posted 04 October 2003 11:20 AM         

1. Some of the reaction to Kilkenny’s 28th A-I title in these precincts has been nothing short of bizarre. Ticking behind such, stinking the place out, is rank begrudgery.

2. That turn of events, however trying some of its aspects, is worth a bit of attention.

3. Kilkenny’s win is not the only story of 2003. Least of all in Kilkenny. Offaly’s utter inability to put it up to Tipperary when they had the wherewithal to do so would be an important one, too.

4. If there is a convincing argument to say that Kilkenny are not very good value for their three titles in the last five years, it would be good to have it made here. If there is a convincing argument to say we were not very good value for this year’s title, it would be good to have it stated here.

5. Does anyone think for a minute that Sid Wallace -- more of whose opinions below -- would be gone off this board if Cork had won?

Draw your own conclusions.

6. The lug element -- tittering behind its tertiary usernames like the ugly sisters behind their fans-- holds that my reaction to the A-I Final has lost me all credibility as a contributor. What reaction would that be now? A few off-the-cuff remarks aside, I’ve posted nothing serious about that match -- mainly because the atmosphere here afterwards was so ludicrous. Any reaction offered has essentially been a reaction to comment here, not to the contours of the match itself.

7. Some sort of somnabulism must, one way or another, pleat these phantom posts. All sorts of assertions supposedly were made, assertions for which no recall whatsoever, on my part at least, exists. Yet no-one, when retrieval of these posts is suggested, can do so. If as offended as some people are now claiming to be by particular Noreside opinions, I think I would have some recall of the threads in which these claims appeared. I think I would have some ability to quote phrases from them verbatim.

8. LLS contends that I’m just "flailing out" at any criticism of Kilkenny. And then, when requested to provide specifics from his quarter, vouchsafes nothing at all. Although plenty nettled enough to go on so about these terrible imperial predictions on our part, there comes, when queried, insufficient interest in the topic to locate the offending prompts.

Draw your own conclusions.

9. Basically, certain people want to believe that certain things have been said because such comment, if it existed, would go some small way towards legitimizing the sort of begrudgery seeping from their every pore. It’s just a version of the old sepulchral axiom: whistling past Croke Park. It’s them, not us Kilkenny folk, who believe that we are going to dominate. Any pop psychologist could give you chapter and verse. Brutal rattled altogether, the only option becomes an invention of sleights so as to sluice off anxieties.

What struck me forcibly at home, in actual fact, is how cautious serious hurling people are being about 2004.

10. Emblematically, emblematically, certain people still appear to believe that Joe Deane (or was it Ben O’Connor?) had a hurl thrown at him as he bore down on the Kilkenny goal, sliothar in hand. While a hurl possibly shouldn’t have been thrown in at that juncture, the camera angle is, in any event, misleading as to the impact its appearance could have had on the cameo. Anyway, and which or whether, it was a heat-of-the-moment thing. It beggars belief that no comment has come from such locations about the quite staggering -- and entirely premeditated ) -- gamesmanship involved in Cork’s attempt to introduce their own sliothars (was told by one of the players that all these balls, compounding such chicanery, had ‘Kilkenny’ written on them: ’twill be very interesting to see what the suits have to say on this issue).

11. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with coherent and detailed criticism of the current Kilkenny outfit. Though the lug element likes to flaunt knowledge of my musings’ minutiae, right down to colour of confectionery and so forth, it prefers to ignore the many attempts at being as hard as possible on our players’ weaknesses, technical and otherwise. Such analyses may have been wrong, stupid and indifferent. Quite possibly so. Quite possibly they were all those things. But they’re there in the archive, for anyone who wants to read them.

12. I have no problem, for instance, with Honda Mines’ comment on certain aspects of our play this year. Noel Hickey’s flake at Eoin Brislane as he came in across the endline in the League Final wasn’t very edifying. You couldn’t argue otherwise. Neither was some of Paul Kelly’s carry-on lovely to behold. But that fact doesn’t annul the first fact.

13. It would be interesting for the non-Cork lug element to give the reasons why they would have preferred to see the Rebels win their 29th title rather than Kilkenny win their 28th one. So far as I’m aware, Limerick Nomad -- very much not in that last category -- is the only person to be straightforward, saying that he’d like to see a different county win it every year. Which is a perfectly reasonable position.

14. The sort of nonsense abroad here had another articulation during coverage of the U21 Final, when a phone-in poll asked whether Kilkenny’s “dominance” was negatively effecting hurling. It would be hard to conceive of a more moronic question. Aside from the dubious nature of the framing terms -- could we be said to be dominant at all when so many feel Cork left it behind them, when the Minors only won by a point? -- there is an obvious want of intelligence in the query. What is more detrimental for hurling: Kilkenny’s current good spell or the inertia of the Dublin, Laois and Wexford Co. Boards? Equally, in another vein, was Cork’s three-in-a-row 1976-78 bad for hurling? Was Tipperary’s four titles in five years?

People badly need to cop themselves on.

15. Of course, this sort of attitude is helping us, in the end. It’s as if people have stopped expecting to beat us. As such. Accordingly, there must, for them, be reasons beyond our current excellence for our current successes.

16. All sorts of factors have therefore been canvassed, from our disinterest in gaelic football to the occult influence Liam Griffin supposedly had on our fortunes this summer. Quite frankly, this stuff been pathetic to read. What has LG to do with Kilkenny hurling? Nothing, particularly. He’s an admirer: that’s all. Very obviously, of course, LG is a really great hurling man, one who brought to ultimate glory a Wexford team hardly replete with brilliant players. That is a fair CV, in any context. All LG is ‘guilty’ of is a loose remark about the virtues of the Carter-Carey-Shefflin triumvirate. And if you read between the lines of the article LG wrote for A-I day in The Sunday Tribune , it’s clear he really wanted Cork to win, clearly fearing that a Kilkenny win might, with devastating effect, set in train in 2004 an outfit freed of all inhibitions and neuroses.

17. I despise begrudgery. Always have. Have even tried to eliminate it from my own attitudes to Tipperary hurling (while still having, I don’t doubt, some way to go down that winding road). If only on grounds of selfishness, people should try to eliminate it from their own county’s make-up, best as we can in our own small way: a hundred ones make a hundred. There is nothing more retarding of potential than begrudgery, forever plamásing with its blandishments about failure.

18. The main reason why I so dislike Nicky Brennan’s notorious comment about Clare hurling -- Kilkenny players wouldn’t swim rivers like them, wouldn’t climb mountains like them -- is because it is a blatant piece of begrudgery. That was a great Clare team, featuring some of the finest hurlers I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch. They ultimately won what they won -- and deserved to win more -- because of the quality of personnel available, spiritually and technically, not because of their ultra-intense training. Consider how Ollie Baker blossomed as a hurler . Remember how he nonchalantly tipped their puckout over the bar after that Tipperary goal in the ’97 Final. A group of Longford fellas, say, could do exactly the same amount of work, achieve exactly the same levels of fitness. But I doubt they’d win an A-I anytime soon.

