The strangest thing. When Darragh Fitzgibbon was standing over the 65 to draw the Munster final in the last minute of extra time, I felt nervous for him. I was sitting on the couch at home watching it on television and I texted a friend of mine saying that I hope he gets it. I don’t know Darragh, and I wasn’t rooting for Cork or Limerick, but I know what that situation is like.
There’s a contradiction at the heart of this. As a sportsperson you want to be in pressure situations and you want to take responsibility, but when you’re there it can feel like the worst place in the world. In my playing career I had a couple of last-minute frees to draw All-Ireland finals. In 2018 against Limerick, it was a long shot, and it dropped short.
Against Kilkenny in 2012, though, all kinds of crazy stuff was running through my head as I stood over the ball. The free to draw the match was a tricky one from under the Hogan Stand, but a couple of minutes earlier I had missed an easier free to put us a point up. Then Kilkenny scored and there was a gun to my head.
I was literally thinking: “If I miss this, I’m f**ked. I’ll never live this down. I’ll always be remembered for this.” Maybe if I had scored the free a couple of minutes earlier different thoughts would have been running through my mind, but that was the pressure I was feeling. Around that time people would have written things doubting me and doubting us as a team and that stuff was hanging in the air as well.
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I don’t know what Fitzgibbon was thinking. When the camera zoomed in on his face you could see him take a deep breath. For his sake, I was delighted it went over. You don’t want to be living with the other outcome.
I’ve taken plenty of penalties over the years, but I’ve never been in a penalty shoot-out. The psychology of it, though, has changed a little since it became a one-on-one shot. The pressure is on the penalty-taker because they’re not expected to miss.
When there were three players on the goal line the emphasis for the penalty taker was on power. You were still picking a spot in the goal, but you weren’t aiming for corners.
With just the goalie on the line, it’s more about precision now. The natural shot for any hurler is to swing the hurley across your body and that’s where you will generate the most power.
Of the five penalties that were scored the other night, though, only Conor Lehane hit the ball that way. His shot was well placed but it was the pace of the shot that beat Nickie Quaid. Aaron Gillane, Diarmaid Byrnes, Shane Kingston and Alan Connolly all hit the ball the opposite way, looking for precision rather than power.
The only chance the goalie has is to guess right. I took a penalty for Portumna in a club league game a couple of weeks ago and it was saved. I know what it’s like to miss. All the players who stood up in the Gaelic Grounds deserve our respect.
Even watching on television, you could tell the atmosphere at the Munster final was electric. I was in Croke Park a day later and it was completely the opposite. The quality of the game didn’t help, but even if the game had been better the atmosphere in a half-empty Croke Park is always going to be a problem.
I’ve been convinced for a couple of years that the Leinster hurling final needs to move to a smaller ground. They gave out 20,000 free tickets to juveniles last weekend – which was a great initiative – but it still only increased the attendance on the previous year by about 2,000. I’d hate to think what the crowd would have been if the free tickets weren’t given out.
In Munster, Thurles is a perfect neutral venue, with a big capacity right in the centre of the province. But teams also have home and away arrangements for Munster finals, and I think that is the road Leinster must go down. Get Leinster finals into Nowlan Park, or Wexford Park or Pearse Stadium or Tullamore or wherever. Make sure the place is full.
Over the last three years Cork and Clare have both played Munster finals in the Gaelic Grounds against Limerick – even though Clare don’t have an option of playing a Munster final in Ennis. Cork and Tipperary have played Munster finals home and away for as long as I can remember. Cork and Kerry do it in football. Clare and Kerry have done it in football in recent years too. It happens in Connacht football. The Leinster hurling final needs to get away from Croke Park.
You often hear players talking about blocking out the noise of the crowd, but the reality is that players thrive on an atmosphere. The best atmosphere I ever played in was the 2018 All-Ireland semi-final replay against Clare in Thurles. The crowd in Semple Stadium wouldn’t have filled Croke Park, but because Thurles was packed to the rafters the atmosphere was incredible.
We played Kilkenny in a Leinster final replay in Thurles the same year and the atmosphere was terrific as well. What would be wrong with playing Leinster finals in Thurles every so often, just to shake it up?
Being compared with the Munster final is tough for the Leinster final but they shouldn’t be thinking about it in those terms. The Leinster final needs to have its own identity and stand on its own two feet. To do that the Leinster Council needs to start thinking outside the box. What we witnessed last Sunday can’t continue.
