After deeply disappointing county quarter-finals we’ll expect something more uplifting on Sunday next when Sarsfields and Kilruane and Drom and Nenagh go to war – metaphorically of course – in the county semis.
We’ve had some interesting – and entertaining – clashes in the latter stages of the county championship but overall the series has left followers underwhelmed. Perhaps our elongated system has been unhelpful.
Nonetheless the cream tends to come to the top and the four remaining sides have earned their passage to the penultimate ties. Kilruane is probably the surprise package in this company where, pre-season, we might have expected Loughmore to be in the final shake-up.
According to the bookies Kilruane have no business coming to town on Sunday. You can get odds of 9/2 on the MacDonaghs whereas Sarsfields are listed at a prohibitive 1/6. In fairness those figures reflect the current standing of these teams. As reigning champions Sarsfields are chasing their fifth county title in seven years whereas Kilruane last held Dan Breen thirty years ago.
The MacDonaghs certainly established a fearsome tradition in the seventies and eighties but in recent years they’ve struggled to transfer underage success to senior level. The loss of some players to emigration has been part of the story but hardly a full explanation.
Facing Sarsfields is a challenging assignment for Kilruane then, though they have been familiar with the ‘Blues’ at underage level. Two years ago they met in the U21 final at Dolla where Sars’ just about got over the line by a single point, a late Niall O’Meara free failing to save the day for the North champions.
This year O’Meara is repositioned at half back where he’s been doing quite well though obviously a loss at the attacking end. Up front his brother, Brian, carries much of the threat along with Thomas Cleary and county minor, Cian Darcy. But it was Seamus Hennessy who attracted most notice the last day against Annacarty when he turned in a very industrious afternoon at midfield. Ray McLoughney is a strong player at half back.
There will be few backers for Kilruane though against the deep depth of talent on parade for Sarsfields. The champions have quality all over though they can be quite whimsical at times in imposing themselves on opponents. Still while the North men might expect to put up a respectable resistance it’s difficult to see a sensational outcome in this one.
With due respect to Sarsfields and Kilruane, most interest will focus on the second semi-final between Drom and Nenagh. I would have expected the odds to be much closer in this one but, surprisingly, the Mid side is hotly fancied at 4/9 while Eire Og are available at 21/10.
There’s no doubt Drom’s resurgence has brought new energy to the latter stages of this championship. Liam Sheedy tends not to back losers so his arrival as manager suggests he sees real potential in this side. Their quarter-final defeat of Kildangan, and especially its emphatic nature, was a bold statement from the Ragg club. Following up on that impression is now the challenge as they face a far more accomplished side that their quarter-final victims.
Nenagh – unnervingly similar to Tipperary – have been the ‘nearly’ team of club hurling. They’ve been perennial challengers for top honours but it’s now twenty years since their sole triumph against Boherlahan back in 1995. Besides, again like the county side, they tend to come up short by very tight margins in key games. Last year they lost by a single point to Sarsfields after extra time in the quarter-final; the previous year they lost the final to Loughmore again by the minimum.
Even this year up North, Nenagh lost to Toomevara and twice to Templederry, all in very tight games. It’s that inability to ‘nail’ those close games that’s frustrating for a club that’s never short of pure hurling talent.
It will be interesting to see how they plan to patrol the in-form Seamie Callanan. The Maloney brothers in the central positions have certainly plenty of experience for the job but it will be curious to see if they operate a ‘sweeper’ to try and frustrate Callanan. Both Barry Heffernan and Daire Quinn are accomplished half backs so Drom will hardly find goal-getting as easy as they did against Kildangan.
From a Nenagh perspective goal getting has been a difficulty in recent games though they’re not shy when it comes to point taking. Overall I expect a much tighter game than the odds suggest even if Drom still deserve favouritism.
An all-Mid final then is the most prudent expectation; it will be a real shocker if Sarsfields don’t fulfill their part though much less of a surprise if Nenagh upset the odds.
Meanwhile, we may be into the closed season at inter-county level but there’s still no shortage of headline media material. Player power has reasserted itself in Mayo. A revolt by the footballers has ousted the team’s joint managers. The unrest has spread to neighbours Galway where Anthony Cunningham is firefighting to hold his position for another year.
There’s no such player unrest hereabouts – I think! – as Michael Ryan continues his bid to put a management cabinet in place. However, the county has been making unwelcome headlines over the ‘Babs’ All Ireland ticket affair.
Eamonn Sweeney held the back page of the ‘Sunday Indo’ for a swipe at the Tipperary county secretary and his board colleagues over the issue. ‘A county overburdened with small men’ was the put-down headline. Inevitably Babs was depicted as a latter day Cuchulann heroically serving his county only to be shamelessly humiliated by that ungrateful county board lot.
The truth of course is far more nuanced than the Sweeney angle allows. Indeed I was smiling at the depiction of Babs in 1971 when, according to the ‘Indo’ man, he ‘put the (Tipperary) team up on his back as they won Munster and All Ireland titles’. I’m sure players like Len Gaynor and Tadhg O’Connor, not to mention Francis Loughnane and Mick Roche and Noel O’Dwyer et al, will be delighted to be seen as passengers on Babs’s back as he singlehandedly won an All Ireland. Indeed.
Anyway the present issue arises over Timmy Floyd’s refusal to supply Babs with an All Ireland ticket. The county secretary was infuriated by Babs’s stinging criticism of the county’s hurlers following their defeat by Galway. Actually it wasn’t just that article which drew the ire of the county secretary but rather the ongoing barrage of tabloid criticism that Babs continues to aim at his own county.
In fairness to Babs he wasn’t the one to go public over this issue, unlike Jim McGuinness and his gripe about the holiday voucher up in Donegal. The county secretary’s action was included in the minutes of a management committee meeting and once it was distributed at a general meeting the story was bound to run.
It seems a particular point of aggravation was the suggestion of extravagance by the O’Shea regime in the preparation of the team. Of all charges that might be aimed at O’Shea this is one that definitely doesn’t stack up and there was a growing sense at County Board level that these Babsian rants just had to be faced down at some stage.
Whether denying the ex-player and ex-manager an All Ireland ticket was the best way to face the criticism is questionable. It left the county secretary and the board open to the charge – gratefully embraced by Eamonn Sweeney – of over-sensitivity and a lack of appreciation for a past player and manager. All Ireland tickets shouldn’t be dependent on kowtowing to the Board but on the other side there’s something particularly brazen about one who constantly, and gratuitously, slates the county and then expects the Board to accommodate him with tickets.
They say (whoever they are) that timing is everything in life and unfortunately for Babs last week’s events came with wicked timing. Just as this fuss over the All Ireland tickets was being aired we were treated on Saturday to sample extracts from the upcoming Brendan Cummins’ biography.
What emerged from the published excerpts was a picture of a very dysfunctional management during Babs’s second coming in ‘06/’07. Some of the incidents recalled were farcical: a player, Darragh Egan, having to sit on the floor of the team bus en route to Croke Park because some elderly ladies were accommodated; the manager’s son replacing the sub-goalie in the pre-match warm-up; the team’s female psychologist being landed with the pre-match pep talk before a league game with Kilkenny. And we have yet to hear the Cummins’ version of the following year when he sat on the bench beside Eoin Kelly while we were taken out by a very poor Wexford outfit.
So, while the business of the All Ireland ticket will fade into the background that Cummins book is likely to keep Babs in the news for some time yet. We’ll watch with interest.
