Just a point between the teams. Seanie McMahon gathers the ball on the Clare 21. He’s tackled immediately and is forced to off-load to Frank Lohan: two Kilkenny players press Lohan and after one surge he abandons the idea of making ground or getting loose. So he turns and retreats, closer now to the Clare 14-metre line, still in possession but the ball getting hotter in his paw by the second.
Lohan finds Gerry O’Grady and a gang of three Kilkenny players descend on him. One of them is Eddie Brennan, whose sanguine nature on the field has been a minor preoccupation of Brian Cody’s since the turn of the century; Brennan, though, is making his third tackle in less than 10 seconds. O’Grady goes wide, harried and hustled, like a sheep being worried by hounds. He doesn’t panic, in fact his calmness is exemplary.
He feeds Colin Lynch, who swipes on the ball first time over his shoulder and gains 20 metres down the sideline.
Declan O’Rourke gathers it and, fresh to the action, innocently assumes that a ball in the hand is a licence to strike. His clearance is blocked. Lynch picks up the pieces and transfers to David Hoey; he swings and is hooked. A melee develops over the loose ball, the referee blows and throws the ball in, short of the Clare 65.
To move the ball that far Clare had used five players, one of them twice, and the operation had taken 33 seconds. In that time not one of those Clare players could have thrown up the ball to strike without the fear of being hooked or blocked. For those 33 seconds there was no difference between Kilkenny and Cork, in outlook or execution. Are you expecting anything to change in the next fortnight? If your taste is high-scoring, loose-marking, carnival-like All-Ireland finals then be advised to root out your video of the 1990 final between Cork and Galway. If the contest and the combat and the relentless psychological battle are your tipple then this final will fill your glass. Every so often one of these teams cracks against the other in an All-Ireland final (Kilkenny 2004, Cork 1982, Cork 1972) but it’s not what you’d normally expect and it’s not what you’d expect this time either. Neither of these teams has a cancel, quit or escape facility on their keyboards.
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Are the rest of the GAA world and the hurling subcontinent bored with another Cork-Kilkenny final? Who knows for sure? Were people bored with Dublin-Kerry All-Ireland football finals in the 1970s and 80s? Can’t remember. Certainly, if that boredom existed it has been obliterated by nostalgia.
The two best teams are in the final and there were plenty of seasons under the old straight knockout system when you couldn’t have made that claim without fear of contradiction. Barring a counter-proposal from left field at the coming special congress, it is odds-on that the current system will be retained with minimal tweaking. On balance, that’s a good thing.
There was a certain disquiet that Waterford seemed to accept their circumstances and target a run through the qualifiers this summer and that Clare ended up in an All-Ireland semi-final on the back of four harmless matches. So what? In the old days both teams would have been wiped from the championship three months ago and this year’s epic semi-finals would have been lost to us. Under the current system the expansion of the quarter-finals has, naturally, produced mixed results given that the championship doesn’t have eight teams of equivalent strength but the semi-finals, both years, have been a headline success and the reformers must take credit.
What happens next in Clare, though, is a worry. With the exceptions of 2000, 2001 and 2003 they’ve been one of the top four teams in the championship every year since 1995; you can argue about 1996 if you like and still you’re looking at eight years out of 12. Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary, Limerick, Offaly or Galway can’t claim to have been consistently in the top four during that time and in at least five — more likely six — of those years Cork weren’t either: 1995, ’96, ’97, ’98,’01,’02. Clare’s contribution to the game in the past decade and a bit has been immense.
But you can’t help fearing for Clare’s immediate future. Whatever understandable slippage there has been in the performances of Brian Lohan, Frank Lohan, Seanie McMahon and Colin Lynch over the past few years, their presence in the dressing room, their example on the training field and their endless nobility in battle have remained central to the character of this Clare team.
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Last Sunday McMahon and Frank Lohan were towering figures and, ironically, Lynch did his best hurling in the final quarter when he ought to have been flagging.
At least two of them will probably go, maybe three, and for all the good hurlers Clare have down the flanks and for all the good young players that Anthony Daly and his selectors blooded over the past three years Clare will suddenly be faced with a leadership vacuum in key areas. Tony Griffin, by far their best forward this year, is returning to college in Canada in three weeks and his career path may end his inter- county days sooner rather than later. Taken together all of that stuff is scary.
Clare’s problem last Sunday wasn’t necessarily with the old players, although Brian Lohan was in difficulty, their problem was that a few guys from the next generation didn’t stand up and make a difference.
Maybe they’ll respond when they have no choice. Maybe they’ve been using the old brigade as a crutch. In any case it will be a huge challenge for Clare to retain their place in the top four and hurling can’t afford any other counties to catch a slope and keep sliding.
Daly’s passion for the jersey and the job was always luminous and losing last Sunday will have broken his heart. All year Daly had intimated that he was ready to step down and last night reports of his resignation did not come as any surprise. Jimmy Barry-Murphy won the All-Ireland with Cork in his fourth year but, just like Clare in 1995, Cork were able to throw in half a dozen new players that year. Daly was never going to have that option and nobody can blame him for removing a lot of grief and stress from his life. He is deserving of every tribute.