19. Ger Loughnane certainly isn’t a begrudger, whatever else could be said of him. That precise dislike, as I recall, formed the substance of his attack on Eamonn Cregan in ’97. It is fitting that Brian Cody has learned so much from Loughnane’s period as a manager: Loughnane learned a lot from Ollie Walsh’s tenure. Faced with Kilkenny’s victory in the ’95 League Final, GL didn’t retreat into a whinge -- one of his own favourite words, of course -- about Kilkenny’s dominant postion. Let’s remember that a lot of observers then reckoned Kilkenny were about to do in 1995 what we’ve just done in 2003: win a third title in four years (we’d also won, of course, three Minor titles and two U21s in the previous five seasons). Extraordinary hurling man that he is, GL knew better than to retreat into the sort of nonsense some Banner contributors embraced after this year’s Final. GL knew what had to be done: speeding up their hurling.

In short: GL had no interest in begrudgery. The rest is history.

20. As it should be : the spectacle of excellence fostering the desire for equivalent excellence. Loughnane’s Clare became, I would strongly reckon, Cody’s template for how he wanted his Kilkenny to play. Out there, somewhere in front of us in the mid 2000s, is a team of non-begrudgers, who are currently learning from the current Kilkenny side how to beat them.

21. Then we will learn from them.

22. That’s how it should be.

23. Maiguesider’s comments had the glint of non-begrudgery on them. That could be a rune. So glinted, too, the majority of the ones made by the Tipp boys.

24. Munster lads here who feel that a Cork victory would somehow cast their own counties’ lack of success in a better light are really and truly codding themselves.

25. I sincerely hope that this whole Leinster-Munster ‘debate’ has been toilet-trained and put to bed.

26. A few comments on the A-I Final:

(a) Kilkenny have a better team -- and a much better panel -- than Cork.

(b) Cork could have beaten Kilkenny. Like every other side, however excellent, our current one is certainly not unbeatable. Far from it.

(c) Kinvara’s Passion -- who I hope will post more, after his travels, since he’s always worth reading -- thinks I strangely underestimated the Rebel threat. Well, to be honest, I’d write the exact same analysis again if Tardis-ed back before September 14th. If Cork couldn’t beat us on the day we played, as BKN pointed out, as badly as we’ve played in a long while, then it doesn’t seem to me I’ve much to regret. Only two and a half of our forwards played any way well. We scored a mere 1-14. And still we didn’t lose.

(d) A severe question was asked and a very adequate reply was summoned: that is the core story of the 2003 A-I Final, however you dice it.

(e) To my way of looking at things, there’s little credibility, as I said before, in going on about wides when you keep picking -- or having to pick, rather, for want of depth in your panel -- players whose score-per-shot ration has long been iffy. If we’d lost, I’d have been laughed off this board if I’d come on handwringing about John Hoyne’s pots at goal. And rightly so.

(f) It was all set up for Cork to win it, after they went a point up. They didn’t.

(g) The more I think about this victory, the better it becomes. It showed, as Brian Cody might say, savage character.

(h) Basically, after Niall McCarthy’s howling miss, we got back in the saddle, mainly thanks to five key plays by Henry Shefflin. I’m not persuaded by the idea that Cork would have gone on to win had McCarthy’s post-bound effort and dire miss opened up a lead of three points. There was plenty time left to haul back that gap. Ditto, I would argue, for the penalty that earlier was and then wasn’t, however it might have ended out: goal, point, miss or save. You’d have to think Santy’s theatrics earlier in the summer played a part in Pat O’Connor’s thinking (on balance, though, I have to say, it looked a penalty). But these things usually cancel themselves out. Santy and Cork had had some fairly green rubs of referees’ decisions in earlier matches.

(i) Which or whether, one-point lead or three-point lead, there would have been fifteen or so minutes left to go. Naturally, I don’t doubt that we’d have turned things around. But leave my own personal confidence aside. The only coherent way of addressing such hypotheticals is to ask whether the team in question -- Kilkenny -- had form in such a situation: that’s to say, whether the team had been in games before where we’d been led or had had a team batten on us in the game’s final sixth or final seventh. This team had considerable such form -- League Final 2002, Leinster Final 2002, semi-final 2002, League Final 2003 -- and that pattern argues for only one ‘hypothetical’ result.

(j) Where Cork could have genuine regrets, perhaps, would be about two incidents:

i. Joe Deane’s pass in the 58th minute to Timmy McCarthy going astray in a promising enough position, a loss of possession that ended up with Martin Comerford’s fourth point after a great pick-up by Henry Shefflin from a skewed Peter Barry clearance.

ii. Ben O’Connor’s ill-judged attempt to pass to Deane in the 64th minute, a loss of possession that resulted, John Hoyne having pulled on the ground when Richie Mullally’s clearance was batted down, in Shefflin’s preternatural ‘dragback’ and Comerford’s goal.

Again, though, the same sort of caveat as before -- wides being well nigh inevitable from certain individuals -- can be made. How can there be any surprise at McCarthy and O’Connor making key mistakes when the heat is on? Pick them and that’s the gamble.

(k) I said that Cork were pretty much hurled out of it for the last fifteen minutes or so. Having looked again at the video, I stand by that analysis:

56: Noel Hickey surely was fouled before a quarter-blocked J. J. Delaney clearance results in Niall McCarthy’s howler.

58: Comerford’s fourth point, after Shefflin’s first key play.

59: Delaney. fetches after short puckout to Diarmuid O’Sullivan; ultimately results in a Cork 65, which John Gardiner misses.

60: Our puckout eventually comes, via a Mullally kick, to Shefflin, making his second key play; Shefflin has the hurling nous under iron pressure to peel away from the ruck, receive Derek Lyng’s snig and point.

61: Sean Dowling fetches the puckout; Pat Mulcahy gathers his clearance and plays forward to Deane, who drops his shot short to James McGarry, whose clearance is brilliantly gathered by Shefflin, in his third key play; Shefflin is fouled and D. J. Carey drives wide Kilkenny’s first free of the second half (cancelling Gardiner’s miss). Why Shefflin didn’t take this free is hard to understand.

64: Ben O’Connor’s fluffed pass, after the Cork puckout leads to broken play, ends up with the Comerford goal, after Shefflin’s fourth brilliant play.

65: Delaney fetches the puckout and is unlucky to cede possession to Jerry O’Connor, who points.

66. Kilkenny sort of win their puckout, with Carey losing possession in a bad fashion.

67: Great Hickey fetch gets us out of jail after Carey’s mistake; a very poor Barry clearance goes to Niall McCarthy, who is stopped by a brilliant tackle by Delaney. Niall McCarthy has a headstagger.

69: Intense passage of play after free results in Seanie McGrath’s poor lobbed effort; from the clearance Shefflin, with his fifth key play, makes himself available for Conor Phelan’s snig and points.

70: McGrath point, which feels sort of flaccid, from puckout ( Cork’s second score in last fifteen minutes). The game is not over but the game is up. Then there’s the last bit of drama around the free after Gorta’s shot drops short, after we control our puckout.

We cleanly won three out of the five Cork puckouts. We largely controlled the aftermath of ours. We got four well-worked scores when the abyss yawned. Cork scored a point from Delaney’s half-mistake and a point when it didn’t really count. We saw Henry Shefflin play as good a fifteen minutes of hurling as anyone in a black-and-amber jersey has ever played when it has really counted. Peter Barry’s lack of strokeplay caused a deal of the trouble. Our three subs -- and Mullally and Phelan in particular -- did very well. Compare the contributions of the Cork subs, O’Connor and McGrath.

I’d call that being pretty much hurled out of it, all in all.

