You’d need a spell in a home for the bewildered after a weekend like that. The gap was mercilessly brief between Ronnie Whelan saluting “Port Verdy” for their performance against Argentina and Joe Molloy saying a crack-of-dawn “helloooo!”, as he kicked off Virgin Media’s coverage of that Nations Championship thingie.
There was barely time for a power nap before Dónal Óg Cusack was predicting a game of “chicken and mouse” between Cork and Galway in the All-Ireland hurling semi-finals and fulminating against train-gate at the end of it.
“Did you watch the Galway game,” Anthony Daly asked Diarmaid Byrnes come Sunday. “I wasn’t watching it, no, there was enough rugby on, the soccer on RTÉ. Are you on again tonight Joanne?”
Now, unlike the rest of us, it’s not like Diarmaid didn’t have enough to be doing in the midst of his telly-watching marathon, such as lining out for Limerick in their All-Ireland SHC semi-final against Clare.
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So lethargic did Limerick seem in spells of that first half, they had the look of men who’d watched all of Port Verdy v Argentina and were up in time to see Ireland v Australia.
Five points down at the break, they were so up against it we were looking at a Galway v Clare final, an outcome that would have funded the purchase of yet another property in the Seychelles by your local turf accountant.
“What was the talk at half-time?” Liam Sheedy asked. “Put the f***ing ball over the bar,” said Diarmaid.
That succinct advice did the trick, along with a late, late goal from Aidan O’Connor. “Limerick just find a way,” said Liam, although Diarmaid wasn’t all that impressed by the art of post-match punditry and the picking-out of turning points. “Jesus, ye have it handy here, don’t ye? All the hindsight!”
Patrick ‘Hoggie’ Horgan couldn’t but chuckle, him only moving into this punditry lark after his retirement from intercounty hurling last September. He didn’t chuckle as much, though, when Joanne Cantwell told RTÉ’s viewers he had arrived at Croke Park by train. That was a don’t-mention-the-war kind of moment.
You will, no doubt, know that Dónal Óg and Joe Canning had a barney after Cork had one of those second halves that form their nightmares. Joe suggested that booked-out Cork-to-Dublin trains on the day of the All-Ireland final intimated the Rebels were a touch over-confident.
Dónal Óg: “Ah, Joe, you’re better than that . . . go on, keep doing it, keep sticking the knife in, stay sticking the knife in . . . you know that’s bull . . . how many All-Ireland medals did you win yourself?”
Ah now Dónal Óg, you’re better than that. (Possibly.) Joe won one All-Ireland. George Best never won the World Cup. Never even got to play in one. So don’t be judging mastery by those standards, ya hear?
They hugged in the end, just to show there were no hard feelings, but Joe really should have done unto Dónal Óg roughly what Paraguay did unto France. Pulverisation, like.
Anyway, Saturday proved to be an entirely rubbish day for GAA-loving Cork folk. Come that evening, the county’s women were cruising to their first football championship win over Dublin in a decade, when those of a certain vintage could barely remember them ever losing to their old buddies. Five points up with three minutes and 37 seconds to go. And they lost by one. “We were unbelievably lucky,” said player-of-the-match Orlagh Nolan to TG4. That they weren’t; they just decided to “put the f***ing ball over the bar” and in the net. Job done.
At last, a reason for Cork to be cheerful. “This will lift people’s spirits going down the road,” said Keith Ricken to TG4 after his bunch won the minor All-Ireland football final in Newbridge after trailing by just the nine points at one stage to Tyrone. “We still can’t get the first 40 minutes right,” he laughed, “but the last 20 minutes, they were sublime. D’you know, they’re a lovely bunch, they don’t know the ends of it.”
And there’ll be no end to the celebrations. N17 and Dreams ringing around Croke Park, the Banks filling the Newbridge air. If you need a notion of what it all means, Anthony Daly summed it up ahead of the Limerick v Clare semi-final. “We’re standing here in the second last day of the year.” 2026 will, then, end at full-time in the final. The five-and-a-bit months after will just be the wasteland before the next championship kicks off.
