posted 31 August 2003 03:03 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by sid wallace:
fair enough.

You are lucky to come from Kilkenny, but I never felt less than lucky to come from Waterford. The buzzes I get from our very rare successes may be less frequent than yours but I'd say they are all the more intense. A puff of nicotine to a shot of heroin I'd say. I've had ample opportunity over the years to hitch my colours to other masts. But you could never do that. And in a way our culture of defeat means we can sometimes enjoy a bad performance as much as you'd enjoy a good one. You mentioned a long time ago that Barry Lyndon was one of your favourites (I retain a lot of useless info as well). The bulk of the Irish portion of that film was shot in Waterford and the duel scene with Leonard Rossiter was shot on the plot of ground I grew up on. Sheer beauty. Good enough for Kubricks picture book film. Why wouldn't I feel lucky to claim the Waterford connection.

It struck me today that although these things are called chat boards or discussion boards they are anything but. This is a very imperfect medium. All the nuances the body language of ordinary discourse are absent so you have to give a really wide latitude to what's being posted. That's my excuse anyway. I do occasionally post just out of pure miscievousness. To get a rise out of people. It can break the boredom and stresses of the day. In a pub once the rise was got you'd slap the man on the back and burst out laughing. And that'd be the end of it. Here though that facility isn't available and offence once taken can linger.

I don't very often have the time to post as carefully as I could. An excuse that is not available to Waterford 98-03, so I couldn't accept the analogy.

---

True, what you say, especially about the boards. And a very sharp indictment of Waterford 1998-03.

No-one's unlucky to be from Waterford. Quite the opposite.

Yes, I retain lots of useless information, too. Imagine the clash about a couple of things is -- was! -- to do with being similar and similarly stubborn. I, too, have a bit of a gra for the likes of Serena Williams and Denise Lewis. Have a theory about that, but won't ventilate it here.

If you're wandering by Kennedy's on September, drop in, by all means, if you're in the humour. Win, lose or draw, we can keep it very safe and talk music and offal.

posted 01 September 2003 09:18 AM         

And now, not only will you not back up what you orignally said, you are attempting to change the intent by incredibly claiming your comments referred to Cork contributors on this site, when in fact, your words say nothing of the sort. Just to clarify further, I'll repost the paragraph

"7. Had Tipp beaten us, I would have hoped they’d go all the way. That sort of shocked me about myself -- and has nothing to do with Cork’s tilt of 28 titles. That’s to do with grappling with Mulcair’s fundamental point: there are no two counties more alike than Kilkenny and Tipperary. Also, Cork’s preening this summer has really got on my wits."

I guess the above also serves as another example of you changing your mind so readily, if you think about it.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

There's no snideness -- if by that adjective you meant a deliberate attempt to occlude my sentiment -- in my comments about Cork comments on this board. MGG's ones stand out, obviously enough. But she hasn't been alone.

More to the point, I notice you haven't attempted to address my query about your daftness about my supposedly changing my mind.

---

posted 01 September 2003 10:40 AM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

True, what you say, especially about the boards. And a very sharp indictment of Waterford 1998-03.

No-one's unlucky to be from Waterford. Quite the opposite.

Yes, I retain lots of useless information, too. Imagine the clash about a couple of things is -- was! -- to do with being similar and similarly stubborn. I, too, have a bit of a gra for the likes of Serena Williams and Denise Lewis. Have a theory about that, but won't ventilate it here.

If you're wandering by Kennedy's on September, drop in, by all means, if you're in the humour. Win, lose or draw, we can keep it very safe and talk music and offal.

All the best.

---

posted 01 September 2003 11:39 AM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

Just don't know what I have to do to prove that I'm very fond of Waterford!

---

Try this drill.

Wake up. Do your hair by running your hand along your shaven head (No2 blade). Put in your earring. Take a deep breath and pull up the Wranglers as quick as you can, before the paunch goes out again. Whip on the Gain Feeds jersey and the black slip ons. You are now dressed for any social occasion.

Head down the Yellow Road for the blaas. You now have enough grub to do you til lunch time ( or dinner time as its known ). Butter them and eat them with a pot of tea. Wipe the flour off your face with the back of your hand and wipe that off your back side.

Head for Cummins's bookies. Stare blankly at the screen filling dockets. Head home for a lunch ( or dinner )consisting of the most improbable parts of the pig ( think extremities here, feet, tail, head etc ), with cabbage and spuds.

Head back to Cummins's. Leave at 6 ish for dinner (tea) consisting of the same as lunch (dinner).

Head down the down. Order a large bottle of ale (off the shelf,small glass, no ice). Head to Club LA. Talk to a few lacks. Roll your Rs.

Go home. Go to bed.

Repeat as often as necessary.

posted 01 September 2003 11:46 AM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by sid wallace:
Try this drill.

Wake up. Do your hair by running your hand along your shaven head (No2 blade). Put in your earring. Take a deep breath and pull up the Wranglers as quick as you can, before the paunch goes out again. Whip on the Gain Feeds jersey and the black slip ons. You are now dressed for any social occasion.

Head down the Yellow Road for the blaas. You now have enough grub to do you til lunch time ( or dinner time as its known ). Butter them and eat them with a pot of tea. Wipe the flour off your face with the back of your hand and wipe that off your back side.

Head for Cummins's bookies. Stare blankly at the screen filling dockets. Head home for a lunch ( or dinner )consisting of the most improbable parts of the pig ( think extremities here, feet, tail, head etc ), with cabbage and spuds.

Head back to Cummins's. Leave at 6 ish for dinner (tea) consisting of the same as lunch (dinner).

Head down the down. Order a large bottle of ale (off the shelf,small glass, no ice). Head to Club LA. Talk to a few lacks. Roll your Rs.

Go home. Go to bed.

Repeat as often as necessary.

---

Class, class, class.

posted 01 September 2003 11:53 AM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by sid wallace:
Try this drill.

Wake up. Do your hair by running your hand along your shaven head (No2 blade). Put in your earring. Take a deep breath and pull up the Wranglers as quick as you can, before the paunch goes out again. Whip on the Gain Feeds jersey and the black slip ons. You are now dressed for any social occasion.

Head down the Yellow Road for the blaas. You now have enough grub to do you til lunch time ( or dinner time as its known ). Butter them and eat them with a pot of tea. Wipe the flour off your face with the back of your hand and wipe that off your back side.

Head for Cummins's bookies. Stare blankly at the screen filling dockets. Head home for a lunch ( or dinner )consisting of the most improbable parts of the pig ( think extremities here, feet, tail, head etc ), with cabbage and spuds.

Head back to Cummins's. Leave at 6 ish for dinner (tea) consisting of the same as lunch (dinner).

Head down the down. Order a large bottle of ale (off the shelf,small glass, no ice). Head to Club LA. Talk to a few lacks. Roll your Rs.

Go home. Go to bed.

Repeat as often as necessary.

---

Sid were you at the mt sion - lismore game last night? Heard it was great stuff. 2 one-point wins in a row.....

posted 01 September 2003 12:26 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by waterford 2-23:
Sid were you at the mt sion - lismore game last night? Heard it was great stuff. 2 one-point wins in a row.....

---

posted 01 September 2003 01:17 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by clare fan:
Wrong again.

And now, not only will you not back up what you orignally said, you are attempting to change the intent by incredibly claiming your comments referred to Cork contributors on this site, when in fact, your words say nothing of the sort. Just to clarify further, I'll repost the paragraph

"7. Had Tipp beaten us, I would have hoped they’d go all the way. That sort of shocked me about myself -- and has nothing to do with Cork’s tilt of 28 titles. That’s to do with grappling with Mulcair’s fundamental point: there are no two counties more alike than Kilkenny and Tipperary. Also, Cork’s preening this summer has really got on my wits."

I guess the above also serves as another example of you changing your mind so readily, if you think about it.

---

The precise nature of what I think about Tipperary hurling has, due to a number of factors, changed over the last twelve months. Yes. And...?

That evolution constitutes some sort of an indictable 'offence' against some laudable 'consistency' (towards which you gesture but fail to define)? So it would be better to have remained shrouded in the murk of my "deep-rooted antipathy" to Tipp?