(l) A parallel occurs to me. Kilkenny felt they left the 1998 A-I behind them. With hindsight, it’s as if we thought the 1999 A-I was going to win itself, due to our ‘misfortune’ the year before. If Cork get to next year’s A-I Final, you’d have to wonder whether the same misperception might befall them. Little Leeside comment has focused on how they need five or six new hurlers for next year to look a really credible side. If, into the bargain, there is any substance in all the talk over the last few years about hurling now being a twenty-man game, where does that leave Cork’s hopes? A bit like us in ’98, perhaps, Rebel support seems reluctant to ask some of the most basic and most pertinent of questions:

i. Where was a Seanie O’Leary-like touch from Santy when Deane handpassed to him in front of goal?

ii. Only for a schoolboy error by James Ryall (and let’s remember that Liam Simpson, after a torrid time in ’91, went on to be our best player on aggregrate performance in ’92 and ’93), how much would Santy have contributed to the game? He is a good and unusual talent. But he’s no Eoin Kelly.

iii. Why is a man being played at fullforward who, crunch come, doesn’t appear suited to its demands?

iv. Will Tom Kenny make a midfielder?

v. Can they afford to persist with The Rock’s antics?

There are other proper queries. But those ones would surely be high on any list.

(m) There is no doubt that Gardiner-Curran-O hAilpin is a really great halfback line in the making. That’s a lot of the battle, if two more scoring forwards can be found.

27. Why are Kilkenny enjoying such success at the minute? It seems important to ask. Difficult topic. My own inadequate thoughts would be along these lines:

(a) We have some outstanding hurlers (and we appear to have some outstanding prospects, into the bargain). The key thing, though, is that the lesser talents have worked hard to ensure that they are, first and foremost, a team , willing to die in the last ditch. We have won all decided-in-the-last-ten-minutes contests since defeat in 2001.

(b) There isn’t a tail to the current Kilkenny team in the way that facet is discernible in Cork, Tipperary and Waterford. Also, contrast the way D. J. Carey never puts his hands on his hips -- a la Paul Flynn -- when things aren’t going his way, as they didn’t all summer.

(c) We have a tremendous manager who has clarity about what he wants from his players, a feature that seems to cancel the occasional dubious decision.

(d) We have an excellent Co. Board, one that seems to have avoided the sort of machinations that are warping other counties (this factor is a really important one in my view). We have an excellent Chairman in Ned Quinn. We have no Frank Murphy- or Phelim Murphy-like figure with which to contend. The players are very well looked after, on their own account (the situation in Cork before this year defies belief). Thanks to good organization, we play most of our underage hurling -- as Liam Griffin has emphasized -- with the sun on the players’ backs. The progress of internal club games doesn’t seem to get hobbled, as in other counties, by the fortunes of the Senior team (keeping county players fresh, into the bargain). It is crazy that the current Galway Senior C’ship, for instance, is at a less advanced stage than our one.

(e) Nor is this Co. Board one for resting on its laurels. The night the U21 title was won, Ned Quinn asked Martin Fogarty -- whose stock has soared (and who will likely be manager after Brian Cody) -- to take the U17s from this year’s Minors for a few sessions before and after Christmas. Particularly in mind, in this request, was the fact that only five off the panel are underage next year (Hartley, Nolan and Guinan from the team). Those busy with their cramped resentments on this site would do well to consider how this kind of foresight is contributing to our success, present and potential.

But any such analysis would go against the grain of some very gnarled personalities.

(f) Mulcair has suggested that Kilkenny’s quota of Senior clubs is well nigh ideal as a number (he himself, of course, has made some really cogent suggestions for a reorganization of Tipperary’s club structures, suggestions which the people with power in Tipp would do well to heed).

(g) The influence of the reorganization of underage structures in 2000 now appears to be kicking in. We, again, were proactive. And so it doesn’t seem to me very credible for anyone to lament Kilkenny “dominance” or whatever if their own county hasn’t gone down the road of using development squads. Limerick have already reaped serious rewards from travelling the same path. And so I dearly hope to see them win an A-I in the next three or four years.

(h) People mightn’t have adequately grasped the most important aspect of these development squads. Their real significance is not so much the production, in the long run, of Senior hurlers. Their real significance is as a vehicle for acknowledgement of hurling’s prestige as a game within the county. Most of the young fellas in these squads will just go on to be club hurlers. Which or whether, the presence of these groupings gives lads a rope ladder across the plunge of their teenage years. Younger lads see older lads enjoying the status. And want it for themselves. And so on.

The most important thing any sports programme has to do is to make envy productive. No longer do you have to be good enough to play County Minor to feel hurling wants you in a serious way. No longer do you have to play County Minor to be coached in a very serious way. No longer does underage ambition come in a fairly monochrome spectrum.

(i) Hurling is now, in my view, more popular in Kilkenny than it ever has been. Coming back for matches over the last years and going into pubs, going into venues, I’ve been amazed to see some of the faces. These were guys who had never been into the game, as players or as spectators. Many of them had been soccer heads, disdaining all things GAA. Now here they were in Kennedy’s, supping pints with grins on their faces. Great stuff: all the parish’s children were going to grow up with hurling as their main game.

(j) That’s what now happening. For me, the highlight of any trip home is just going into the field for any kind of a match: four-year-olds are tearing around with hurls. People in their sixties and seventies are watching them, already sizing up the clasp of breeding. As well: girls are now playing camogie -- up and down Main Street, Ballyhale, for instance, as lads left on the Saturday night to hit Dublin -- well beyond the age girls before fell away because it was uncool to keep playing. Always important, of course, hurling has now come still closer again to being a total way of life (many journalists picked up on that point over this summer, scratching their heads for the verities of cause-and-effect scenarios). Locally, at any rate, the old Knocktopher-Ballyhale friction seems to have largely gone (Knocktopher was always more soccer-friendly, for whatever reason: I remember the Shamrocks coming out on the Carmelite field and whizzing balls all over the place so as to drive Abbey Villa down onto the five-a-side pitch to train). Being one of the generation who grew up training on that muddy, ill-draining space -- the Shamrocks won three club A-Is without having dressing-rooms in which to tog out -- I can definitely say it wasn’t anything like the same as having your own facilities. Now that field in Ballyhale is a place of resort for everyone -- and a very safe one for parents as regards their kids, however young. Metaphorically and literally, hurling is absolutely central in Ballyhale in a way not quite seen before. And I’ve no reason to think we’re unusual in that regard, since we were late in acquiring our own ground.

(k) Details, as ever : was asked by the groundsman -- the great Kevin Kennedy -- to do the scoreboard at the recent Minor C Final. Three young fellas of ten competed as to who could help me most. Two of them will be playing for Kilkenny in the Tony Forristal Tournament in four years’ time. All three of them already idolize Richie Hogan. One of them was able to tell me that Hogan takes frees off both sides, ever before I saw Hogan do it myself.

Another : a brother of one of these young fellas made a revealing comment to John Power when he brought the cup to Ballyhale in 2000. Power was asked about his favourite position. Wingback, he said. Our fella, then himself only thirteen: “Ah no, John: you’re way too loose for wingback!”

And another, while I’m enjoying myself : over watching the Shamrocks train the Tuesday before I came back, one of the same three young lads asked nothing finer than playing a hurling version of ‘keep it up’ for ten or more minutes. They’re really shy and polite until they get going with a sliothar. He’s remarkable good, for a lad of ten. Noticing, while gripping RHOT, that he favoured his left, I asked him if he was left-handed. He is. With his hurling already so advanced, it probably wouldn’t be worth trying to change his grip (and ye know me on these questions...). However, he didn’t at all demur at the suggestion that he drive a rake of shots, at all heights, off his right. Entirely of his own accord, he would, with a flourish, show an imaginary back his left side before wheeling around and hitting off his right, on the half-turn, a succession of strokes.

