The great irony of the All-Ireland season is the contrasting finales in football and hurling. Football was as open as it has ever been in the past couple of decades and yet, despite shocks along the way, two of the favourites have ended up in the final, including perennial front-runners Kerry.
As a friend messaged after the quarter-final blitz of Armagh: “The most open football championship known to mankind is probably going to be won by Kerry.”
At the weekend, we had the climax of the hurling championship, by consensus slightly overshadowed by its football equivalent and so full of intrigue back in April that the bookies paid out on Cork before a match was played.
Except that on Sunday, a Tipperary team, which had started the championship as distant outsiders, romped to a 29th title. In the past three decades, only three counties had taken Liam MacCarthy without having been in an All-Ireland semi-final for the previous five years: Clare in 2013, Cork in 1999 and Wexford in 1996.
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That might slightly overstate Tipp’s underdog status, as a side that still was crewed by a clutch of All-Ireland medallists even if just four started on Sunday against Cork.
This was an influence referred to by Nicky English in his All-Ireland hurling final preview in The Irish Times. He recalled from his playing days the views of his own former mentors Theo English and Donie Nealon that it was easier to win All-Irelands with at least some players who already had Celtic crosses.
So convinced was Wexford manager Liam Griffin of this truth that in the first minute of injury time in the 1996 final, he sent on 19-year-old Paul Codd so that county teams would have someone who had won an All-Ireland medal on the field of play at their disposal for well over a decade.
The scale of Tipperary manager Liam Cahill’s achievement is still phenomenal and spanned the generations on his panel.
The focus has been on the very youngest players, the Darragh McCarthys and Sam O’Farrells but, as a team-building exercise, it required the fusion of those rookies plus the reactivation of the 2019 survivors – epitomised by John McGrath’s plundering of seven goals this championship – as well as incorporating the bridging generation, led by Jake Morris.
Before the under-20 championship came into being it wasn’t uncommon for a tranche of under-21s to feature in senior panels but the dropping of the year has made that progression less viable.
Cahill nonetheless cleared the decks for generational change after the humiliation of Thurles last year and Cork’s 18-point destruction of the home team, who that day had also been mostly abandoned by their supporters. He drew scepticism for using his first-choice team so relentlessly in the league but they needed experience. They got that and more.
Although the competition is best remembered for the seismic defeat by Cork in the final, there were, in regulation fixtures, ultimately telling wins over Galway, Cork, Kilkenny and Clare – all of which would be repeated at critical junctures of the championship.
Maybe the opposition wasn’t always at full stretch but they acquired a habit of winning, which survived championship setback.
Cahill’s approach crystallised after the win against Kilkenny in March. Speaking afterwards, he raised two issues that would be relevant until last weekend.
“Today was a good test again for one or two newbies. Young Oisín” – O’Donoghue, a goal scorer that day who would repeat that feat against the same opposition in the All-Ireland semi-final – “making his debut in the Tipperary jersey. He did really well for 30 minutes there.
“Younger fellas again that performed well at the start of the league. The likes of young Sam O’Farrell” – immensely promising captain of the All-Ireland-winning under-20s and a starter on Sunday – “and obviously young Darragh McCarthy. All those boys are going to be an integral part of Tipperary going into the future, not just in 2025.”
McCarthy at 19 was in a category of his own in the All-Ireland, scoring 1-13 and showing immense fortitude in the wake of his disciplinary issues earlier in the championship.
The manager also addressed the hum of background noise that has followed him since he took Waterford to a league title in 2022 followed by a championship blowout and was also picking up volume this year.
“People say Tipperary under Liam Cahill will win matches in the spring, but can they do it in the summer? We have to prepare in the spring to make sure that we give ourselves a fighting chance in the summer. Summer is only six weeks away now.”
An All-Ireland like this has become feasible in the modern era of multiple fixtures and the ability to absorb defeat along the way.
In one way, Tipperary’s victory is easily explained. Since the 15-point defeat by Cork in May, Cahill’s team was on a constantly rising trajectory. None of the wins was of itself groundbreaking but created momentum, which accelerated as the victories became more consequential.
Cork were more uneven in their delivery even though they had won all of the big prizes before last weekend. The ghosts that had haunted them along the way – and were believed to have been exorcised by league and provincial success – returned with a vengeance.
To have ended up with as bad a final beating as they had suffered at the hands of peak Limerick four years ago has thrown the considerable progress – first league in 27 years and first Munster in seven – of the year into turmoil.
This also poses problems for the GAA. The county’s buoyancy has animated the last two championships, bringing crowds and colour. For all of that to plummet into disillusion would be a terrible blow for the game in general.
Tipperary have given them a template for turning adversity into triumph but have Cork the materials and, above all, the perseverance to return to the bottom of the hill and start pushing all over again?
sean.moran@irishtimes.com