It can be one. But it can't be both of the above, as you're trying.

posted 01 September 2003 01:20 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by sid wallace:
I won't be in Kennedy's or at the match due to a long standing family commitment. As for match day pubs, Gaffneys in Fairview is the best around in my view.

---

Sound.

The drill is brilliant.

posted 01 September 2003 02:00 PM         

Perhaps its in my 'liberal' nature to be able to discern such blatant obfuscation.

My post was pointing out to you (in as clear a way as I thought you could deal with) the factual inaccuracies in your previous post about Cork's preening, which you had tried to explain away without reference to what you actually wrote.

No more, no less.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:
The precise nature of what I think about Tipperary hurling has, due to a number of factors, changed over the last twelve months. Yes. And...?

That evolution constitutes some sort of an indictable 'offence' against some laudable 'consistency' (towards which you gesture but fail to define)? So it would be better to have remained shrouded in the murk of my "deep-rooted antipathy" to Tipp?

It can be one. But it can't be both of the above, as you're trying.

But no great matter, I guess.

---

posted 01 September 2003 02:07 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by clare fan:

My post was pointing out to you (in as clear a way as I thought you could deal with) the factual inaccuracies in your previous post about Cork's preening, which you had tried to explain away without reference to what you actually wrote.

No more, no less.

---

How can there be "factual inaccuracies" in/about something I just feel: that is, the Cork thing?

You've simply ignored, of course, the centralpoint about simultaneously urging me to give up on the unpalatability of my views about Tipp whilst deploring evolution as a sleight against 'consistency'.

Anyway, we're not going to progress. And I'd be better saving my energies for another overwrought post I'm writing.

posted 01 September 2003 02:33 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:
How can there be "factual inaccuracies" in/about something I just feel: that is, the Cork thing?

You've simply ignored, of course, the centralpoint about simultaneously urging me to give up on the unpalatability of my views about Tipp whilst deploring evolution as a sleight against 'consistency'.

Anyway, we're not going to progress. And I'd be better saving my energies for another overwrought post I'm writing.

Say hello to everyone in Nirvana for me.

---

posted 01 September 2003 03:43 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

And I wouldn't imagine anyone here gives a damn about knowing it. So...?

---

Actually I'm quite curious and have been quizzing my Da to see if he can figure it out. As I passed through Ballyhale yesterday on my way home from the Butlerstown 7s I thought I spied 'Arrigle' over the door of a pub? Am I going barmy?

Arrigle, to be honest half the time I haven't a bleedin notion what you are on about but you certainly seem to know your stuff about lots of stuff.

Kudos to ya and you know what they say to do to begrudgers...

posted 01 September 2003 04:18 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by No.13:
Actually I'm quite curious and have been quizzing my Da to see if he can figure it out. As I passed through Ballyhale yesterday on my way home from the Butlerstown 7s I thought I spied 'Arrigle' over the door of a pub? Am I going barmy?

Arrigle, to be honest half the time I haven't a bleedin notion what you are on about but you certainly seem to know your stuff about lots of stuff.

Kudos to ya and you know what they say to do to begrudgers...

---

Thanks for that. Great gas, isn't it...? The aftermath of the Leinster Final showed where a lot of people are coming from as regards Kilkenny and anyone from there. 'Nuff said.

Your eyes are good, No. 13. The pub's called 'The Little Arrigle' (known locally as Healy's; before that, as 'The Gluepot'...; before that, prior to a long period of closure, as 'The Twins'). Very nice and unspoilt inside, with a couple of lovely old-style snugs. Well worth a visit.

Brought up a mile outside the village. I haven't said anything here, as I've often said before, that I haven't said in Andy's. So, while I reckon the anonymity factor is very enabling, it wouldn't worry me for a few people to know my name. Some already do, with the best part of twelve months. A minor comet didn't hit my townland or anything, so far as I'm aware. Hattons Grace -- to my pleasure -- had no bother, most amusingly, in tracking me down in Kennedy's. Just asked two lads from home and they immmediately pointed me out at the counter.

Where is your father from, if you don't mind me asking? Just ignore me, if you do.

posted 01 September 2003 04:50 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enda Kenny:
This thread is a crass publicicty stunt. And the disturbing thing is that it is being lapped up by the increasingly shallow contributors on this site

---

So Zanussi, The Blues, Aragorn, Hattons Grace, FF, Maigue et al. are "shallow"? And I'm meant to be the egotistical one...?

I 'admire' your neck, I must say.

Certainly, I am getting publicity for how crass you and your cohorts are.

I promised two of the sharpest hurling men I've ever come across a post on AFR. That one here was in (very tardy) lieu of it. No great mystery.

Is it just that it's upsetting you that the board could actually be used for discussing some of the complex and difficult emotions hurling evokes? Surely it's not as crass as all that?

Or...

posted 01 September 2003 11:15 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

I mentioned Limerick in the post as a county I'd really like to see win an A-I. And I also tried to ask what are so'called 'traditional' counties for.

All the best.

---

I still remember Mossy Dowling and Eamonn Grimes bringing Liam into the school the last time. 30 years and counting. Recall Gunther telling a story here once about some man next to his father at the 73 AI at the end of the match saying "see you in another 33 years!". He mightn't be far out yet.

I think what sets the traditional/big three counties apart from the others is that they have the habit of winning. Cork, Tipp and KK travel with the expectation of winning not the hope.

posted 02 September 2003 09:48 AM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:
Where is your father from, if you don't mind me asking? Just ignore me, if you do.

---

Between T'town and Knocktopher. Related to a big family in Ballyhale (thought you might be one of them). Anyway, I'm sure I'll bump into you some day.

posted 02 September 2003 12:13 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

I, too, have a bit of a gra for the likes of Serena Williams and Denise Lewis. Have a theory about that, but won't ventilate it here.

All the best.

---

posted 02 September 2003 12:28 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by sid wallace:
I can't imagine what that theory might be. Any chance of a ventilation

---

denise lewis is gorgeous

posted 02 September 2003 12:35 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by sid wallace:
I can't imagine what that theory might be. Any chance of a ventilation

---

They're not not pairing Serena and Denise off with Henry, Gorta et al to breed the Kilkenny uber-hurler are they Arrigle?

posted 02 September 2003 04:51 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Durlas Eile:
They're not not pairing Serena and Denise off with Henry, Gorta et al to breed the Kilkenny uber-hurler are they Arrigle?

---

What a brilliant idea!

posted 02 September 2003 04:54 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by No.13:
Between T'town and Knocktopher. Related to a big family in Ballyhale (thought you might be one of them). Anyway, I'm sure I'll bump into you some day.

Yours in sport.

---

Have a slight notion of who your father might be. But what matter, anyway?

Hopefully, we will, if God is good to us, bump into each other during celebrations in downtown Ballyhale, in The Little Arrigle!

Yours in hope.

posted 19 September 2003 03:06 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:
My instincts, 12 months' ago, were correct, as they usually are. Was prepared to have a right discussion about QuinnGate (and issues arising) but it quickly dawned on me that you have all sorts of 'issues' with Kilkenny. No point. You have no ultimate goal save for the placebo of the obtuse snig. 'Nuff said.

Part of me feels genuinely sorry for you: if Waterford don't win an A-I with the talent there, it will be awful. If I elaborated, of course, I'd only be patronizing you. Again.

So I won't.

However, the pronounced streak of boorishness -- as remarked by the gent who briefly stepped in on behalf of my conscience -- evident in your reference to my sister ("your wan") staunches any such impulse. As it is, you're the only reason -- save for a possible Kilkenny victory -- that I 'm glad Waterford fell on their arse.