Adjacent, a lad of fourteen -- who’d just won the Forristal with Kilkenny -- repeatedly tried to slice a ball over the bar from the endline. Which reminds me: whilst watching a Minor League match against The Village in Larchfield after the semi-final against Tipp, another Ballyhale lad on that recent Forristal team gave a cocky, detailed and very sensible critique of Donncha Cody’s (de)merits as a defender.

This sort of stuff is going on all over Kilkenny, I don’t doubt.

30. Numerous times, I have made explicit my admiration for Sid Wallace’s abilities -- and my frustration, correct or incorrect, about the unworthy snigs. Rejigging that Belle & Sebastian song was not my finest moment on ch.com. But there was obtuseness involved, your honour.

SW is gone from here and I regret that departure. However, I want to finish up by using what he had to say in the A-I Final’s aftermath as a sort of lightning-rod for the feelings that streaked this board. I believe that’s an appropriate way to treat his contribution.

So:

(a) It really was a poor effort on SW’s part to bring Maiguesider’s name into his spleen. It seems to have escaped people’s notice -- including his own -- that this animus displayed a certain arrogance. After all, SW was essentially telling Maigue that he wasn’t sharp enough to read the situation for himself, to make a judgement for himself. Had there not been two particular factors -- that I’d expressed, on several occasions long prior to the 2003 A-I Final, the hope that Limerick would win a title in the near future, as well as having struck up a good relationship with the Limerick boys pretty much from the start -- SW’s characterization (“pat on the head”) might have been fair comment. SW’s claim, in culpably ignoring those two factors, came nowhere near any such category.

Am I also alone in finding SW’s certainty that Limerick (and a host of other counties, he implies) will not win an A-I title “in [his] lifetime” -- a span reaching, I hope, to at least forty more years -- a touch odd, even a touch arrogant? I make a claim for a possible four-in-a-row at U21 on the basis of obvious factors, thereby upsetting some. Yet this vatic certainty about the next four decades occasions no disquiet...

(b) I’m very far from glad that Waterford have so underperformed in the last four seasons.

(c) I’ve already warmly complimented SW on his insight about Hickey, Delaney and Comerford playing with such freedom in the 2003 Final probably because they didn’t play in 1999 Final. To be honest, I’m envious the same nuance didn’t occur to me in all my lengthy deliberations before the Final.

Such being so, such perceptiveness being so evident, I can only invite readers to consider what factor could account for the same contributor plummeting down to giving this reason for Kilkenny’s recent victories: “only because everyone else is so sh!te”.

Draw your own conclusions. But I reckon only begrudgery could account for so calamitous a fall in standard.

(d) SW does not entirely content himself, however, with that explanation. SW does not settle on this notion -- the current crapness of all other hurling teams -- as a sufficient elucidation of his thesis. SW moves on to address himself to one particular issue: what exactly are counties trying “to emulate” when they try to match Kilkenny’s stature? Essentially, this discussion, while not of the highest lucidity, involves an examination of the factors SW discerns behind recent Noreside successes.

SW offers two initial observations. First: “wonderful under age structures” (though this facet, he says, is “not infallible”). A bit of a non-point, so, since no-one in Kilkenny, to my knowledge at least, has ever made an ultramontanist case about underage titles (although you could hardly argue for them as a disadvantage and Liam Fennelly was correct when he said in 1987 that Kilkenny wouldn’t win another Senior title until we won another Minor title: three Minor wins came in four years and we won, coincidentally or not, Senior the following year). Again, there creeps into SW’s approach a grudging note, for no apparent reason. Does SW mean that Kilkenny’s recent successes are rather mysterious because a good underage set-up does not guarantee good Seniors? And that, being mysterious, this success therefore must involve hidden factors only SW is willing to discern? His logic is not crystalline. But it seems that such is his logic.

Which or whether, there’s an obvious point SW is missing: Kilkenny people put so much into underage coaching because Kilkenny people intensely love hurling. That love of hurling often leads to hurling success: true enough. But it’s not a love of success that has led to this love of hurling. The founding prompt is this feeling for the beautiful game. Kilkenny certainly does not have a monopoly or a premium on love of hurling. Nor ever should it. I know, from having trained under him, that Martin Óg Morrissey loves hurling as much as any Kilkenny man. But that emotion’s role in my own county has to be recognized. To my eye, it’s the only way of explaining why we’ve consistently punched so far above our population densities.

Second: SW notes the forceful presence of ‘tradition’. Analytically, though, he adds nothing save to say: “ours [meaning: Waterford and Limerick, amongst other counties] is a different tradition to the big three”. It is hard to regard this comment as anything other than a banality. What might have been interesting would have been an honest account of why it appears to distress SW more when Kilkenny win A-Is than when Cork or Tipperary do so. Be that as it may, SW once more leaves his analyis at the level of tone : Acoustically, SW has served notice that he is suitably unimpressed by Kilkenny’s achievements. More here, he seems to wink, than meets the eye.

(e) However, that is not the whole story. It is to SW’s credit, I suppose, that he appears to oscillate between an implicit realization of his analysis’ low partiality and a willingness to face that low impulse on his part. SW does, in fairness, pose the key question: why are Kilkenny “so much more successful than their near neighbours, Tipp, Waterford and Wexford, despite having a smaller population”? That’s the real poser (although we’re not, in historical terms, any more successful than Tipperary, especially in face-to-face encounters).

Betraying more than perhaps he would like, SW then pauses to essay a fairly unedifying dig at the fact I don’t currently live in my native place: “the people at the heart of the game in Kilkenny know quite well” -- a gibe all the more lamentable since no-one has ever suggested SW’s opinions are less valid because he currently resides in Dublin.

Anyway, SW moves on to offer six reasons (when you carefully sieve his prose) for my county’s disproportionate levels of achievement. Much of his reasoning, to my mind, is pretty bizarre. SW alternates between wanting to believe and having to believe several incompatible things. Here are the six prompts lodged in that ambivalence:

i. The fact that the chasing teams are so “sh!te”.

Less said, the better, as I’ve said. I wouldn’t personally put the current Waterford team in that category.

Relatedly, it’s also worth noting that SW rated all the main hurling counties for 2004. On his assessment, Kilkenny were first, with Cork second and Wexford third. So : Kilkenny beat the best two teams in Ireland to win this year’s title, on SW’s own account. It only remains to ask: what more could we have done, even for SW?

ii. The “attitude towards football” within Kilkenny is very significant. Like many others this summer, SW wishes to refute the notion that our indifference to the code “plays no part” in Noreside levels of success. SW instances John Leahy getting injured whilst playing football for Tipperary in 1994. SW also raises names such as Stephen Lucey and Declan Browne.

First off, Kilkenny has a lot less tradition at football than counties such as Tipperary or Limerick. For one thing, both those counties possess, unlike us, an A-I title in the code. Equally, both counties have a credible chance of winning a Provincial C’ship. There are plenty of decent footballers on the current Kilkenny hurling panel (after all, they beat Armagh last September at soccer...). But it is hard to see what would ever motivate them to become dual players. That’s the nub of the issue, since SW is discerning advantage in our not having a Senior gaelic football squad. That’s the point to remember, over and above SW’s guff.

