KILLINAN END - Tipperary and Kilkenny are infrequent minor rivals

Despite the success of the counties at this grade an All-Ireland Minor hurling final between Tipperary and Kilkenny is a rare enough phenomenon.

A series of finals took place between the counties in the 1950s and ‘early 60s but since then they have been scarce. Tipp won the final of 1976 but lost the 1991 and 2002 versions.

Whoever agreed to toss a coin for venue was either extremely optimistic as to what is to come or had not weighed up the odds. Three finals between the counties in 62 years would not engender confidence about the opportunity to exercise a home and away agreement any time soon. Sending a young team into a potential cauldron for their most important game is a courageous decision indeed.

Pioneers of the Minor grade were courageous too. The first Minor hurling championship took place in 1928 against the backdrop of a GAA that was anything but stable. The first 50 years of the GAA are its most interesting if politics and intrigue are your thing. The 1925 All-Ireland Football championship was finished in a haze of objections. In the following years, according to the GAA official history, the county boards of Sligo, Longford, Donegal, Tyrone, Wicklow, Louth, Waterford were in dispute with the central GAA at various times, as well as the footballers of Kerry, Galway and Cavan being excluded from various grades after disputes in the late 1920s.

This was a very fraught time in Ireland with memory of the War of Independence and the Civil War still very raw. Controversy was always easily enough raised and there was a learned tendency to not bend to authority very easily. It was also a time when illegal players were not so easily spotted or even ages very clear. The GAA itself was in financial turmoil with the Tailteann Games held at a significant economic loss, and the development of Croke Park, acquired just the previous decade, also absorbing funds.

The last thing you might have thought would be on the GAA’s mind was expanding its competitions, but it is a great testimony to the organisation that they pressed on with this anyway. The Railway Cup began in 1927 and more significantly given that it was a 32-county concern, the Minor championship began a year later.

Before long Tipp was making a mark at the grade with the 1930 ‘Triple Crown’ year when the Senior, Junior, and Minor titles were won, not being a bad way to open the county’s account. This final was against Kilkenny, opposition also beaten by Tipp two years later when Tipp won the first of a three in a row. The third win, in 1934, was part of a remarkable double when the Minor footballers were also crowned All-Ireland champions. In a sign of those times the football competition was awarded after both potential final opponents were ejected from the competition. It might seem harsh to be willing to forego the actual final itself in order to make a point on the rules but perhaps in the environment of the time such extreme punishments were deemed essential to concentrate minds.

The Kilkenny minor team which beat Tipp in 1935 included names such as Jim Langton, Terry Leahy and Paddy Grace who would play a significant role in that county’s hurling fortunes in the years ahead. As the cycles of time would have it Tipp went from the brink of four in a row to not contesting a final for a decade. Two unsuccessful finals in 1945 and ’46 may not have yielded All-Ireland medals but provided a treasure-trove of players for successful Tipp Senior teams in time to come – Phil Shanahan, Seán Kenny, and Pat Stakelum among them. Tipp’s golden years at the grade came in the following dozen years when eight titles were won.

The late 1950s and early ‘60s saw Kilkenny and Tipperary dominate the grade meeting in six out of seven finals between 1956-62, winning three each. Despite Kilkenny winning three finals consecutively 1960-62 it would be another ten years before they added the next title. Tipp would have bitten your hand off for this record. The Blue and Gold would wait some seventeen years after the 1959 final until Kilkenny were overwhelmed in the 1976 final. That gap between Minor successes was almost totally barren with just a single Munster Championship win in 1973 to show. It also shadowed eerily the eighteen year wait until 1989 for a post-1971 Senior title which might be exhibit A in any discussion about the relevance of under-age success to future Senior prospects.

To that end, both counties will be pleased to be in this final. Kilkenny have not had many riches to contemplate at this grade in recent years. Yet, their last win in 2014 looks very good now against the background of a Limerick opposition which included Seán Finn, Séamus Flanagan, Barry Nash, Cian Lynch, Peter Casey, and Tom Morrissey. Now there was a defeated team which didn’t fare too badly in the long run. All goes to show that while the result matters very much on Saturday, it certainly is not the end of the story.