KILLINAN END - Winning remains important
Tipperary’s latest endeavours had much to be recommended, and leaving aside all the usual caveats about who was missing and who is to come back, winning was important.
The more the team develops this habit the more the confidence in the approach will build. Injuries to Bryan O’Mara and Jake Morris will hopefully not be an issue and not the start of recurring problems. The form of Gearóid O’Connor raises the issue of why he didn’t start last year against Galway after a good Munster campaign. But perhaps there is little value in looking back at this point. The form of John McGrath, who has so much to offer, Michael Breen and Craig Morgan, as well as the abrasiveness of Alan Tynan are all sources of optimism.
Cork manage to lurch from one underwhelming performance to another and remain somewhat of an enigma. For a team that does many good things they lose an awful lot of matches. They have won one from their last seven league and championship games (v Waterford in last year’s Munster championship) which must erode confidence when you are going down the stretch in a tight game.
In contrast, Kilkenny, despite two consecutive All-Ireland Final appearances, are far from inarguably the second-best team in the country but they do have the ability to perform consistently. They will always have a chance against this Cork team as a result. One of Kilkenny’s challenges is the consistent praise Eoin Murphy attracts while his puckouts, in the context of the possession game that is now normal, are a liability.
In many aspects the league’s first couple of rounds have confirmed many of the trends we have seen in recent years. Early days and all that but consider the evidence. Wexford drew with Kilkenny last week – and they rarely lose to Kilkenny in recent years – yet found a way to not beat Offaly a week later. Dublin were lucky to beat Antrim who have lost players from last year. No surprise here though as these teams drew in last year’s championship.
Kilkenny have, to put it mildly, struggled to beat Wexford and Galway in the round-robin in recent years. In eight matches against Galway and Wexford in the round-robin phase since it started in 2018, Kilkenny have won just once – a one-point win over Wexford in that very first year. Yet they won a fourth consecutive Leinster title last June. The flakiness of Wexford and Dublin against teams they should beat in part facilitates this. And it is again apparent in the current League that the passage of winter has not solved this problem.
One of the more talked about points of the weekend was Donal Óg Cusack’s fairly typically trenchantly delivered views on Páirc Uí Chaoimh and the GAA’s policy on stadiums. Said policy appears to be facilitating stadium construction wherever possible and maybe it is past time to call a halt. The stadium in Cork in particular is a warning sign of how things can get out of hand financially, but also raises the matter of the necessity for a stadium of that magnitude in the first place.
The new championship system seems to necessitate grounds in each Munster county but that is not to say that they cannot be provided and upgraded in a more modest way. It is probably true that a city and county such as Cork should, in an idealised world, have a stadium of some opulence and presence. But it remains a venue which will rarely be a suitable neutral location within a reasonable travelling distance.
A case in point is the 2018 Clare and Wexford which struggled to draw 10,000 for an All-Ireland quarter-final. Even though it was geographically even between the counties, it is a trek from the two. Ennis to Cork is a two-hour drive, and Wexford town to Cork is even further. If games are available on television and played as that game was on a Saturday, it is difficult to do justice to a stadium like Cork. That is not to even get to the challenges of getting to the stadium. Yes, of course, those who really want to attend will go but filling a ground to a viable extent will always involve easing access for the softer underbelly of attenders who’ll be influenced by convenience.
In the long-run Cork will have a fine stadium but lessons need to be taken from the whole experience. Much of the GAA’s energy might have been better expended in upgrading Semple Stadium which remains the best located hurling venue and this is a nettle which needs to be grasped. McHale Park in Castlebar is another venue which is modest enough yet has left the County Board there with an ocean of debt. Donal Óg’s points were well made even if they paled in the amusement stakes beside the spectacle of himself and Jackie Tyrrell sniping about how long it’s been since their counties wore medals. Two bald men fighting over a comb.