That claim has its own logic, of course. Which is: that a significant amount of Kilkenny Senior hurlers would wish to become Senior footballers if we created such a panel. Therefore it is not simply in the failure to field a Senior gaelic football team that any advantage would lie. That headstart would lie in the disruption such an entry would cause to Senior hurling preparations. For SW’s case to hold any water, it needs to be easy to envisage such disruption.

I doubt in the extreme that such a scenario would ever come to pass. After all, there was a time when Kilkenny, not so long ago, had a Senior football team. Would anyone care to tabulate for me the manner in which that team’s presence hindered our chances in hurling? You’d soon, so tabulating, be reaching for the motley.

SW claims that we have a great advantage because the issue of dual players does not rear its head, as it has, recently and acridly, in Limerick. To that speculation, I would make the same obvious point. Even if the Co. Board ploughed a lot into raising the profile of gaelic football, even if we fielded a Senior gaelic football team, it would have no impact on our prospects in Senior hurling. The duration of Kilkenny teams’ involvement in all football C’ships has long been a short one. There is no fear of players suffering Brian Corcoran-like burnout. The likes of Henry Shefflin is not going to give up his chance of becoming a legend of the game to dabble in football. Or am I missing something?

Nor would I give much weight to John Leahy’s injury, as regards this theme. By all accounts, JL was a hard goer rather than an accomplished footballer. That injury had a lot more to do with the perilous state of JL’s head in ’94 than it had to do with any confliction on his part over codes. Read Beyond the Tunnel on that period. Basically, JL had lost the plot.

The heart is a lonely hunter, as the title goes. It is hard to know what drives sportsmen at the best of times. Certainly, it is hard to know what drives Declan Browne, who would have a much greater chance of winning an A-I medal in hurling than in football. But DB is a brilliant footballer and goes his own way. I’m delighted that he’s going to Australia.

But let’s be clear about the substance of SW’s implication: Kilkenny have some class of an emblematic advantage because DB is not playing with the Tipperary Senior hurling team. That, diced, is his case. And you would, strenuously, have to query it. Is DB -- who is in his late twenties, by the way -- so brilliant a hurler that Tipp are suffering from his absence? Judging by comment on PVDF, the jury is certainly out. Judging by assessments of DB’s performances with the Intermediates, SW’s decision to rest his thesis on DB is a misjudgement. The reality is that DB is a far greater footballer than a hurler. That, most likely, accounts for his choices. An attempt to make some point on the back of DB’s disinterest in Senior hurling -- or Senior hurling’s disinterest in DB, quite possibly -- cuts no ice.

So : this notion of some putative advantage, once rigorously examined, is patent nonsense. The Kilkenny Co. Board could move heaven and earth as regards promoting gaelic football and still it would be near impossible to envisage Kilkenny as football contenders in any serious way. And let’s be honest: only being contenders would be likely to tempt guys away from another code in which they’re usually there or thereabouts. That factor will always exercise a gravitional pull. That’s not likely to change (end of day, the population factor is always going to be a huge circumstance to overcome). It would be the work of many many generations to bring feeling in Kilkenny about gaelic football to a pitch anyway close to the emotions which surround hurling. Anyone possessing serious talent with the small ball will always choose hurling. Ask Paddy Mullally. Whatever the Co. Board did, I can foresee no circumstances in which that orientaion would change. And so the argument about [/] advantage [/I] is null and void.

There is an another argument about the promotion of gaelic football. That is the idea that the Kilkenny Co. Board should be promoting gaelic football as part of a generalized gaelic games agenda. That contention, it should be noted, is an entirely separate matter from the ‘advantage’ argument. Yet even here SW doesn’t give us a fair crack of the whip. Let’s focus, in this regard, on a specific proposal. To wit: AFR instances one of his contributors’ suggestion that counties should play each other in both games, with a winner emerging on an aggregrate score over the two matches. Supposedly, that imperative would strengthen both codes.

INTERLUDE

By the way, while I’m here : SW queried my dissatisfaction with AFR’s article, choosing, as so often, to go against the clear nature of what I actually wrote. My unhappiness was not with AFR offering an opinion on football in Kilkenny. My unhappiness was with AFR proffering an old article on that topic as an adequate means of marking -- if only by his own high standards -- our victory over Tipperary in this year’s semi-final. Most unworthily, that choice, I repeat, was a calculated and begrudging sleight on AFR’s part

END OF INTERLUDE

Anyhow, I believe such an argument -- an aggregrate both-codes victor -- to be very wrongheaded. There are two issues here. First: there is always going to be a problem with population. Leitrim, for instance, struggle to put out a competitive football team. How could they be expected also to put out, from such a small pool of suitably aged males, a serious hurling team? Second: this plan, if introduced, would destroy hurling. What would happen is that hurling counties would have to become much better at football, with the beautiful game relegated to second place. It would be infinitely easier for Kilkenny to become good at gaelic football than it would for Armagh to become good at hurling. That is to take nothing away from Armagh, a great county. Hurling is an infinitely more skilful game, as this year’s football C’ship searingly attested. That being so, only one thing would happen. That being so, the AFR initiative would be disastrous for hurling.

Here is where SW comes back in. Revealingly, SW claimed it was “unworthy” of me to make a particular query. That challenge concerned why certain individuals weren’t being consistent, why certain individuals weren’t pressuring Armagh -- and the men in orange are only adduced, I should stress, since they were last year’s football Champions -- as to why their Co. Board is not doing more to promote hurling. The depths to which SW’s begrudgery carry him were again evident in his bizarre retort about the Orchard County’s indifference to hurling: “You might as well have pointed out that Man U don’t have a hurling team”. Well, no, actually. If there is an onus on Kilkenny to promote both games, to have a parity of esteem for the two disciplines, surely there is an onus on all counties to further both codes? Why would there be a heavier pressure on the Marble County than on any other one? What’s sauce for the hurler is sauce for the footballer. Not so?You would have to think so.

But no: not really. Here, SW’s begrudgery wriggled out into the light. Armagh can be put on the same footing as Manchester United as regards hurling. But Kilkenny must be put on the same footing as the strongest football counties when it comes to the big ball. Do I have to point out the obvious? Do I really?

Okay, so : all that this ‘argument’ is fundamentally about is an attempt to diminish Kilkenny’s achievements by saying we have some (unfair) advantages. Only SW, as we’ll see further below, is adequately alert to their presence. The real difference between Kilkenny and Armagh -- that’s to say, the motivation behind SW’s self-contradicting comments -- is that the former have far more titles (and Waterford is not separated from the Orchard County merely by a river). The net impulse on SW’s part ends up as follows: to try to put as many impediments in Kilkenny’s way as possible. Failing that, failing a halt in Kilkenny victories, there merely remains the clammy work of seeking to diminish those wins with all sorts of extraordinary guff on everything under the sun, from Nicky Cashin to the absence of hurlers at Old Trafford.

So : I don’t think it’s me who’s being craven. Even pragmatism alone would deliver that verdict. Gaelic football, quantitatively, is in a far ruder state of health than hurling. Therefore it’s surely obvious that there is more of an onus on football counties to foster hurling than there is on hurling counties to support gaelic football. Seamus J. King, a far greater authority than myself, wrote in A History of Hurling (1996): “Hurling is a significant game in about ten counties, and it should be cultivated and developed in them. This would be a better policy than dissipating scarce resources in trying to cultivate the game outside that area.” Not sure I agree with this ringfencing of hurling, though I understand the concern that advocates it. But there is no doubting the sentiment’s corollary: that hurling counties have more than enough on their plate with strengthening hurling. With my primary concern being hurling’s future, my view is that there should be two separate boards, one per code.

