A Triumph of Failure

Killinan End

“A young girl sporting the Blue and Gold colours wept beside me in the stand. She wept, like others, for the shattering of the dream – so real with just six minutes to go – of Tipperary reaching the Centenary All-Ireland Final.” The words are those of Raymond Smith from the Centenary Year edition of ‘The Hurling Immortals’ which dealt with the 1984 Munster Final in its final chapter.

It captures something of the emotion and drama of the day as does his recollection of people of all ages chanting “Tipp, Tipp, Tipp” as the Blue and Gold surged from a two-point half-time deficit (2-10 to 3-5) to a solid four-point lead (3-14 to 2-13) late in the game. A Nicky English goal late in the first half after a very good pass from Michael Doyle prevented the game from drifting away from Tipp as it threatened to do early on. After the break came perhaps the best 25 minutes of hurling the county had produced in over a decade as a Cork team full of stars was forced to play second fiddle.

Last Monday was the 40th anniversary of a day that – despite the final result – can be called the day modern Tipperary hurling was born. Anyone under the age of eighteen would not recall the 1971 All-Ireland win and probably not even the Munster Final appearance of 1973. Tipp lined out with just one player who started in a Munster Senior Final before. Qualification for the Munster Final was exciting for the newest generation and the door was opened for the kind of days we had always heard tell of but not directly experienced. Borris-Ileigh could not be passed without hearing tales of Liam Devaney and Jimmy Finn. From that day on we would never pass up the chance to similarly wax lyrical about Noel O’Dwyer and Bobby Ryan.

There was a great North Tipp feel to that Tipperary line-out with John Sheedy, Jim Keogh, Dinny Cahill, Philip Kennedy, along with the two Borris-Ileigh men. Special mention must go to Lorrha’s John McIntrye who hurled up a storm in that second-half. It was a match “robbed by Cork” according to the chief lock-picker himself, Séanie O’Leary, but that is harsh indeed on the Rebels who went into the game as strong favourites and in the end did merely what those Cork teams did and fought to the bitter end.

Society and youth’s place within it had moved on a fair bit in 1984 since even the early ‘70s. Siamsa Cois Laoi and Slane Castle concerts were established reference points in youthful summers. Tipperary hurling had not had a bite of the particular cherry yet. By the time Thurles 1984 came by there was a tsunami of youthful enthusiasm and excitement waiting to be unleashed. In the more sober days of the early 1970s young Tipperary supporters would have approached matches with a different sense of expectation and perhaps even some feeling of entitlement.

The following decade with its barren landscape of replays and narrow defeats begot a fertile environment where a new generation of Blue and Gold head-banded swaggering young fans sprung up. There was a hunger for days like this which even in defeat this Tipp team provided in Centenary Year, something that the county would capitalise on later in the decade.

It is easy, and necessary, to acknowledge the threshold to modernity that was crossed. Maybe the leap of Noel O’Dwyer when his point put Tipp four points up was the moment when the new generation realised that the high fives of Mackey McKenna and Seán McLoughlin after a goal in the 1964 All-Ireland Final could be ours too. Victory beckoned at the point before those late goals from Tony O’Sullivan and O’Leary laid waste to Tipp’s wildest dreams. It is the hope that kills you they say, but on this day hope was born and there were brief glimpses that Cork had feet of clay.

At the time, of course, this sort of reflection was the preserve of the dreamers. Contemporary arguments revolved around the selflessness of Michael Doyle’s decision to pass a ball – ultimately intercepted by Denis Mulcahy and leading to a goal by Seánie O’Leary – when he might have scored himself or at least engineered a free. A sign of the times too comes in the sober match commentary when Doyle picked the ball in a manner that would have a modern commentator in raptures were it done now.

Lady luck certainly thumbed her nose at a Tipp team which lost three defenders to injury: Pat Fitzelle, Dinny Cahill and Bobby Ryan. A key debate emerged with the decision to relocate full-forward Séamus Power to defence after he had been torturing Donal O’Grady at the other end of the field. Then there was the luckless John Sheedy who maybe did his job too well and suffered with those late rebound goals. It is remarkable that three years later when Tipp finally toppled Cork in Killarney only three of the players from 1984 started – Donie O’Connell, Bobby Ryan, and Nicky English. Let nobody ever tell you that the players are not there.

The Tipp team that gave birth to hope for a new generation on 15th July 1984 – a Triumph of Failure maybe: John Sheedy; Jack Bergin, Jim Keogh, Dinny Cahill; Pat Fitzelle, John McIntyre, Bobby Ryan; Ralph Callaghan, Philip Kennedy; Nicky English, Donie O’Connell, Liam Maher; Michael Doyle, Séamus Power, Noel O’Dwyer. Subs used: Brian Heffernan (for Fitzelle); Johnny Doyle (for Cahill); Paul Dooley (for Ryan).