ALL-IRELAND SHC QUARTER-FINAL GALWAY v TIPPERARY:THEY TRIP one another up, these not-quite rivals. In 1888 Galway and Tipperary played out the first All-Ireland hurling final when the men from Meelick jousted with the crowd from Thurles Blues and the Tipp team prevailed on the memorably neat score line of 1-1 to 0-0.
Eighteen times since they have sparked on summer hurling fields and if a rivalry has crystallised through those infrequent clashes, it has probably done so more in Galway minds than those in Tipperary.
Premier teams through the decades always had Munster grudges to preoccupy them; Galway only presented an occasional problem. Three times they played in the 1920s, nothing between 1930 and 1950, once in the 1960s, once in the decade that followed. Only along the narrow border where south Galway meets north Tipperary are they close enough to be aware of one another and the modern splendour that Portumna has achieved, making it the envy of most hurling clubs in the country, has probably done more to tilt Tipperary heads northwards than anything that occurred in the previous century.
“When I was hurling first, Portumna wouldn’t have been the first club that would have come to mind if you were looking for a challenge,” says Pat McLoughney, the former Shannon Rovers and Tipperary goalkeeper.
“They were an ordinary club, they were probably junior at the time and they would have been noted for being a tough club. They changed their style of play and concentrated on the game that they excel at today, that skilful game. I remember doing a little bit of work with Ivan Canning when he was coming through as a goalkeeper.
“Damien Hayes was just a minor then and you could see that they had a group of exceptionally good players coming through. Someone told me too about a young lad who was hitting sidelines balls over the bar. But in terms of a rivalry, I don’t sense it. Maybe years ago when there were carnivals held and they had tournaments around them, rivalries between the border clubs would have formed. Maybe Lorrha and Portumna.
“But being honest, when Portumna won the All-Ireland, a lot of people from our parish would have been up supporting them, people who married and came to live down here.”
McLoughney’s intercounty career is a fascinating contradiction. He hurled with Tipperary from 1975 until 1982, played seven championship matches, drawing one and losing six but was so outstanding between the sticks that he won two All-Stars, in 1979 and 1980.
The second, of course, coincided with Galway’s breakthrough year, when the maroon county won the All-Ireland for the first time since their lone 1924 title. The late Niall McInerney, Jimmy Cooney, Seán Silke, Iggy Clarke, Joe Connolly and Bernie Forde were the Galway men he travelled with on a three-week jaunt across the major Irish American cities.
“I was young and probably not socialising as much as the others and minding myself; I probably took the games a bit too seriously and I ended up coming home with the ‘player of the tournament’. I thought it gave me a serious chance of establishing myself among players of that calibre. But those Galway lads were terrific and the pity was that afterwards, we only saw them at games.”
McLoughney says none of the Tipperary players were surprised to see Galway come through. “They were such a good team that you began to wonder if it was going to happen for them and that side might have won more All-Irelands.”
But Tipperary were too preoccupied with their own problems, unable to win a Munster title since 1971 and in the midst of a famine that would last until 1987. It wasn’t as if Tipp teams were particularly poor then. In 1979, for instance, they won the league – handing Galway a 17-point beating along the way – and then went down to Páirc Uí Chaoimh and lost a June classic by a single point, 1-14 to 2-10.
“This titanic battle of a thousand thrills between those arch rivals Cork and Tipperary was made of a stuff that old timers sometimes rave about in their long memories,” wrote Paddy Downey in The Irish Times.
“It was a game the likes of which we have seen all too rarely in Munster over the past decade – a gigantic test of endurance, courage, sportsmanship and hurling skill. And to crown the spectacle, it gave us a cliff-hanger finish so loaded with tension and emotion that the onlookers were limp and scarcely able to move from their places in the terraces and stands.”
McLoughney played a critical role in that absorbing endgame, somehow contriving to stop a shot on goal from Cork’s Eamonn O’Donoghue and send a clearance downfield for a late chance at an equaliser which Tipperary could not convert. Playing the losing role in a glittering game was small consolation to Tipperary.
McLoughney feels that a key reason for Tipperary’s miserable spell was down to the policy whereby the selectors came from whatever club had won the county championship. “It meant that you had five or six new players in every year and there was no continuity. Not until Babs Keating came in, who didn’t care who the county champions were, did that change.”
When Tipp got their act together in 1987, it just so happened that Galway were established as the best hurling team in the country. It was a peculiar time when Tipp, for all their tradition, were the novel side and Galway the establishment.