One last thing here. There’s one thing I really despise about this late-made interest in Kilkenny football: where was this preoccupation in 1999? Seems it’s only an issue when we are Champions. It says a lot about people’s agendas that this preoccupation is nowhere to be seen when we are losing A-I Finals rather than winning them.

Enough said, really, in all senses.

iii. The role of Nicky Cashin in SKC is also a factor that hugely exercises SW. He goes so far as to deem NC the finest hurling coach in Ireland (a contention queried in cogent terms, in any event, by Lory 1). Which or whether, the fact that NC is a Waterford man means...

Well, it’s not at all clear, in fact, what that aspect means. Again, we are back with tone. SW appears to want to imply that Kilkenny sucks great coaches into its bounds, leeching off abilities that would be far better employed in other counties and thereby gaining a hidden advantage that must be acknowledged in all paeans to emulating Kilkenny. Equally -- and here’s the red rub -- Kilkenny does not reciprocate: “how come the Kilkenny coach in the Waterford school delivers so little”? Yet there quickly comes a concessive, as there must, of course, due to the facts of the topic. That concessive entirely undercuts any such argument: all hurling nurseries are “stuffed with Kilkenny men”.

So what is SW’s point, then? Is he trying to say that the Marble City takes much but gives little -- and that this parsimony is behind the disproportionate success, is yet another concealed asset? Or is SW trying to say that we both receive much and give much, therefore inevitably returning us to the same perplexing question: why is Kilkenny so special a case, given its light population?

All I can say is that it is not news to me that Kilkenny hurling has often benefited from extra-county input in various ways. It is not news to me that Bobby Hinks and Ramie Dowling were schooled in Mount Sion. It is not news to me that Dowling lost a Harty Cup Final to North Mon by a point. Denis Philpott’s Cork origins are not news to me. It is not news to me what a good coach Aidan Fogarty was for O’Loughlin Gaels.

Could go on but the point is made. SW is talking rubbish. Why does SW try to imply that Diarmuid Healy never managed Offaly, with epochal changes resulting, that DH is not now attempting to do the same for Dublin hurling? Why does SW try to imply that Georgie Leahy doesn’t exist? Why does SW ignore Fr Tommy Maher’s work as a young curate in Dublin? What’s more, of course, SW well knows, at some level, the reductive effect these omissions have on his perspective. But SW is nevertheless driven to persist with this drivel. That’s why SW contradicts himself. And what could account for that urge, that needless self-contradiction?

Draw your own conclusions. Personally, I’d say: only begrudgery, in an intelligent person.

iv. Another occluded benefit Kilkenny hurling enjoys, according to SW, is proximity to WIT. Fo him, this factor is another reason why any ambition to emulate the great removed black-and-amber monolith is an ambition based on a false premise.

This emphasis by SW is a curious one. Again, let’s break it down. It takes nothing away from Waterford City as a place or Waterford as a county to query how, in the first instance, a third-level institution ‘belongs’ to the area in which it is sited. How ‘Dublin’, in hurling terms, is UCD? How Dublin was DCU when they had Nicky English training them? My point is simple: this question is a more complex one than mere geographical location.

SW claims that WIT is chock-a-block with Deise personnel. Personally, I’m not au fait with the ins and outs of who runs WIT hurling at the minute. I’d be grateful to be apprised. What I do recall is that Colm Bonnar, a Cashel man, was centrally involved there for a good spell. And what I suspect is that the history of hurling in WIT is far from pan-Déise in coaching terms. Equally, I know a Kilmacow man is currently centrally involved in UCC, likely influential in bringing down some of Kilkenny’s most outstanding underage prospects to play piratical hurling. These things are more complex than merely where an institution stands. Reading Beyond the Tunnel , you’d quckly learn that a fair few Tipp men -- such as Borrisokane’s Ian Conroy -- were involved in UCC’s great run in the ’80s as well as that great Corkman Monsignor O’Brien.

But this aspect is not the crucial point here. The crucial point here is that SW implies that he discerns another unacknowledged blessing for Kilkenny: the availability of WIT to its young hurlers. SW instances Henry Shefflin, who came in a raw underperforming minor and left a player on his way to being HOTY. WIT is a great hurling academy and I’m always pleased when I see Noresiders on its team lists. I’d a first cousin on the first WIT outfit -- or was it then still WRTC? -- to win Fitzgibbon and he is always waxing lyrical about the experience. Henry is extremely warm about his WIT days (and nights!). SW’s case, however, is entirely beskewed by blind prejudice. The college also hugely contributed to Eamonn Corcoran’s brilliance as a hurler. So far as I know, Corcoran is from Templemore rather than from Glenmore.

SW wants somehow to say this: Kilkenny derive some generally unseen benefit from WIT hurling. The actual truth runs like this: all hurling counties can derive the same benefit. Ask Ollie Moran. Ask the Wexford boys, the Offaly boys. Like all Fitzgibbon-entering institutions, WIT is there for all lads who want to hurl and who have the points, whatever their native county.

v. SW then makes a very interesting point: the “commitment to education in hurling communities” has a knock-on effect for Kilkenny success, in that the county’s youth benefit, in short, from hurling Fitzgibbon. SW particularly has in mind the “rural working class”. Well, first off, just on a matter of fact, Henry Shefflin isn’t from that last-mentioned class. Nor, so far as I’m aware, are the O’Connor brothers of Ballinfacy, since SW mentions them too.

Any particular individual’s background is neither here nor there, really. SW is seeking to deal with a pattern -- and to imply, yet again, that there is some camouflaged boon for Kilkenny present in that pattern.This topic is a fascinating one in terms far broader than hurling. But we’ll have to forego elaboration. It just remains to note the same sorry tendency in SW’s musings. He strives to make out that Kilkenny has some sort of inbuilt advantage in the way its rural classes -- and especially its rural proles -- go on to college.

There are two elements to SW’s attempted logic which should be scrutinized.

First: is rural South Kilkenny in any way more advantaged than rural South Galway as regards access to third-level education? Than people who live in Rathnure or in Mullinahone? Is SW trying to say that Kilkenny youngsters are just cleverer than other youngsters? And that therefore a greater amount of them go on to college, with an inevitable increase in the amount of Kilkenny tyros who get to polish their hurling?

This sort of rhetorical carry-on is quite bizarre, as I noted at the outset.

Second: does SW actually know what the relevant figures are? A few years ago, reading an article in The Irish Times , I recall feeling a sort of amour propre that the figures for the amount of Kilkenny lads and ladies in third-level education were relatively low in comparison with surrounding counties (Carlow’s figure was much higher, I seem to remember). That response has nothing to do with me thinking that there’s something inherently wonderful or desirable about going to college. Not at all. It was just a comparative thing: I just didn’t like the idea that we weren’t taking up opportunities as much as other counties.

So hard facts -- which are not currently before us, even though SW’s logic presumes them -- are required. Even if the numbers of Kilkenny eighteen-year-olds heading off every September were very high, you’d still need a far closer argument than SW was able -- or willing -- to provide. It is very difficult to believe that Kilkenny people obtain some intrinsic educational edge simply by being born in Mullinavat rather than in Mullagh.

