Tipperary and Kilkenny on verge of history

GAA;Kilkenny and Tipperary have the great knack of making the most out of underage titles

THE REMORSELESS nature of both provincial hurling finals leaves us under no illusions about the remainder of the season. Assuming that the All-Ireland will be between Tipperary and Kilkenny, it will be the third successive final to match the counties.

This hasn’t happened for 108 years, when Cork and London met in the finals of 1901-03 – a slightly false statistic in that London qualified automatically for the final in those days and played the winners of what was styled the “home final”.

To put this in context, such a sequence would be impossible for much of football history because the rotating semi-finals meant no rivalry could extend to three All-Ireland finals in a row.

There was no such brake on hurling, however, and yet the sequence happened only once and in unusual circumstances, although the championship didn’t require Munster and Leinster champions to play each other in advance of the All-Ireland final except in just four seasons since 1887.

So to all intents and purposes, Kilkenny and Tipp are on the verge of making history this September. Galway may have built some momentum after their flat display against Dublin, but they haven’t reached an All-Ireland semi-final for six years.

Waterford have consistently run the third-best team in recent years, being eliminated from the past three All-Irelands by the eventual winners and having reached the semi-finals in each of the past five seasons. And we saw what happened to them on Sunday.

There is a strong sense that, far from becoming weary of the sight of the same teams, the hurling public looks as fascinated by the duel as football was in the 1970s and ’80s when Dublin and Kerry were contesting All-Irelands seven times (including the 1977 semi-final) in 11 years.

Most people outside of the counties who eventually get to the semi-finals will want to see a renewal of the rivalry that has produced two elemental All-Irelands and a similar NHL final two years ago.

Is it a coincidence that the counties are part of the game’s governing caste, the Big Three? Possibly, but the more relevant consideration is the amount of developmental work in the two counties. That, combined with the traditional hierarchy, is a potent brew.

Galway, for instance, have been very successful at underage, but have struggled to turn the achievements into senior success. Dublin are working flat-out to establish the county as a force, starting at underage, and tonight contest another Leinster hurling final (their seventh in 10 years). But they won’t be under any illusions about the difficulty of translating that on to the senior stage.

Clare are also on the rise, having won an All-Ireland under-21 and reached a minor final last year with many of the players who are many people’s favourites to go one better this season. Again, though, the road ahead is hard with no guaranteed destination. After all, landmark All-Ireland minor football titles in Westmeath and Laois led no farther than provincial success in the years that followed.

Contrast that with Kilkenny and Tipperary, who appear able to make the most out of underage titles. Nicky English pointed out recently that in Tipp there is a solid link between minor All-Irelands and senior follow-up. Last year’s MacCarthy Cup was preceded by back-to-back minors in 2006-07. Similarly, minor success in 1980, ’82 and ’96 prefigured the 1989, ’91 and 2001 senior All-Irelands. The massive sequence of five in six years, 1952-58, led to a comparable haul of five senior titles in eight years.

If not quite to the same extent, Kilkenny have also made that sort of connection, with around half a dozen senior medallists graduating from minor in the past 10 years.

Conversely, Cork, the remaining Big Three county whose back-to-back successes in 2004-05 were well supplied by the minor teams of 1995 and ’98, are now struggling without an underage success in 10 years.

It’s not the only matter in the county that needs attention. Maybe it was karma, but scarcely a week after highlighting Páirc Uí Chaoimh as a venue in dire need of the overhaul that is currently planned, I found myself in the concourse beneath the stand in conditions that made the Black Hole of Calcutta look spacious as a ballroom.

The area beneath the McCarthy Stand is narrow, allowing little room between the stairwells from the stand and the facing wall, which also boundaries dressingrooms, toilets and a bar. There is no organised flow system, so people coming down into the concourse are often moving in opposite directions, depending on where they are going – to or from the toilet, or wherever.

At the time in question the minor match had ended and there was a surge down from the seats, crowding the area fairly seriously. In the midst of this gardaí were obliged to establish two cordons across the area to allow the teams leave the dressingrooms and take to the pitch. At no stage was there panic and supporters almost appeared aware of how delicate the circumstances were.

I found myself against the wall, bumping or – more accurately – squashing into a well-known team official, more accustomed to sideline duty at the ground than sitting in the stand. He shook his head and sighed: “Jesus, I’d forgotten how awful this is for spectators!”

At the 2010 annual congress in Newcastle, during the presentation on crowd safety and pitch invasions, safety consultant Paul Scott used aerial views of Croke Park after an All-Ireland final, which had been followed by supporters flooding onto the field, to illustrate instances of crushing – that is, crowd density on pitches well in excess of the permitted safety standard of 47 per 10sq m.

As any of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen would have put it: “Forty-seven per 10 square metres! Luxury.”

To the best of my knowledge there has never been a safety-related incident in this area, but even assuming it’s never happened, supporters deserve less stress and more comfort when attending matches in one of the GAA’s most important stadia.