---

Sid Wallace claims that I said to him last August: "I'm glad Waterford fell on their arse." As the post quoted above makes abundantly clear, I meant no such simple thing. What I said was that his carry-on -- and his carry-on alone -- was my only abrasion about Waterford. It would have been very easy for Mr Wallace -- especially as such would have involved a small fraction of the energy involved in composing so long a post -- to check my original comment. So bent is he, however, on ventilating his own prejudices about Kilkenny, he seeks to justify them by inventing one for me as regards Waterford hurling. As anyone can easily read in this page of the thread, I state above that Waterford have played the most admirable hurling over the last several years. Most people here will recall my frequently stated admiration for Waterford hurling, past and present. I really don't know what more I could do on this front.

posted 19 September 2003 03:11 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:
Sid Wallace claims that I said to him last August: "I'm glad Waterford fell on their arse." As the post quoted above makes abundantly clear, I meant no such simple thing. What I said was that his carry-on -- and his carry-on alone -- was my only abrasion about Waterford. It would have been very easy for Mr Wallace -- especially as such would have involved a small fraction of the energy involved in composing so long a post -- to check my original comment. So bent is he, however, on ventilating his own prejudices about Kilkenny, he seeks to justify them by inventing one for me as regards Waterford hurling. As anyone can easily read in this page of the thread, I state above that Waterford have played the most admirable hurling over the last several years. Most people here will recall my frequently stated admiration for Waterford hurling, past and present. I really don't know what more I could do on this front.

It seems my instincts were correct.

---

posted 19 September 2003 03:37 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

You're an awful begrudger... So it's only "time" that's a factor in such posts.

---

Howaye, Good stuff Arrigle, and by the way you the other fella in one.

posted 20 September 2003 11:45 AM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bo Dike:
Arrigle...
Arsigle....
Arsighle......
Arsihle........

[b]Arsehole[/B]

---

posted 29 September 2003 06:08 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by exile:
Howaye, Good stuff Arrigle, and by the way you the other fella in one.

Slan

---

Jesus, only saw this now...

Thanks for looking in. Hope you're doing well.

posted 29 September 2003 06:12 PM         

HOH,

Eventually got around to a look at those two threads on the semi-final -- before and after -- on gaaboard.com. You were right, of course: very high standard of discussion, with admirably little bullsh.it. Very sharp men. Couldn’t have been as dispassionate as yourself, boot on other foot, I will admit. Hats off. All in all, ye called it pretty much on the money.

A few supplementary thoughts, inevitably, while I’m here.

1. Struck me that a lot of the discussion and the ramlatching between yourself, myself and OB moons ago -- Lar Corbett’s performing flea-like technique, Brian O’Meara’s predictability, Paul Kelly’s looseness etc. -- came back to haunt Tipp. Know I’m an extremist and all, but it doesn’t seem to me that there’s any way round, in the end, deficiencies in technique. We have those, too. But teamwork, for the moment. overcomes.

2. See that you are not a fan of Mr Doyle. Ditto, to my outsider’s eye. He certainly didn’t cover himself in glory this summer. First and foremost, and avaricious for any victory at all over “De Ketts” (as he so winningly puts it), Doyle pretty much showed his hand in the League game and, more importantly, in the League Final (compare and contrast Cork’s doings). Merely repeat, of course, the gospel according to St Babs... If ye’d won the League Final, ye might just have done it against Clare, injuries and all. As it was, and given the highly abrasive approach with players Doyle is widely acknowledged to espouse (an approach that starts to cancel itself, of course, once denied the fuel of significant victories), the wheels came off. Your doubts about Doyle’s appointment were well-founded. He just doesn’t give the impression of a shrewd man. What went wrong? Said he himself: “I don’t know.”

3. True, as I freely acknowledged on ch.com, Doyle did okay in the qualifiers, moving things around, taking off Eoin Kelly, finding Benny Dunne’s only credible position. But real pressure found him badly wanting. That must hurt, especially in Holycross. Couldn’t believe Eddie Enright being taken off, Brian Horgan being brought on. Is that just 1995 U21 stuff? Why, in the name of God, wasn’t John Devane blooded, as you query? Who has the more hurling to do for Tipp: Horgan or Devane? What, in every sense, was the point? Denis Byrne’s entrance -- if only to get John Hoyne sent off (if talk is to be believed) -- was the card to play. That switch had as good a chance as anything else of unsettling us. All things being equal, it makes, as Mulcair and Husker Du (thematically) note, no sense at all. Why have Byrne around the house and make so little use of him in the Leagu? The glic move would have been to bring in Judas, ten minutes to go, in the League Final. Likely as anything else, ye’d have won. The membrane would have been broken. And we’d really have been on the back foot, next time round. Let’s remember that Brian Cody’s strongest point, when Cartergate erupted, was his record against Tipperary. Kevin Heffernan was once asked why he didn’t take off (a very poor -- and post-car crash, of course) Brian Mullins in the 1982 Leinster Final. His answer: “1983.” That sort of nous appears remote from Doyle’s doings.

4. Also worth asking is how Nicky English is regarded in certain quarters. Rightly or wrongly, correctly or incorrectly, one hears that the man from Lattin-Cullen isn’t especially well-regarded -- as a player or as a manager -- in certain circles. If so, it seems somewhat remiss of the Tipperary Co. Board to hand over the reins for a panel of players who adored English to someone who was always going to be reading from a different hymnsheet.

5. One of the few topics on which myself and Colombia would disagree is Benny Dunne. What do you think of him? He doesn’t really enter your comments. To me, this Dunne just seems too omloch (sp?). All being equal, LHOT no. 4 hurlers have -- or so it seems to my finicky eye -- to have real physical power in their repertoire -- Brendan Lynskey, Ollie Baker and all that -- before they matter (this general conviction is why I increasingly find J. J. Delaney such a fascinating phenomenon). As I recall, Dunne doesn’t feature in your blueprint for 2004 -- and that call, in my world, seems fairly right.

6. Colombia understandably queried my characterization of John Carroll and Paul Ormond as “average enough” hurlers. You would probably do the same. Clearly, as I would be the first to acknowledge, Carroll has an abundance of skill.The finesse of his touches in the lead-up to Dunne’s goal against Galway was tremendous. Equally, Carroll’s stroke for the goal against Offaly was really memorable.

However, we judge hurlers, so to speak, in the round.

However talented, in potential, the hurler, it is only performance, in the end, that counts. Sean Clohessy would be considered one of our greatest ever stickmen, by Eddie Keher and others. Kevin Cashman, no less, considers Clohessy one of the few players he’s seen who had hurling’s whole repertoire of skills at his disposal. Yet the same man would be considered in Kilkenny circles not to have capitalized fully on that extraordinary gift. Clohessy, down my way, would suffer by comparison with a “functional artisan” (Mulcair’s fine phrase) like Frank Cummins.

Equally, and here taking an example more in line with Carroll’s own abilities, the career of Claus Dunne would be hedged with a lot of ifs and buts by the Nore (“a bit shy ”: so always says the father”). Again, there was great talent there (‘shyness’ isn’t Carroll’s problem, of course). Again, it wasn’t properly used. And so the career, judged by the rightly exacting standards of Kilkenny and Tipperary, was only middling.

7. The Roscrea man is in clear and present danger of going the same lamented way.

8. Probably the first thing I look for in a cornerback -- as such -- is his ability to hurl in zig-zags as well as in straight lines. Ormond is decent and I’m prepared to be agnostic until next season, given his troubles with injury. That said, Ormond gives the impression of being, enduringly, a straight-lines hurler.

Martin Maher, by contrast, as one excellent sidestep in the second half of the semi-final alone demonstrated, is well up to the demands of the ying and the yang of the zigs and the zags. Still, it is easy enough to envisage Maher-Maher-Ormond as an All-Ireland-winning line (especially now that Mr Doyle has got the bullet: Tipperary, are again, him gone, a team I fear).

9. See that one guy on gb.com -- hows the form? -- threw out the same core things that have struck me about Kilkenny hurling in the 25 years or so I’ve been watching it: (a) we keep producing quality hurlers; (b) we have underachieved.

That second aspect gives me the fever (and is why, really, I got so unsettled about Cartergate). While talk of my crowd underachieving in the last three decades might, to most people, seem daft, that would be my assessment of the period’s haul.

Which is why August 17th meant so much to me. Over the years, that sort of game was the sort of contest we tended to lose.

Relatedly: couldn’t help but see that one contributor on gb.com claimed he was severely bemused by how someone on ch.com -- myself, I can only imagine -- could announce that victory in the semi-final would constitute one of Kilkenny’s very greatest days. How could victory over so average a Tipperary side amount to so mothering much?