If I started to imply something like that, people would start calling me arrogant.

vi. Finally, inevitably, tediously, the state of Leinster hurling is trundled out. This topic has been debated to infinity on ch.com and elsewhere. Certainly not going to rehash it yet again. What did emerge from those scrums in some sort of factual sense was that there aren’t any criteria -- ‘head-to-head encounters in the last ten years’, ‘head-to-head encounters since 1997’, ‘underage titles won’, ‘A-I titles won’ and so forth-- which bear out Munster’s supposed superiority. If anything, such criteria argue for Leinster more than holding its own.

So SW’s recourse to this hoary topic does him, yet again, no favours at all as regards his expose of Kilkenny hurling’s improper advantages.

(f) SW said to me a while ago, as we sought to bury the hatchet, that he regretted hopping that ball about Nicky English’s BA and that he also regretted his silly comments about Kilkenny football. Now the latter gripe waxes wider than ever. What had changed in the meantime?

Only that Kilkenny had won their 28th A-I title, that’s what.

Draw your own conclusions about the motor force of begrudgery.

(g) Kilkenny, as a county, does have an inbuilt advantage for hurling: its countryside. Not that it is the only place with such sway, of course. The historian Kevin Whelan characterizes the nature of hurling’s heartland: “It coincides with well-drained, level terrain, seldom moving too far off the dry sod of the limestone areas, which also happen to produce the best materials for hurls--ash. It is closely liked to the distribution of big farms, where the relatively comfortable lifestyle afforded the leisure to pursue the sport.” There was likewise, according to Whelan, a historical convergence (which might help some to understand one of my emphases in earlier posts): “in the late medieval period, the Norman and Gaelic worlds fused to produce a vigorous culture”.

It has long struck me that Connemara, for instance, could be a region in which hurling is played superbly. The sort of skills honed from generation to generation due to fishing -- great upper-body strength, agility, good use of yourself in tight situations -- would transfer very well to hurling. Certainly, the careers of the Connollys, sons of Leitirmóir, does not harm my case. Alas, due to the treeless landscape, the game never took root.

At moments such as this one, thinking about those uncontrollable factors of earth and sky, you have to feel very humble for the luck of being born into the alkaline fields of South Kilkenny.

posted 04 October 2003 12:28 PM         

How much cafeene had you in your system when you wrote this.

posted 04 October 2003 03:58 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

8. LLS contends that I’m just "flailing out" at any criticism of Kilkenny. And then, when requested to provide specifics from his quarter, vouchsafes nothing at all. Although plenty nettled enough to go on so about these terrible imperial predictions on our part, there comes, when queried, insufficient interest in the topic to locate the offending prompts.

Draw your own conclusions.

---

Arrigle,

I've already outlined why I wrote what I wrote on the other thread, so I'm not going back over it.

However, I do believe that you have been overeager to look for 'begrudgery' where there isn't any; although there certainly is some, there isn't as much as you seem to think on this board.

Also, I'd concur with the assertions here that you're doing yourself no favours with such lengthy efforts. I mean, what does the ten-year-olds helping you with the scoreboard have to do with the price of turnips? I find myself reluctantly ignoring the vast bulk of your posts because they're too long, the sentences contain too many clauses and the language used is so arcane. Nobody likes cliches, but IMO you're heading too far in the other direction.

posted 04 October 2003 07:33 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tbilisi:
Less is more, Arrigle, less is more.

---

Is that the mantra of all employees of star newspapers.

posted 04 October 2003 07:55 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Digger:
Is that the mantra of all employees of star newspapers.

---

posted 04 October 2003 08:22 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Digger:
I guarantee Kilkenny's dis advantage in this regard would not be great at all. Clare and Limerick similarly have hurling and football areas that are well defined.

---

If one was to look at a map, the county team in Limerick will rarely have players that come from clubs that are the left of the main Cork Limerick Road on the map. Adare are the exception.

posted 04 October 2003 09:13 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:
[To wit: AFR instances one of his contributors’ suggestion that counties should play each other in both games, with a winner emerging on an aggregrate score over the two matches. Supposedly, that imperative would strengthen both codes.

[b] INTERLUDE

By the way, while I’m here : SW queried my dissatisfaction with AFR’s article, choosing, as so often, to go against the clear nature of what I actually wrote. My unhappiness was not with AFR offering an opinion on football in Kilkenny. My unhappiness was with AFR proffering an old article on that topic as an adequate means of marking -- if only by his own high standards -- our victory over Tipperary in this year’s semi-final. Most unworthily, that choice, I repeat, was a calculated and begrudging sleight on AFR’s part

END OF INTERLUDE

Anyhow, I believe such an argument -- an aggregrate both-codes victor -- to be very wrongheaded. There are two issues here. First: there is always going to be a problem with population. Leitrim, for instance, struggle to put out a competitive football team. How could they be expected also to put out, from such a small pool of suitably aged males, a serious hurling team? Second: this plan, if introduced, would destroy hurling. What would happen is that hurling counties would have to become much better at football, with the beautiful game relegated to second place. It would be infinitely easier for Kilkenny to become good at gaelic football than it would for Armagh to become good at hurling. That is to take nothing away from Armagh, a great county. Hurling is an infinitely more skilful game, as this year’s football C’ship searingly attested. That being so, only one thing would happen. That being so, the AFR initiative would be disastrous for hurling.
[ [/i][/B]

---

Arrigle, do us a favour, like a good man , and keep us out of your stream of consciousness tirades against sid wallace.

posted 04 October 2003 10:24 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by An Fear Rua:
Arrigle, do us a favour, like a good man , and keep us out of your stream of consciousness tirades against sid wallace.

---

posted 04 October 2003 10:28 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tbilisi:
Less is more, Arrigle, less is more.

---

posted 04 October 2003 10:37 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Umpire:
art Keep posting on your own site, and f**k off, when you're not wanted, if all you have to do, is issue disclaimers, when you're brought to task, then you're site is as
moribound as you're thoughts on hurling.

---

What I posted was not a 'disclaimer'. I stand over all 1,200 plus articles, and 2,250 DB postings on my site. Same applies to the above article.

My simple request was to be kept out of the ****e that passes for controversy between Arrigle and sid wallace.

However, I wouldn't expect any better from a contributor who styles himself as 'Umpire'. Your blindness to fairness, logic and courtesy is in the best traditions of GAA umpiring ...

I'll post whenever and wherever I like on the Web and the likes of you won't deter me!

posted 04 October 2003 10:42 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Umpire:
Silence, the core of misunderstanding,
was there an extra note in any Mozart
masterpiece ?

---

posted 04 October 2003 10:56 PM         

I'll post whenever and wherever I like on the Web and the likes of you won't deter me!

posted 04 October 2003 11:18 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steveland:
You are equating this guy's inane utterances with the genius of Mozart? You deserve to be flogged.

---

posted 05 October 2003 06:33 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by An Fear Rua:
Arrigle, do us a favour, like a good man , and keep us out of your stream of consciousness tirades against sid wallace.

---

posted 05 October 2003 06:37 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Truth:

More Kilkenny drivel. Couldn't stay awake for most of it. This is more apologist bullsh!t, cause Arrigance can't understand why everyone isn't wanking off at Kilkenny winning. Why the fcuk he has to take a million words to say what could be said in a few sentences bates me. Maybe its so that Limerick Nomad and Maguesider wil start jerking off at such a long post that shortens their p1ss boring day for them. Spare us this up your own a.rse drivel Arrigance. Noone gives a toss. Hurling is very boring when a dull county like Kilkenny wins. Theres a bit a spark to the like of Cork. You also can stick your comments about Clare up your hole. We know what you think of them. Your just looking for popularity.