Competitiveness turned sour in 1989 during the Tony Keady controversy and the extreme ill-feeling generated by that incident obscured the fact that for the previous two years, the counties had enjoyed a very healthy rivalry. The counties met in the All-Ireland semi-final in 1987 and after Galway won by 3-20 to 2-17, Tipperary manager Michael Lowry told the victors in the dressingroom: “Your victory was excellent: experience and understanding won through. We got our chance but could not put you away.”
The following year, Tipperary won the league and both teams qualified for the All-Ireland final. As a prelude to the match, Breandán Ó hEithir wandered through Tipperary. Getting a ticket for the match had become a major obsession.
“When one got away from that burning question . . . one was struck by the total absence of what, for want of a better word, is usually referred to as ‘spite’ between these two teams. When talking of their hero, Nicholas English, they acknowledge the clean play of the man who is marking him, Conor Hayes.”
Losing that All-Ireland – Galway won by 1-14 to 0-14 – must have confirmed for Tipperary that the order had changed during their hibernation within Munster.
By 1989, the need to deliver an All-Ireland title was acute and Galway formed the main obstacle. The suspension of Tony Keady completely ruined what ought to have been a natural culmination of a gripping series of games between champions and challengers. Even now, one is struck by the daftness of the entire episode.
That Keady, the outstanding Galway centre back, was to spend some of that year in America was hardly a secret: in January, The Irish Times reported he was expected to relocate imminently. As it happened, Keady was to and fro but the trouble arose when along with Aidan Staunton and Michael Helebert, he played a match for Laois-New York. The trio adopted the rather minimal disguise names of Bernard Keady, Enda Staunton and Tom Helebert. They were playing a Tipperary-New-York outfit and were rumbled, reported to the authorities.
A lengthy suspension threatened Keady through a spring of discontent and counter- accusation, with the Galway camp believing Tipperary had orchestrated the entire storm, something that was vehemently denied in the Premier County. As it turned out, Keady was hit with a staggering 12-month ban for the seemingly minor crime of failing to secure permission to play in New York from the domestic authorities. He would miss the All-Ireland semi-final.
In the build-up to the match, Galway threatened to pull out and even in Tipperary there were calls for the ban to be overturned.
“If we are to beat Galway,” said Paddy Leahy, chairman of the north Tipperary board, “I would prefer it to be with Keady on the field.”
But Keady was not on the field. Tipperary won a fractious match by 1-17 to 2-11 and went on to capture the first of two All-Irelands won in that period. Galway have not won an All-Ireland since. The championship has seen them cross swords sporadically since: in 1993, Galway gained a measure of revenge by eclipsing Tipp in another pulsating semi-final and when the teams met in 2001, Nicky English was managing Tipp, Noel Lane for Galway. Tipp prevailed in another tight, absorbing contest.
“In 1993, Galway had a good young team and now they are all gone,” said Galway’s centre back Liam Hodgins after that match. “So when you get here, get to an All-Ireland final, you have to take it.”
Since then, they have traded blows. Tipperary sent Galway packing by one point in a tight qualifying game in Pearse Stadium in 2003. Two years later, Galway returned the favour in the All-Ireland quarter final, 2-20 to 2-18. Tomorrow is the latest instalment.
But when McLoughney thinks of Galway, he thinks of the untold time Séamus Shinners – the Newport man who hurled for Tipperary and Galway – invested in him. Shinners would drive from Ballinasloe and pick him up before taking him on to Thurles for training. “I was young and starting out and he was an enormous help to me.”
Years later, McLoughney found himself in Ballinasloe, He was on his way to the hospital where his wife would give birth to their daughter. He happened to pass Shinners in the car and flashed his lights: Shinners turned the car around and wanted to put the family up for the few days they would be in Ballinasloe.
“All my children were born in Galway,” he says simply.
McLoughney left the Tipperary scene in 1984: outfield hurling had always been his first choice and he had hoped to reinvent himself as an intercounty wing forward but packed it when he felt he would not get his place. By then, John McIntyre was just starting out with Tipperary. “A terrific hurler, so committed, absolutely passionate club man and should have been hurling for longer with Tipp,” is McLoughney’s verdict.
Tomorrow, McIntyre will be plotting on the maroon sideline. Sentiment and home place must be forgotten. For an afternoon, at least, the sporadic rivalry will flare again. “It has never been a natural rivalry because we can never know when we will meet again,” McLoughney says. “But it is a hard one to call.”
Galway and Tipp is always that.