Doesn’t really work like that, of course. Bit more complex than any such formulation indicates, of course. Not so localized, of course, given the history. And so I feel that the remark on gb.com underestimated the threat, going well, of the current Premier crew. OB stated at the start of the year that he hoped someone would give Kilkenny a proper run for their money in 2003. Typically acute, he said that no-one had come really close to us in 2002. That was my assessment of the 2002 semi-final, as well. Had Kilkenny been facing any other jerseys than blue-and-gold ones, they’d have won by considerably more than four points. Tradtion and its discontents -- call it what you will -- almost palpably held us back when we wedged ourselves into the driving-seat in the second half. Winning this August -- when we’d perhaps waxed a bit and ye’d waned a bit -- was to win more than one match: it would be to conquer a phobia. That was my calculation. And so, at any rate, I believe it will prove.

6. I believe that there are such things as benchmark results between counties. I believe that this facet is what Nicky English implicitly had in mind when he spoke of his conviction that ‘tradition’ did stand for something significant. I believe that there are results in individual games that count for more than just one win. I believe that it can be the work of a generation (and more) to overturn such a gravity.

Wexford’s defeat of Tipperary in 1968, to my mind, was one such result (from many other instances: the manner in which the 1940 A-I Final won the 1973 A-I Final would be another one -- sure, you could even go to 1897...). Taken in tandem with 1960, it reduced 1962, ensuring ye’d always feel that bit nervous about meeting them. It’s why English said in Beyond the Tunnel that he’d prefer to play Kilkenny instead of Wexford any day. Curious enough conviction, that, you’d have to think, given Kilkenny’s record in comparison to Wexford’s one and the mid ’90s upon us. Given English’s age in 1968, given the fact that the counties didn’t meet again in a C’ship encounter until 1997, that feeling is something English must, evidently enough, growing up in Cullen, have absorbed through hurling’s very particular osmosis.

That’s how tradition makes it mark: people you respect say it’s so. And so it is so, when you go out to hurl. Tradition won the 1991 A-I for Tipperary as much as Pat Fox’s points did.

Nor was that benchmark -- if I’m any way right -- erased by yere victory over the Yellabellies in 2001, due to the denouement of the first game. Wexford : jaysus, you’d never have the fcukers bet... You’d wonder whether English’s opinion of Model hurling somehow contributed to the nervy aspects of Tipp hurling in the draw.

My hunch, in the same vein, is that Brian Cody’s avoidance of C’ship defeat at Premier hands during his playing career has been an enormous factor in our last two meetings. Equally, the residue of Cody’s experience in 1978 might go some way towards explaining why we have -- even when possessing a significantly better team on both occasions -- choked more than a bit in the two recent Finals against Cork. I reckon great sportsmen never ever truly process defeats. And that factor, as with Ger Loughnane, can be the grit that makes the pearl. But there’s many an unpearled oyster, of course -- and 2003 went damn close to culinary use only.

Bit of further particularity: the 1945 A-I Ireland Final, in my belated stare, was a benchmark match. Fr Tommy Maher, then a seminarian at Maynooth and drafted in for the injured Liam Reidy, remembered the denouement as follows: “There were about seven minutes to go and we had begun to fight back. From being 10 points done we had cut their lead to 5 points. The ball dropped into the square, their goalie Jimmy Maher dropped it, I slammed it into the back of the net. So that left us only 2 points behind them. The ball was pucked out and as I was fairly fit at the time, I managed to get out under it and catch it. I began to run back towards the Tipperary goal. I was challenged by a Tipperary back. He tripped me. I had been trying to make up my mind whether to go for a goal or a point. As I fell I kept the ball in the palm of my hand, not allowing it to touch the ground, hitting the ground with my elbow. I got up quickly and was about to strike it when the referee blew the whistle. He was the late Vinny Baston from Waterford and he had decided that as I had touched the ground with the ball, I had committed an infringement and he awarded a free to Tipperary.” The Premier County got a goal off that free and went on to win 5-6 to 3-6. Two decades later, Paddy Leahy himself broached the subject with Fr Maher, acknowledging the (decisive) unfairness of that particular decision by Baston.

It would be entirely wrong to claim anything other than that Tipperary were entirely deserving winners over the 60 minutes. The great John Maher nullified most of Jim Langton’s threat (Langton was miscast at centreforward and was kept there, it seems, rather bafflingly, by the Kilkenny mentors: Terry Leahy, main man in ’47, was very badly missed). Jimmy ‘Fox’ Maher, as Langton himself later stressed, was outstanding in goal. The black-and-amber performance hinged on a comeback. That being so, there can, in the nature of things, be no complaints about losing.

What strikes me about the ’45 Final is not the stock gibes about Tipp’s liking for rough and tumble. What strikes me is Tipp’s mental toughness.What strikes me is a belief is that more than one C’ship match was won on September 2, 1945. 1937 could be put down to an old team’s enervation. But that day in 1945 laid down a marker more about mental than about physical toughness. The former is a rather more difficult quality to acquire than the latter one, in truth. Certainly, it stood ye in good stead in 1950. Having gone in two points up, having played against a strong wind, Kilkenny came back out with the game in their hands. Thirty minutes later -- after a great rearguard action by the Tipp backs (and by John Doyle in particular), after botching several close-in frees -- Kilkenny saw Tipperary win by a point.

Can’t recall reading a close-grained account of the ’58 semi-final (and would be very grateful if someone pointed me in the direction of one). Down my way, though, rightly or wrongly, it was, of course, filed under the usual: ‘LEFT BEHIND US’. Stuff and nonsense, of course, most likely. Or not. Which or whether, it splayed a perception, after Tipp had been out for a bit, that we weren’t up to ye, even as A-I Champions, even with the man who got the goal against ye in ’45 training us. A benchmark had been re-established.

And so on, until now. 1971 was an awful one for us to lose (and cost us 1991).

7. Less generally: sorry not to have given the long-promised run-through Mr Leahy’s career (where has this Twinkle sobriquet come from?). ’Twas already a long enough post, I had to think!

Since you’re still keen for my ramblings on the subject: I could not agree that JL is, as OB originally deemed him, the “most complete” hurler of our time (OB’s original designation, as regards period, was: “the most modern era”). There is no doubt, of course, that JL was an exceptionally gifted hurler. Saw him against us, as it happens, early on, in a routine Minor challenge game. Immediately clear that he was a remarkable talent: great balance, great engine, great positional sense.

Less summarily: needless to say, of course, JL suffered in the earlier part of his career from (now well-known) ‘refuelling’ problems. Clearly enough, that taste abraded his potential as a hurler.

Still, JL has, in personal terms, my sincere admiration for the manner in which he seems to have overcome said problem -- and for the manner in which he has been so admirably honest about his struggles. There’s not a family in Ireland untouched by that same problem, directly or indirectly, one way or another. JL has given very good example by his frankness. It’s only right I should risk mawkishness in that acknowledgement

Nor have I ever held that lamentable incident in Manchester against JL to the same degree as others appear to do. Drink, mixed with a certain temperament, is a terrible cocktail. I know lots of stories about lots of Kilkenny hurlers which far from reflect well on them and they in their cups (with and without cups).

What I do hold against JL, though, is his mouthing on the field. To me, that trait, as demonstrated again by the business end of last summer’s Tipperary Co. C’ship, debases his talent. Such fcukacting has no place on a hurling field (and may backfire on him when he takes on future managerial roles: the recent carry-on against Ballingarry is yet another case in point). It’s surely significant that this tactic -- and it is a premeditated tactic, obviously -- has survived his abstinence as regards alcohol. Nicky English recounts playing in a 1986 League game in Beyond The Tunnel (1996): “Having scored a good goal, I made a point of running to the crowd behind the net and making a gesture at them. I was trying to get them going.” This impulse did not please everyone: “Some days later, Mick Roche called to the family shop on his travels for Carrolls and said to my father that I should never react to a goal like that again. Tipp players should never be seen to do that sort of thing.”

It is a great pity that a Mick Roche-like figure did not emerge with regard to JL’s mouthing. That’s one way -- as I initially gambited -- Tipp hurling culture has let JL down. Wanting another John Doyle, it perhaps wanted too much. Perhaps relatedly, it was extraordinary to me -- and to many Kilkenny people -- to observe the cult that arose around Paul Shelly (a decent cornerback, a very dubious fullforward). It was if we should suddenly make of Ned Byrne an avatar.

