KILLINAN END - Hurling in a different place for return to Walsh Park

The last time Tipp played championship in Walsh Park the hurling world was a very different place.

Long before the game was governed by statistics, the short puck-out, the retain-possession-at-all-costs throws masquerading as hand-passes, it was a looser wilder game where it was in a sense every man for himself. Full-backs did not have an extra defender as a buffer and were far less likely to go on forays down the pitch. They tended to be rawer and more primal, Waterford’s Damien Byrne, Tipp’s Paul Shelly, Brian Lohan and Diarmuid O’Sullivan come to mind. It was an era when Offaly struck gold, Clare were the talk of the country for good and bad, and Wexford were dancing at the crossroads.

The Munster championship of 1996 threw-in on the last Sunday of May and saw a result which shattered the illusion that Cork had some kind of magic in their wrists as soon as they crossed the whitewash in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. The venue opened in June 1976 which coincided with a golden era for Cork hurling. Some twenty years later they remained undefeated in championship hurling at the ground, but this run was vaporised by Limerick on a wet day when the men in green ran amok by the Lee. It has never really been the same since. That sixteen-point margin matches the one Limerick achieved in the 2021 final although the 3-18 Limerick scored that day was racked up by half-time in Croke Park last July.

That is one of the starkest differences between then and now. A week on from the fall of Páirc Uí Chaoimh Tipp went to Walsh Park to face Waterford and the final aggregate score of 2-25 will likely be surpassed by half-time next Sunday. When Kilkenny and Galway face up in a few weeks much will be made of the Cody-Shefflin connection, but the managers next Sunday in “Welsh” Park have their own modest connection.

Colm Bonnar was a member of Tipp’s 1982 All-Ireland Minor winning team. It was some thirteen years later when Liam Cahill captained the Tipp Minors to a narrow defeat against Waterford – the squad included his comrade in arms on Sunday, Michael Bevans, and a host of future All-Ireland medallists including John Carroll, Eamon Corcoran, Mark O’Leary, Donncha Fahy and Eugene O’Neill. A different era to the players Colm Bonnar played with yet their paths crossed just a year later.

It was a decade when nearly every Tipp game seemed to be in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, but the Walsh Park trip recalled an old arrangement which had seen Waterford come to Thurles for the 1973 Munster championship first-round. It was a much-anticipated game not least as there has been some blood-letting at the Blackrock End of the Páirc a year earlier and the 1990s was never a time when ash was in short supply.

For Liam Cahill it was an extraordinary rise to make his Senior championship debut on the same day as Waterford’s Ken McGrath in 1996. In the autumn of the previous year those looking at prospective Tipp championship debutants might have been tempted towards the All-Ireland Under-21 winning team, yet it was a Minor from the south who raised his hand. It wasn’t a bad debut either and he finished as Tipp’s top scorer with 1-2. Still, it was Colm Bonner who got the popular vote as Tipp’s best player on the day. The placing of the captain Michael Cleary at midfield remains one of the more memorable experiments.

It was not a win which caused much excitement in Tipp at the time as Waterford were seen as the easiest draw. Cork were Cork, Limerick had won Munster two years earlier, and Clare were defending All-Ireland champions. Within two years, under Gerald McCarthy, Waterford came good and even though it has been a patchy existence since, swaying between sublime and underachieving, they have rarely been out of the reckoning for long.

Time will tell with the current team, but it might well be that their finest hour is not far away. Certainly, Tipp supporters will anticipate Sunday with an apprehension that would have been very foreign to them on the day Liam Cahill and Colm Bonner lined out on the same side in Walsh Park.

Just for old time’s sake - this was the team: Brendan Cummins; George Frend; Paul Shelly; Michael Ryan; Raymie Ryan; Colm Bonnar; Brendan Carroll; Michael Cleary (0-4); Brian O'Meara; Liam Cahill (1-2); Liam McGrath (0-1); John Leahy (0-1); Declan Ryan; Nicky English (0-2); Tomas Dunne (0-4). Subs used: Pat Fox; Conal Bonnar; Kevin Kennedy.