KILLINAN END - Small is sometimes the right fit

Back in 2018 one of those occasional ‘scandals’ or ‘affairs’ that grips the GAA came to the fore. It all seemed routine enough when Mayo were drawn to play Kildare in the football qualifiers. No less so when the game was fixed for Croke Park – after all it was a neighbouring county to Dublin against a team which had lost the previous two All-Ireland finals by a grand total of just two points. On the face of it there was box-office appeal aplenty.

The rest, as they say, is history. Kildare, as the team drawn ‘at home’ dug their heels in and insisted on ‘Newbridge or nowhere’. It was an admirable stance. Back in 1993 Toomevara hosted Patrickswell and St Finbarr’s in their local pitch and did so with impressive organisation and efficiency. In earlier years, Roscrea and Kilruane had hosted teams in the Munster club championship as well. Everyone lived to tell the tale. It was not necessary to hold such games in cavernous grounds which echoed with emptiness. What was lost in creature comforts was made up for with bucketful’s of atmosphere.

Atmosphere was not in short supply in Newbridge either when Mayo, for all their talent, demonstrated their tendency to fold when the heat is really turned up. It is hard to believe that the temperature would have been so high on Jones’s Road. But you still had to smile last weekend when, in an affront to the original ‘Newbridge or nowhere’ clarion call, the Kildare County final was played in Dr. Cullen Park in Carlow. St Conleth’s Park hosted its final game in its current form when Kildare played Meath in the National Football League last March. This will turn from an intimate atmospheric ground into a 12,000-capacity spectacle with all the mod cons. It is a ground that will find much use at that size and that location.

Some 40-years ago, Tipp went down a similar road with a County final off-Broadway. The stakes for the county were sky-high. The prospect of hosting the Centenary All-Ireland hurling final was salivating. The development in Semple Stadium between those late-70s’ Munster Finals when Clare came up short against Cork’s three-in-a-row team, and the day Olly O’Connor’s goal at the Killinan End brought the curtain down on that Cork era is conspicuous. Jim Power got the line in 1977 to a backdrop of shirt-sleeved supporters on a grassy ‘bank’. The 1980 Munster Final looked like a game on the far side of modernity with the sparkling Ardán Uí Riain – named for a Newport man – overseeing a great Munster Final that swayed back and forth before Limerick delivered the killer blow.

Before the final surge to have the All-Ireland Final in the GAA’s foundation town there was still further work required. The County final of 1982 – another replay between a North and Mid team – was the last played on Tom Semple’s field before the Centenary hurling final.

For the great Borris-Ileigh team of 1983 and then plucky newcomers Loughmore-Castleiney it was off to Leahy Park in Cashel for the County Final. No doubt Cashel King Cormacs and all who sail in her spent a considerable time getting their best China ready for what must have been a monumental day by the Rock. Just three years earlier, Loughmore had been playing in the Intermediate final when they had a win over Kiladangan. Neither club would have imagined that day that four decades later they would cross hurleys in the County Senior final. Then again, maybe they did, knowing these two clubs and the ambition they have shown since.

Borris-Ileigh were old money. The aristocrats who always seemed to embrace County Final day like family. Indeed, there are many similarities when you consider the two clubs meeting in the replay on Sunday. One of them with a great tradition of success on the big day, the other just bursting with ambition to create its own pattern of achievement on Dan Breen day. Loughmore-Castleiney came up short that day in Cashel.

In those years, Thurles Sarsfields were a long way from winning the Dan Breen Cup. The 1980s was the only decade of the twentieth century when Thurles did not grace County final day. The temptation to link this to Tipp’s inter-county record might be considered lazy but is hard to resist. It would be over twenty years before they cracked the code again but have not looked back since. Kiladangan too have a forward trajectory in recent times but they need this one. A fourth defeat in five County Finals in recent years would not reflect the consistency they’ve shown.

The drawn game was a curious clash of styles – Sars working patterns to the point of sometimes passing for the sake of it, while Kiladangan were more direct and effective in doing so. The challenge will be to not allow Sarsfields to build a lead as they threatened to do the last day. Make it tight and intense and anything is possible.