How I read JL’s mouthing is as a desire for a shortcut.

Desire for shortcut is evident in his play, stringently examined. NB: I make no apologies for applying exacting standards here. After all, we are supposedly dealing with the most gifted player of the last fifteen years. Be that as it may, and be it 10, 20, 30 or 40 years that is in question, I don’t believe cool appraisal would pitch JL anywhere near the top of any pile as regards brilliance. JL really hobbled himself when he wasn’t prepared to keep himself in prime physical condition. His brand of hurling needed him so prepared.

Let’s stick to the last 15 years, though: 1988-. No serious analyst could hold that JL was a clearly better stickman than Ollie Canning, D. J. Carey, Jim Cashman, Michael Cleary, Joe Cooney, Brian Corcoran, Paul Delaney, Johnny Dooley, Liam Doyle, Liam Dunne, Tommy Dunne, Nicky English, Adrian Fenlon, Tony Keady, Eoin Kelly, Olcan McFetridge, Sean McMahon, Seanie McMahon, Pat O’Neill, Niall Rigney, Henry Shefflin, Wayne Sherlock, John Troy and Brian Whelehan. There are probably a few more to mention but they would be the core of any such roster. All these players had/have as much strokeplay as JL. Some, as with JL, didn’t capitalize on their potential (Pat O’Neill, for example). Some have/had more skill with the stick. I recall seeing Cleary, for instance, scoring a truly exquisite point (think he got some sort of a ‘Score of the Week/Month/Year’ for it, if that helps anyone remember it). Anyway, the Nenagh man was running away from the goal at a fair pelt, out towards no. 12’s precincts. He rose the sliothar, balanced it a moment on the bas and sent it, while still running away from goal, without ever needing to take the sliothar to hand, without ever needing to turn around, lancing back over his left shoulder right over the black spot. Numbing piece of brilliance, it was.

I don’t recall JL having that stroke. Then again, most players in the history of hurling hadn’t that stroke. It’s a Martin Kennedy sort of thing, a Martin Coogan sort of thing. Also noticeable, though, is how JL isn’t anything like as fluent off the ground as, say, Fenlon and Troy (items: 1997 Munster and A-I Finals). Neither does JL appear to have that very difficult stroke Tommy Dunne has off to a tee: sliothar in front of you, waist-height, very little backswing, elbows tight to the body. Always a good ball for forwards, that one -- and sourced in a technique at the heart of Dunne’s brace of goals against Cork (in 2000?). Man converging on him from the front, JL generally seems, especially on his left, to need to go sideways and backwards. It is this flaw -- and we are supposed, as I’ve stressed, to be dealing with the most complete of hurlers -- that saw JL often attempting those mistimed (and ill-conceived) dropshots. While there is no doubting the power of JL’s stroke -- as several howitzer-like frees in the 2000 Munster C’ship alone attested -- his strokeplay, aesthetically, would not be of the same calibre -- to take three internal examples -- as that of Cleary, Dunne and Eoin Kelly. His swing, especially on his left, never seemed to me the acme of tidiness, being a bit long in its duration. Was this factor why JL, very curiously, seemed to be looking back over his shoulder a lot of the time as he travelled with a ball? I have a memory of a goal JL scored -- in the ’91 Munster Final, I’m nearly sure -- when he was coming in along the left wing (with the helmet tipped down extra-low over his forehead, as I recall). He throws the sliothar up on his left, only managing a weak stroke and poor contact. Nevertheless, he follows in and a goal results.

Contrast the typical fluency of D. J. Carey’s stroke off his left (a highly analogous movement to that one in ’91 would be the ‘consolation’ goal Carey scored at the end of the ’97 semi-final). Contrast John Troy’s knackiness in tight situations.

Strokeplay isn’t everything, of course, as Gerry McInerney was wont to prove: to us, in ’87; to ye, in ’93. But I don’t think JL would fare particularly well as regards consistency of performance, either. Compared, say, to Brian Lohan, Seanie McMahon, Willie O’Connor, Johnny Pilkington and Henry Shefflin, JL wouldn’t do at all well on that criterion.

So, then: so much for the technical stuff. Equally, however, it is my view that JL retarded his game by a seeming need to double his appeal: great hurler and hard nut. He’d no need of the second quality. For him, the former imperative, given his gifts, should have been more than enough. Let’s take a bookend from either end of his career: the ’89 semi-final against Clare and 2001’s joust against Clare. The first match saw him, right at the start of the match, essay a ferocious stroke on Peter Finnerty out near the sideline, one for which JL should have got the line (Finnerty’s response to that stroke got him the only booking -- at that point at least -- of his career). JL clearly relished the reputation he got for being Tipp steel wrapped in Tipp silk. Soon enough, though, most of the silk went out of his game, between one thing or another.

Cast also your mind to the Clare game in 2001. Just on, JL goes to announce himself --under the aegis of a high ball -- to Brian Lohan (and I stress here that I read the relevant exchange between OB and LongLad Seamus on ch.com on this thorny issue...) Never a good idea, really, whatever the specific impulse, to dance that sort of ballet with Lohan. JL ends up doing his cruciate, effectively ending his intercounty career.

I’m deliberately haven’t gone through JL’s career game by game. If there’s interest in that approach, there are plenty of people here who, with much greater forensic capability than myself, could mount such an examination. I’ll merely say that JL seems to me somewhat over-rated due to his performances -- admittedly remarkable -- in the 1991 Munster C’ship. Nuance and counter-claims welcome, of course.

8. Probably I upset some people -- evidently, I really abraded Tipp Topp -- with some of my comments on ch.com. Probably there is simmering unhappiness in Tipperary circles about my notion of a paradigm-shift. But I can only call it as I feel it and that’s how it’s felt in my stomach. If we meet next year (and I hope we do, since I want this particular Kilkenny outfit tested to the utmost), and if ye win, I will know all about it. But that’s the gamble of speaking your mind -- a credo which Mr Tipp Topp has long commended to Noreside folk. Clearly, though, something truly remarkable has occured when you have a figure such as Mulcair calling for Tipperary hurling to take on the sort of “aggression and mental focus” displayed by the current Kilkenny team.

9. Hopefully, the events of this summer will forestall much of the unfounded criticism bruited about Leinster hurling. It’s a much more complex topic than is commonly allowed (and as the relevant stats bear out). As I said before, Mulcair’s admirably forthright opinion -- that it would be best for hurling if a Munster team hammered Kilkenny in the semi-final -- has a logical corollary. That corollary is that a double-figure for us argues for stasis (as he, in fairness, allowed).

I wouldn’t agree with that argument, disagreeing with the terms in which it was initially framed. But I am very dubious about the almost casual way Galway have been invited into Leinster. There should be a joint Leinster-Connaught C’ship, with Roscommon (and Mayo, perhaps, in time) playing in the qualifiers. I can see, although there would be grounds for having a tri-provincial C’ship based in Leinster, why Ulster hurling probably needs for its own reasons a separate Ulster C’ship. My belief is that Galway have to be told that they will, basically, be playing in Leinster forever. Only a move to an Open Draw would change matters.

At the moment, then, there exists an obvious reservation. If Galway can be waltzed in so casually, they could also waltz themselves back out. Human nature is human nature. If Galway don’t quickly win a few L-C C’ships, then they might well feel they’d be better off in some other set-up. And then the splicing of Leinster and Connaught -- which is an attractive idea in all sorts of ways, if handled properly -- is off-limits for any future reorientation. Galway should not be put into Leinster on the basis that it would make life harder for Kilkenny. That notion is too contingent a rationale. They should be put into Leinster permanently, with no option to withdraw even if they don’t win a L-C C’ship for ten years (that wouldn’t, by the way, be a scenario I’d envisage happening). Let’s not forget that we heard relatively little about the disadvantages Galway faced when they were winning -- or nearly winning -- A-Is in the 1980s with some regularity. A moral for plucking, there, methinks.

