Sunday completed an extraordinary turnaround in the fortunes of Tipperary and Galway hurling. It wasn't a traumatic single event like the roof falling in but the completion – or at least continuation – of two journeys in different directions.
In a little over three weeks it will be five years to the day since Tipp soared to the zenith of its recent hurling history. Just six days after winning an electrical storm of an All-Ireland final to halt Kilkenny’s five-in-a-row ambitions, Tipperary hosted the under-21 final against Galway.
There had been a bit of a furore over Semple Stadium being the venue, as it was – correctly – seen as the climax of a week of celebrations in the county but the decision (since amended) had been made to stage all under-21 finals there and it didn’t make a huge difference, as Galway were young and unlikely to beat a side glowing with six senior medals won the previous weekend.
That’s how it all worked out: Tipp 5-22 Galway 0-12. There remain two abiding memories of that evening. One was the sense of infinite possibility in Tipperary. Their own five-in-a-row had been officially launched and their under-21s had razed the earth. To say the future was bright was to damn prospects with faint praise.
Secondly it was hard not be impressed by the demeanour of Galway manager Anthony Cunningham. His team had sustained the worst beating in 50 years of under-21 finals and he had a ready-made gripe because of the venue. If ever there was an opportunity to 'take the pressure off,' this was it.
Bitter disappointment
Instead he merely acknowledged it had always been likely to be difficult travelling to Thurles before praising Tipperary and discussing the match dispassionately.
A year later he was back with 12 of the same players at the same venue to beat Dublin in the 2011 under-21 final – shortly after which he became senior manager.
Tipperary’s post-2010 trajectory has been a bitter disappointment. Despite apparently having the equipment to forge a memorable rivalry with Kilkenny, they haven’t beaten them since in a big game. Within a month of the All-Ireland five years ago, the successful management team had left and in the years that followed the county lost its way.
For a traditional ‘top-three’ county, Tipperary have all the appearances of being too indulgent in victory. How else did the strong hand of 2010 end up as discards for five years and running?
In that time there have been seven winner-take-all matches with Kilkenny, five championship and two league finals, and not one of them won.
Eamon O’Shea, the hugely respected coach in the All-Ireland winning management, returned for the past preordained three seasons but acknowledged himself on Tipp FM that his tenure had come to “a bad ending” with defeat in the dying seconds of Sunday’s semi-final.
Last year O’Shea had come wafer-close to regaining the All-Ireland with his team’s typically exuberant display in the drawn final. It looked like a dramatic reclamation of Tipperary’s status but maybe in retrospect it was the beginning of the end.
Three times during his involvement with the county seniors O’Shea produced a season’s best performance in the All-Ireland final. The outcomes were a defeat, a victory and a draw. In the last case, the final was acclaimed as the latest candidate for hurling’s favourite accolade – The Best Game. Ever. There was a definite sense (admittedly disregarded here) that having opened the entire box of tricks the first day, Tipp might struggle to find a new one for the replay, as they did.
O’Shea was different to other managers in one respect. He saw the game as an end in itself and understood his task to be the creation of conditions in which players would almost lose themselves in a continuum of flowing play, wise decision-making and heightened perception.
If in Kilkenny there might be a fear of losing your place if you don’t meet the prescribed standards, in O’Shea’s Tipperary there was more a sense that if players weren’t going well the manager would be trying to improve and optimise the environment in which they hurled.
After one match he spoke about ‘learning to love the ball’ – inviting raised eyebrows among the less devotional – and that was in keeping with the theme of hurling as ‘performance’ almost in artistic as much as sporting terms.
Maybe the regular, fringe rehearsals of the qualifiers suited the rhythm of what he was doing better than the straight-to-Broadway productions of winning Munster and hanging around for All-Ireland semi-finals. Tipperary's best seasons under him took the former route.
Coaxing the best out of players wasn’t just a matter of blather, either. The county reconstituted itself as Kilkenny’s main threat last year and regained the Munster title last month.
Lethal forward
More specifically, Séamus Callanan blossomed. In the year before O’Shea’s appointment Callanan didn’t start a single championship match but under new management he was given the reassurance that he would be the team’s full forward and, after a couple of difficult phases, the player was a Hurler of the Year nominee last season and the most lethal forward of the past two. In little over 12 months between two All-Ireland semi-finals and finals he has scored seven goals.
O’Shea’s valedictory comments were defiantly optimistic as well as regretful but it’s fairly certain he would have hoped to achieve more in his three years. It will be up to the players he leaves behind to justify the confidence in them he always voiced.
For Anthony Cunningham and three of last Sunday's players – Johnny Coen, David Burke and Joseph Cooney – there will be the possible opportunity to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their annihilation in Thurles with the Liam MacCarthy west of the Shannon – and not a single further senior All-Ireland medal in Tipperary since. Imagine the odds on that in September 2010. smoran@irishtimes.com
