It’s handy enough that Ger can be a boy’s or girl’s name because it means every parent-to-be in Tipperary can call their baby after Loughnane, regardless of gender. And it’s the least he deserves after single-handedly saving the county’s hurling summer.
“What on earth happened between the end of the first half and the start of the second,” Joanne Cantwell asked Noel McGrath at full time, but the answer was obvious enough. Clearly audio of Ger administering the last rites to Tipp’s Championship hopes had been piped in to their dressing room at half-time, leaving manager Michael Ryan having to say no more than: “D’you hear that, lads?”
Confirmation that they had risen from the dead – nine points down, to be exact – came with John McGrath’s 60th-minute equaliser, Darragh Maloney noting that certain people had written them off. “There’s one in this parish,” Michael Duignan chuckled.
From Nenagh to Clonmel and every hamlet in between, they’ll be getting this printed on T-shirts: “Tipperary have come to the end of line – it’s not a lack of character, it’s a lack of energy and that’s what happens when you get old. There’s no way back for them, either today or in the Championship.”
Cyril Farrell, in fairness, had tried to offer Tipp some hope by suggesting “it can’t get much worse than it is”, but Ger saw no signs of life at all.
It’s not that Tipp actually won in the end – they might have done but for an Anthony Nash save that will have had Liverpool submitting an €85 million bid to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, but the draw would have felt like the mightiest of triumphs under the circumstances.
Although there was a somewhat nervous wait for Hawk-Eye to decide whether Jake Morris had equalised at the death. “We’ll need a defibrillator here shortly,” said Duignan, the tension rising to the heavens. Then: Tá!
A grinning Michael Lyster let Ger suffer for a few moments while asking Henry Shefflin for his verdict on the contest. “It was a game of two halves,” he said, which was most certainly true. “We had Tipp buried at half time.”
“Some of us,” Cyril stressed, throwing a side-eye in Ger’s direction, Ger slumping a touch in his chair, perhaps hoping that he would disappear from view.
Well? “First thing, sack the pundit,” he said. But Michael wasn’t going to let him off that lightly. Well? “They say that death concentrates the mind, and at half-time that’s what was facing Tipperary … fair play to them,” said Ger. “It just shows this team didn’t win Munster and All-Ireland Championships for nothing.”
Reports of Tipp’s demise had, then, been a bit exaggerated. They live to fight another day.
The ugly truth?
Alex Payne was probably lucky to be still living after introducing us to Sky’s coverage of the Pro14 final with a “welcome to Dublin city where the pundits aren’t that pretty”. That clearly hurt the beautiful Ieuan Evans, Shane Horgan and Alan Quinlan, who were standing beside him on the Lansdowne pitch ahead of another occasion where Leinster proved they really are quite good.
The highlight was Jordan Larmour’s ball-scoopie-uppie-thingie (which may not be the correct technical term) before scoring that try, although another stand-out moment was Shane’s temporary and possibly baffled silence in the commentary box after an exchange with Stuart Barnes concluded with Stu, sounding like the love child of Peter Alliss and Prince Philip, noting that Shane was “gesticulating like some crazed Latino”.
Sky moved swiftly on, which was probably wise, and Leinster did, too, in the direction of a Pro14 and Champions Cup double, James Ryan still having no clue what a pro defeat tastes like. Twenty-three and counting. Mad.
“Ireland are comfortably feasting at the top table at the moment,” said Ieuan. “They’re having a rare old season.” Ger will have to hope Tipp don’t go on to enjoy a similarly successful one. If they do, it’ll be the mother of all resurrections.