10. Some quarters hold that the current Kilkenny outfit is unlucky not to be have landed a record-breaking five-in-a-row. There is good reason to contend that the county has been the outstanding one in the country since their victory over Clare in the ’99 semi-final. Still, any such talk about a five-in-a-row left behind us would be fierce loose. Such talk neglects a salient aspect of the way hurling works: the dialectical way, putting it fancy. We lost one A-I title in 2001. But that defeat -- or, more accurately, the lessons learned from it -- has probably won us two titles. Right now, I’m in the curious situation of believing two things that most people would hold to be antithetical: (a) that Kilkenny have been much the best team in the country since 1999; and (b) that we are somewhat over-rated as a team. If we had given the sort of great display I anticipated on September 14th, then we could say this team is special enough to merit the very rare distinction of achieving a three-in-a-row. As it is, I reckon that their brand of excellence is well catered for by a double. After all, the great Limerick outfit of the 1930s and ’40s -- likely a superior set of players -- never managed that distinction. We should be grateful for what we have. It is ample, now that 2003 is safely home.

Without further surgery on the team, at any rate, I doubt we’ll win next year. Peter Barry has trained like a dog to get about 75% of the way to where he should be. Next year, I reckon, will be a bridge too far. He was very poor in the A-I and only moderate, at best, all year. For me, The Village winning the County, with Barry made captain, is a very dangerous scenario. I admire Barry as a player as much as I’ve ever admired a Kilkenny player. As a hurler, though, he gives me the heebie-jeebies. You’ll remember me droning on with a prediction: that an ill-conceived Barry offload would cost us the A-I. Well, after he shipped a hospital handpass to Michael Kavanagh just after the Cork goal --having had time, after gathering, to clear with a brisk stroke (if he possessed such...) off his right -- that prediction was burning a hole in my head in the Upper Hogan. Kavanagh, through no fault of his own, was blocked down, out on the sideline. Niall McCarthy’s shot that hit the post ensued.

We can’t keep getting away with that sort of stuff.

11. It’s amazing, when you think about it, how little hurling of substance Kilkenny played this summer: last fifteen minutes of the League Final; last ten minutes against Wexford; twenty minutes after halftime in the semi-final; last fifteen minutes of the A-I Final. And that’s about it, really. I’d hoped we were building up to a great display in the Final. Wasn’t to be...

Noel Hickey, though he may well now get an All-Star, had a poor enough year overall. Lyng was fitful enough in midfield. Carey was essentially that most paradoxical of things: a hard-working passenger. Our men of the year are J. J., Gorta and Henry. Never, in my time looking at Kilkenny hurling, have so few contributed so much.

12. Might we hurl better next year? Might we, with five years of hurling now safely filed away under ‘satisfactory’ (the savage begrudgery after our victory leaves me under no illusions about what would have been said here, if we’d lost, about those last five years), hurl next year with a bit more freedom? Maybe. And there’s no reason to think other than that J. J. and Tommy Walsh are going to improve still more (as will Gorta, I believe: he had very little top-class hurling under his belt under last year). Talking to a few of the players in the Leeson Lounge on the Monday, I was struck by how nervous they said they felt at halftime. There was a marked consciousness, in what they said, of how they hadn’t hurled well. They were looking at making history at halftime and they probably choked a bit (and Cork started to hurl very well, of course, in certain sectors). Equally, they might well have peaked in training about a fortnight after the semi-final, leaving their best for 2003 after them in James’ Park. Tellingly, Andy picked up on that facet in his TV interview.

Anyway, it will be exceptionally interesting to see how Brian Cody deals with this particular success. We are, inevitably, like a clay pigeon up in the air, with everyone scoping us out. Cork showed in the second a blueprint for beating us: deny the half-fowards aerial possession. They had, when Gardiner went back, three men strong enough to achieve that aim (Ronan Curran, so unfussy and calm, is a huge talent, in my book, and a shoo-in for an All-Star -- Sean Og should get one beside Lyng in centrefield). While our hurling, betimes, is very powerful, it is also, at the very highest level, a bit predictable. As several of us noted, the goal came when John Hoyne eschewed the usual formula of a pick and run, instead letting fly on the ground. This issue comes back to Hattons Grace’s key point: the obsession with fetching to the detriment of variety. Kilkenny’s attacking philosophy is largely based around the half-forwards breaking the ‘gain line’, thereby drawing a tackler and bringing a colleague free. If you stop us doing those manoeuvres -- not an easy task, admittedly -- then we seem to lose our shape, with the fullforwards (as happened in the Final) drifting out the field. This is the reason I believe we made so few goal chances against Cork.

It is also a weakness of this Kilkenny team that we seem to need a goal to ignite the booster rockets. Had Tommy Walsh’s drive hit the net, I’ve no doubt that we’d have pulled away into the wild blue yonder. To my eye, Cork didn’t hurl in the first half as if they really believed they could win. They were there for the taking with the prompt of a goal.

13. A charge against me, arising out of my ‘Thirty thoughts’ posts, was blunt. Those fortunate enough to live at room temperature claim that I have a “deep-rooted antipathy” to Tipperary hurling. I probably do, lots of the time, and would doubt anyone from my place who doesn’t ( and would doubt anyone from Co. Tipperary not inverse in that respect). Ezra Pound characterized W. B. Yeats’ genius as an ability not to flinch: “Yeats learns by emotion, and is one of the few people who have ever had any, who know what violent emotion is really like; who see from the centre of it -- instead of trying to look in from the rim.” Such experience was supposedly so rare that it franked select High Modernists with greatness. But pay three euro and you can experience this edifying violence of emotion any weekend in Ireland between May and October. Not long ago, I experienced it in Mullinavat at a Special Junior A first-round C’ship match between Ballyhale Shamrocks and Glenmore.

14. Off and on, Mulcair, amongst Tipperary others, displays a near chthonic animus towards Kilkenny hurling. Nothing else, amongst many instances, could explain his deeming Charlie Carter a journeyman hurler, when no equivalent ambition announces itself -- even allowing for Liam Griffin’s ‘provocation’ -- as regards the Stygian category that would befit Lar Corbett. But I like him for that. Who would care for the passive-aggressive fcukwits who effect to find themselves so exquisite that they near find it difficult to select a dish in a restaurant?

15. It is my belief that strong emotion arising out of certain prompts is an intriguing and beneficial experience, even if you’re not a poet. It is also my belief that such emotion has a tale to tell. A central prompt for us is the GAA. However acrid, on occasion, the expressions of that involvement, I believe that such emotion finds it easier to pass into the staples of all fellow feeling -- empathy and sympathy -- than does the sort of mealy-mouthed liberalism which disdains anything stronger than conviction.

As always, it’s personal. Between pints in Kennedy’s, ordering at the bar (just before Hattons Grace came up to me, in fact), I greatly surprised myself by feeling a twinge of regret, thinking of Ormonde Boy getting the news in Australia, where he wouldn’t even have the insulation of getting drunk amongst his own. Only a twinge, of course, and more that the defeat was so crushing. But it was, however fleetingly, there.

16. As mentioned long ago on AFR, I think, these boards quickly suggested a parallel in my prior experience. Reading and contributing, I quickly found that the people who tended to look at hurling the same way as myself included a very high percentage of Tipp men (yourself, HOH, very much included, of course). Being honest, that factor reminded me of UCD. Training for Freshers’ hurling, myself and a couple of Tipp fellas fell easily into conversation about whether Jimmy Doyle was the greatest left-handed hurler ever. And so on (interestingly, I remember -- this was 1985, after a very disappointing summer for ye -- all the Tipp guys agreeing that they’d win no A-I with Seamus Gibson on the team). This obsession with RHOT and LHOT isn’t, then, so far as I’m concerned, a late-made doctrine. Other lads in the dressing-room obviously -- and mostly indulgently -- thought such conversations as arcane as astrophysics or tort or post-structuralism. There was an assh@le of a guy from Cuala who liked to sneer at anything and anyone he could. He got put in his place on a bus coming back from Cork.

