Champions League type format, but it’s actually hard to see it happening in the short term.
“I think the issue for hurling really is Kilkenny are almost pervasive at this stage in that people watched the league final and they say ‘well Kilkenny are going to stroll to the All Ireland Championship’ and therefore what’s the point in going to see your team if you’re Waterford or you’re Clare or you’re Tipperary or you’re Cork, really.
“Kilkenny are waiting in the wings just to win the All-Ireland. I think that’s affecting it.”
That’s the thing – it’s Kilkenny, not Leinster, who loom large over the Munster championship. The fare in Leinster certainly doesn’t.
Yet there are quarters in Kilkenny who take it as an insult that the Munster SHC is judged to be a better competition than Leinster, that it’s somehow a reflection on them. It's most surely not.
Kilkenny can do many, many things but taking responsibility never mind compensating for the failings of its provincial championship is not one of them.
The Offaly-Wexford and Westmeath-Antrim games, the best of a bad bunch in Leinster this summer, have hardly been on patch on what’s been served in the Gaelic Grounds, Semple Stadium and Páirc Uí Chaoimh in recent weeks.
Portlaoise on Saturday might have been the saving grace. Had Dublin beaten Kilkenny it would have ended seven seasons of Cats’ dominance of their domain.
In that same time-span since 2005, the Munster title has changed hands four times.
Had the Cats fallen, it certainly would have added an extra dimension to yesterday’s game in Cork. The prospect of facing a wounded Kilkenny team in the qualifiers next month would inspire any team.
But the Cork-Tipperary rivalry is self-sufficient. Hay saved, donkey for derbies, sliotar swaps, goalkeepers purposely breaking opposing forwards hurleys – it has it all.
The fixture may have lost a little of its lustre two years ago when Tipperary belied their defeat in Páirc Uí Chaoimh to go on and win the All-Ireland title.
But Tipperary couldn’t afford to look beyond yesterday. Cork, as much as they are moving in the right direction as Jimmy Barry-Murphy says, have lost two big games in a row. There was plenty on the line.
The 32,568 people who attended the game realised that.
In Portlaoise, 12,446 turned up. For one early summer evening, we were led to believe Kilkenny were a peer of their opposition but in Munster teams have always been equals of one another.
Therein lies its appeal. Therein it will continue.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/aqogWY--GFg/post.aspx
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