17. We’d gone to play UCC (can’t even remember if we won: think we did). Anyway, we’d a few pints after the match. As we drove back, nicely insulated against the drive, getting to know each other in that way utterly specific to your first months at university, one of the Tipp fellas gestured to the pleasant rushing dark: “That’s Holycross in there.” There was real emotion in his voice, pints or no pints. It’s a moment I’ve never forgotten. Was -- and remain -- very impressed: partly because I had exactly the same feeling about Ballyhale and Kilkenny; partly because it was a degree of emotion meant to be reserved, in most of the circles in which I then moved, for a discussion of the respective merits of The Smiths and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Yourself and a few others once asked me on PVDF about the music scene in Kilkenny in the ’80s. Great fun, as I said. But I remember, equally vividly, telling a son of a former Kilkenny great one night, well full after a gig in The Castle Inn, how much I admired his father. He took himself off, aghast, looking like Robert Smith in bonsai. This was a world before replica jerseys, before Blur’s ‘Song 2’, before the twain met.

18. I do know this much for certain: people from Kilkenny and Tipperary will only truly love hurling if they first love Kilkenny or Tipperary hurling with an intensity sometimes unedifying and fractious. The circle can only move outward. And you have to go through stuff, not around it.

19. Was profoundly struck by an obituary in the Kilkenny People for August 30, 2002 to the point of clipping it, even though I had absolutely no prior knowledge of the man in question. Something of the tilt and heave of our great rivalry, its sheer colloquial grandeur, seemed to stiffen the piece with lost dignities. An elderly bachelor -- Neddy (‘Sparky’) Breen RIP-- died six weeks after his elderly bachelor brother, Johnny, had departed. They had lived together all their life, working hard, fanatical followers of Gortnahoe-Glengoole, Moycarkey-Borris and Tipperary. The report by a friend and neighbour states: “[Mr Breen] liked a pint or two or three and had a few favourite places in Urlingford and then Mary Willies on the way home. In his earlier days he had a phenomenal memory for Tipp teams of the past and could name them all back through the years. He performed this feat with relish particularly in Urlingford, and he would lift it when he spoke some of the great names.” The report continues: “He lost interest in that art in the early seventies for obvious reasons.” Earlier it had remarked with a haunting, almost brutal and unbeknowst-to-itself eloquence: “Neddy’s death brings to an end a generation of people in Graiguewood. Death is relentless. It can and does clean out a place leaving only a dog behind.” Was filled with sudden daft emotion: a whole life folded out, and then folded right back in. I’m old enough to have known folk exactly like that, unsophisticated and complicated, mad on the Shamrocks and Kilkenny. They smelled funny in cars, going to matches.

20. We are far poorer for these people’s slow going. They had a rich independence.

21. You can be more intellectual about this topic than clipping obituaries out of local papers. Having already been derided for mentioning some of the books I’ve read, I suppose I might as well plough the furrow a bit deeper.

22. Somewhere in Isaiah Berlin’s writings he speaks of breaking down in tears in the course of a trip, during the 1930s, to Palestine. As he was being rowed ashore, Berlin heard the oarsman speak rough colloquial Hebrew to someone on the dock. Hearing the language spoken in that context was, he unexpectedly found, extraordinarily moving.

Berlin was a Zionist. That belief involved emotion as well as thought.

It is a passage by which I’ve long been haunted. A substantial part of Berlin’s power as a philosopher lies in the manner he does not seek to downplay what is, after all, a central aspect of human existence: intense emotion. Might seem strange to say but I think of that moment in Berlin’s writings around this time every year. Your own antipathy to Ballingarry brings it to mind. So does my youngest brother’s animus against Carrickshock, schooled by recent underage defeats. Guys who spent the summer shouting for the same county now engage in serious sledging on the basis of differing parishes. You wouldn’t believe -- but you would -- some of the things I heard said about Ballyhale on sidelines in the 1980s. You’d wonder what we ever did to all those people up in Clara.

That’s how it should be, of course.

23. You could discern an important intellectual point here, in fact. You really could. Berlin stresses elsewhere in his work the importance of what we might term ‘benevolent irrationalisms’. These attachments act, for him, as a sort of antidote to that class of Enlightenment project that culminates in genocide and state terror. These attachments -- irrational though they may be, depending on where you stand, say, as regards Urlingford and environs -- are a saving heterogeneity amidst the diktats of life. They are the stamp of an individual making himself free through an embrace of given contingencies.

You could even go further. You really could. You could even mention Edmund Burke. You could note how Burke remains a hugely important figure, a centrality evident in his enduring relevance to thinkers as diverse as Conor Cruise O’Brien and Seamus Deane. You could remember Burke’s remedy for revolution, for terror, for life-denying theory.

That salve was an attachment to the local and the rooted and the long-known. We are back in the same territory as Berlin. You could -- if you’re a bucko like myself -- even go so far as to note a commonplace of Irish historiography: the atttempt to rubbish revolutionary Irish nationalism. Burke, in his guise as a conservative sage, is always adduced, on this front, as an intellectual mentor. Often enough, and ever so lazily, the GAA is enlisted, along with the Christian Brothers, as a leading vehicle of militant republicanism (see Mike Cronin’s book, for example).

24. But you never see a particular paradox noted. Fairly evidently, the GAA is concentrically structured: townland, parish, county, country. Now, as we all know, the GAA is frequently held in certain circles -- Declan Lynch, Kevin Myers, Hot Press etc. -- to be a repository of all that is most backward and most deplorable about ‘Irishness’. The great text of our time on this sorry craic is John Waters’ Jiving at the Crossroads (1991), a book that gets better with every passing year.

25. It often amuses me to think of certain Irish academics reading ch.com, PVDF and AFR. Apalled they’d be, I imagine, to think that a liking for Killenaule or Ballyhale involves hot disregard for Ballingarry or Aghaviller. Savages, they’d think us. Partly, this repugnance issues from a barely concealed prejudice: the GAA is emblematic of everything that is conservative, non-pluralist, atavistic, reactionary, backward and recalcitrant. For them, this is the Ireland that you couldn’t trust with a winelist. The likes of Neddy Breen is as foreign to them as the Indians were to Cortez.

26. A related anecdote: friend of mine works in a Department with a leading Irish historian. Talk during the run-up to the last General Election in Ireland: wouldn’t it be absolutely terrible, due to the economy going well, if Fianna Fail got back in? No specifics: just a generalized dislike of the party. Poor old John Bruton is “too nice” for his own good.

It was as unthinkable as a flat earth to this individual that any Irish academic might vote for anyone other than Fine Gael or Labour.

27. Dinner-party, round about the same time: same historian was scoffing at the amount at benighted Irish people turning out to see the relics of St Therese of Lisieux. Good food was being eaten and good wine was being drank. Said friend eventually felt that he had to point out something: how could you deplore what the Taliban were then doing to Buddhist statuary if didn’t extend the same principle to those relics? The point, after a pert pause in conversation, was grudgingly conceded.

28. Academic studies done on the GAA are strangely few in number, given the topic’s importance. As J. J. Barrett’s In the Name of the Game (1997), for instance, makes clear, gaelic football was absolutely crucial in healing scars in post-Civil War Kerry. Men agreed to come together for reasons of a benevolent irrationalism about winning Kerry A-I football titles when they could never have been persuaded to do so under some abstract imperative, however worthy that prompt. The county was much the better for that shared devotion. All the more irritating, then, to have so much academic writing on sport organized under themes such as ‘the crowd’ and ‘the masses’, topics obviously cognate with the hoary questions raised, for revisionists, by nationalism. It is all so lazy. Burke, in his guise as an advocate of localism, actually implicitly glosses the GAA as a counter-revolutionary influence.

29. Personally, I’ve long thought that nationalism and liberalism resemble each other in surprising ways through a shared core conviction: people’s lives can be improved. But such observations butter few academic parsnips.

30. You could reread a lot of Irish history in intriguing ways if you pursued that paradox I’ve sketched.

31. I write all this having seen Tyrone people cry in a pub yesterday when Peter Canavan lifted Sam. And delighted I was for them.

32. But maybe I’ve gone too far.

33. Lastly: suppose I should apologize for these posts’ length. But I won’t, since the Kilkenny-Tipp rivalry is one of the Solar System’s great imponderables. Besides, in the passage Berlin most liked to quote from Kant, wood provides a metaphor not remote from the beautiful game: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight was ever made.” Hurling makes, in all senses, people crooked. And that’s when you learn the things most worth knowing.

34. Anyway, HOH, it’s only right to conclude by complimenting you on your very considerable graciousness: first, by going to the trouble of writing here about the Kilkenny fans you met on the day of the semi-final (especially since you don’t post much here any more); second, by your emphasis on our performance in the second half as the contest’s central aspect. Wouldn’t say, as I’ve detailed above, we’re as close to perfection at the minute as you so generously claim. Contrary to what’s been said by some people (and on telly and in print by Mr Loughnane, as likeably -- and as complexly -- hyperbolic as ever: the great Ger then announced in [I] Ireland on Sunday [I] that this Kilkenny team was far from great, after all), I doubt we would beat the 1997-98 Clare team: Doyle and Daly would clean out our wingforwards; Henry would have it all to do against MacMahon; midfield would be second fiddle.

But we’re not too bad, all the same. The day will come soon enough when ye will beat us. I will try to be comparably gracious in return. You, and a few others, have been a benchmark in that regard.

posted 30 September 2003 12:17 PM         

To be specific, I think you have analysed Kilkenny's (potential) weaknesses very well. I couldn't really disagree with any of that.

Regarding Leahy, much of your criticisms of his negatives probably are fair. And when the argument is as big as 'best of generation' well then you will probably win or lose it on your negatives rather than positives, if you know what I mean.
BUT, I would like to hear your thoughts on his positives. There were times, and maybe they were too few, that when watching Leahy the only thing you could think of was genius. Not only at county but club aswell - even though the standard of player he was with and against may have been lower, his genius on occasion was the same.

Regarding Tipp V Kilkenny. My grandfather spent the first 13 years of his life in Tipp. His brother 9. They have lived over 70 in Kilkenny. They are Tipp men. They will die Tipp men. Children all hurled in and won AI's with SKC. Hurled in, and won and lost (against Tipp!) AI with Kilkenny. But they (grandfather..) are still Tipp men. The sons produced are KIlkenny, through and through. Their Tipp blood was shed the 1st time they got cut by a hurl. But, despite what might say to me or others, if Cork had sneaked a 1 point win a few weeks ago, there might have been a couple of smiles in a townsland not far from Kells.

BUT, the Thursday before and after the AI, like 90% of Thursdays, the grandfather would have been visited by his brother-in-law - A Kilkenny man. Staunch. The type of man who goes to a Walsh cup game in the pissing rain and wouldn't think a thing about it. They would have analysed the match, players etc. Much the same as we do here except in a much more laid back kind of way. I've heard the conversations many times. They listen to each other carefully and whether they agree or disagree the opinion is RESPECTED.

I have many more examples (mother from Tipp, father a cat - neither too far from the border) of KK/Tipp relationships and where words like hatred, rivalry, bitterness, blind b.a.s.t.a.r.d.s etc are all part and parcel of it, BUT there is definitely an undercurrent of respect. And why not? They've won half of all AI's between them.

BTW, don't retire from CH. Thats kinda permanent. Take a break or whatever but don't give it up. For all the s.h.i.t.e thats talked, it still is a valuable source of information.

posted 01 October 2003 11:17 AM         

quote:

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Originally posted by The Blues:
Great post Arrigle. Worth waiting for.

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posted 01 October 2003 11:58 AM         

quote:

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Originally posted by rorschach:
yes. but what does it all MEAN...?

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come,come Rorschach surely you can divine the meaning here. An educated man like yourself, hewn from the very soil of the Divil's Bit.
Item;- if you will of course, but only if that's your ketchup, the monolith (as Kant might have observed to Freud as they were sipping Lattes and munching Sackertorte in fin de siecle Vienna) is there to be beholded and you must behold it and like the Jews in Egypt, be beholden to the monolith that is Kilkenny. As Bertrand Russell might have concluded if he were ever lucky enough to set foot upon the beautiful Norman swards of Kilkenny as they roll into fair Ballyraggett and idyllic Muckalee, any other view is merely a congerie of filth and misperception.

posted 01 October 2003 12:36 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:
"Back in Corrib Village, I noticed she had a Tipp jersey on the wardrobe door: a first cousin had played U21. I made her put it on when she’d taken everything else off"

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A question if I may Sir Arrigle (if you can lower yourself to indulging someone of my limited intellect with a retort).

Boning Galway birds with Tipp jersies?...what is that all about?..is it some kind fetish????

-YK2-

P.S. While you are indeed a widely regarded wordsmith and (self-regarded) highbrow intellectual remember the words of Bertrand Russell:

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."

because hurling ain't the only religion.

posted 01 October 2003 01:13 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by spuds taxi:
come,come Rorschach surely you can divine the meaning here. An educated man like yourself, hewn from the very soil of the Divil's Bit.
Item;- if you will of course, but only if that's your ketchup, the monolith (as Kant might have observed to Freud as they were sipping Lattes and munching Sackertorte in fin de siecle Vienna) is there to be beholded and you must behold it and like the Jews in Egypt, be beholden to the monolith that is Kilkenny. As Bertrand Russell might have concluded if he were ever lucky enough to set foot upon the beautiful Norman swards of Kilkenny as they roll into fair Ballyraggett and idyllic Muckalee, any other view is merely a congerie of filth and misperception.

Think of it as a green lollipop on this occasion. Or as Socrates might have remarked to Euripedes if they were ever to consider the primeval nature of hurling "We bet the Tipp lads handy and we're going to go about it for the rest of the year, however long it take to rub it in good and hard"

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posted 01 October 2003 01:13 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by spuds taxi:
come,come Rorschach surely you can divine the meaning here. An educated man like yourself, hewn from the very soil of the Divil's Bit.
Item;- if you will of course, but only if that's your ketchup, the monolith (as Kant might have observed to Freud as they were sipping Lattes and munching Sackertorte in fin de siecle Vienna) is there to be beholded and you must behold it and like the Jews in Egypt, be beholden to the monolith that is Kilkenny. As Bertrand Russell might have concluded if he were ever lucky enough to set foot upon the beautiful Norman swards of Kilkenny as they roll into fair Ballyraggett and idyllic Muckalee, any other view is merely a congerie of filth and misperception.

Think of it as a green lollipop on this occasion. Or as Socrates might have remarked to Euripedes if they were ever to consider the primeval nature of hurling "We bet the Tipp lads handy and we're going to go about it for the rest of the year, however long it take to rub it in good and hard"

---

posted 01 October 2003 02:23 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Blues:
And when the argument is as big as 'best of generation' well then you will probably win or lose it on your negatives rather than positives

---

That is a very good aphorism, which I'll probably have to plagarize!

Thanks for the kind words. A break, I should have said.

posted 01 October 2003 02:25 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Younger Kenny:

A question if I may Sir Arrigle (if you can lower yourself to indulging someone of my limited intellect with a retort).

Boning Galway birds with Tipp jersies?...what is that all about?..is it some kind fetish????

-YK2-

P.S. While you are indeed a widely regarded wordsmith and (self-regarded) highbrow intellectual remember the words of Bertrand Russell:

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."

because hurling ain't the only religion.

[This message has been edited by Younger Kenny (edited 01 October 2003).]

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posted 01 October 2003 02:31 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by spuds taxi:
come,come Rorschach surely you can divine the meaning here. An educated man like yourself, hewn from the very soil of the Divil's Bit.
Item;- if you will of course, but only if that's your ketchup, the monolith (as Kant might have observed to Freud as they were sipping Lattes and munching Sackertorte in fin de siecle Vienna) is there to be beholded and you must behold it and like the Jews in Egypt, be beholden to the monolith that is Kilkenny. As Bertrand Russell might have concluded if he were ever lucky enough to set foot upon the beautiful Norman swards of Kilkenny as they roll into fair Ballyraggett and idyllic Muckalee, any other view is merely a congerie of filth and misperception.

Think of it as a green lollipop on this occasion. Or as Socrates might have remarked to Euripedes if they were ever to consider the primeval nature of hurling "We bet the Tipp lads handy and we're going to go about it for the rest of the year, however long it take to rub it in good and hard"

---

Ah yes, the Deise taxi, with the excellent soundtrack...

Copped anyway. But remembering words such as 'congerie' is a bit of a slip. It's very flattering to be so influential.

Good and hard: a contradiction in terms in Waterford.