---

posted 05 October 2003 06:47 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by LongLad Seamus:
Arrigle,

I've already outlined why I wrote what I wrote on the other thread, so I'm not going back over it.

However, I do believe that you have been overeager to look for 'begrudgery' where there isn't any; although there certainly is some, there isn't as much as you seem to think on this board.

Also, I'd concur with the assertions here that you're doing yourself no favours with such lengthy efforts. I mean, what does the ten-year-olds helping you with the scoreboard have to do with the price of turnips? I find myself reluctantly ignoring the vast bulk of your posts because they're too long, the sentences contain too many clauses and the language used is so arcane. Nobody likes cliches, but IMO you're heading too far in the other direction.

[This message has been edited by LongLad Seamus (edited 04 October 2003).]

---

LLS,

Perhaps you're sort of right on that point. Perhaps most contributors aren't begrudging. But what begrudgery there is to be found, I think you'll have to agree, is more than enough to be going on with. I made a specific claim about how avoidance of neagative and fruitless envy was a large part of Ger Loughane's achievement. That passage was all detailed and close and plain and factual -- 1995 like 2003 in lots of ways -- and low-key. But that doesn't suit people. They want to retreat behind lazy words like 'bombastic'.

Truth is, there is probably nothing nore bombastic than calling stuff bombastic.

Also, while I freely admit such posts have been of an unwieldly length, I'd be surprised if you could instance more than a couple -- if that -- of clause-ridden sentences. Most of it is very plain -- deliberately so, as per the deflationary effect of the numbered paragraphs.

posted 05 October 2003 09:55 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arrigle:

No, I won't, in fact. What I wrote above has nothing inparticular to do with Sid Wallace and is absolutely fair comment about your manouevre after August 17th last. To have marked the semi-final win with recycling that article implied agency in the win by our (dis)interest in gaelic football. Why don't you face up to that instead of huffing and guffing? At least own the implications of what you write. Wrongheaded as that would be, it would at least show a modicum of intellectual courage.

---

posted 05 October 2003 09:59 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Umpire:

you are the Mr.Invisible of this site,

---

posted 06 October 2003 03:30 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by An Fear Rua:
Arrigle, everyone knows who I am and where to find me. I don't need any lectures in 'intellectual courage' from someone who does so from behind the safety of a pseudonym. Emphasis on the [b]pseud[/B]

---

Would you ever take a running jump for yourself, Quasimodo... You know what my name is, too, not that such really matters.

In fact, it's you who's displaying all the parasitic traits of pseudery. I know what I'm on about. I repeat: what percentage input had football into Kilkenny's semi-final win?

No wonder ye can't win an A-I in Waterford, for all the brilliant hurlers: begrudge, begrudge, begrudge... Never learn. First item on the agenda is the split.

Now tear over to your own place and write alovely little unpretenious essay about how we had such an advantage over Cork because we don't play road bowling; "It was a dark and stormy night. No-one in Kilkenny was playing gaelic football and..."

posted 06 October 2003 03:59 PM         

quote:

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Originally posted by Arrigle:
No wonder ye can't win an A-I in Waterford, for all the brilliant hurlers: begrudge, begrudge, begrudge... Never learn. First item on the agenda is the split.

Now tear over to your own place and write alovely little unpretenious essay about how we had such an advantage over Cork because we don't play road bowling; "It was a dark and stormy night. No-one in Kilkenny was playing gaelic football and..."

Yours in treble.

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posted 06 October 2003 04:18 PM         

To paraphrase what Pat Hartigan didn't say to Ger Loughnane at the Galway races, don't lead the baxtards get to you!

quote:

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Originally posted by Arrigle:

What, you mean I should just write posts short and bitter -- like, amongst other things, Michael Doyle's managerial career?

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posted 06 October 2003 07:08 PM         

quote:

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Originally posted by Arrigle:

Also, while I freely admit such posts have been of an unwieldly length, I'd be surprised if you could instance more than a couple -- if that -- of clause-ridden sentences. Most of it is very plain --

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However talented, in potential, the hurler, it is only performance, in the end, that counts.

This belief: we should have won in 1999, as almost everyone accepts now, even in Cork (a leading Cork official recently said to an acquaintance of mine that they consider ’99 the most fortunate victory in living memory); we would still have won in 2000, even with the victory in ’99 on our belts: have no doubt about that, with an Eoin Kelly-less Tipp not ready; we would have got mugged by Galway in 2001, which or whether, due to a ridiculous team selection (and that was the major factor, more than anything); there’s no reason to think that 2002 would have panned out any other way than it did, especially as we didn’t play to our full potential in any of the four matches.

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.

While our hurling, betimes, is very powerful, it is also, at the very highest level, a bit predictable.

It worked, is all that can be said about it now, I suppose.

Specifically: not doing something about Peter Barry’s scutching at Timmy McCarthy’s hands until the scores were posted; not swapping Kavanagh with O’Connor for a bit; leaving Power on Corcoran for so long, when there were at least two other coherent options; most of all: leaving D. J. to slog it out with Sean Og in the wet and grease, when a simple shift with Henry would quite possibly have allowed Carey to do what he did against Clare -- win the game with one lethal moment -- and would quite possibly have allowed Shefflin, physically equipped for the task at least, to score a point or two whilst staunching the quality ball that was pressuring our halfbacks.

To my way of looking at things, there’s little credibility, as I said before, in going on about wides when you keep picking -- or having to pick, rather, for want of depth in your panel -- players whose score-per-shot ration has long been iffy.

Burke, in his guise as a conservative sage, is always adduced, on this front, as an intellectual mentor.

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.

We, again, were proactive.

posted 06 October 2003 08:59 PM         

quote:

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Originally posted by Arrigle:

If and when I return next year, there'll be no grudges on my part.[/B]

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posted 06 October 2003 11:11 PM         

quote:

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Originally posted by South Limerick Referee:
If one was to look at a map, the county team in Limerick will rarely have players that come from clubs that are the left of the main Cork Limerick Road on the map. Adare are the exception.

Draw a line along the Cork Limerick road from the cork border to the City. Draw another line along the Tipperary-Limerick road from the Tipp border as far as Bearys cross and another line from bearys cross to the Cork border. Highlight everything between the lines and the county bounaries and you will find an area that is less than 30% of the total area of county Limerick.

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I don't have a map or highlighter , please explain what you are saying ?

posted 06 October 2003 11:32 PM         

quote:

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Originally posted by Digger:
Arrigle, good post very interesting enjoyed reading it. One criticism is your constant reminding about Kilkenny's small population. I live on the border of your county and can see with my own eyes that the rural countryside of Kilkenny is not at all as sparsely populated as you make out. The biggest factor in the small overall population is the fact that most of it is rural with only one big Town.With a population of 70 odd thousand in a small-ish area it has a higher density than most other counties.
In comparison to my own county where you could drive from from Thurles to a place like Rearcross(25 miles) and count the houses you pass without going far into double figures. Our biggest town is deep in the heart of football country. That football country is in size equal to half the county. If we were to crunch the figures and compare and contrast I guarantee Kilkenny's dis advantage in this regard would not be great at all. Clare and Limerick similarly have hurling and football areas that are well defined.
You will point out that the likes of Brendan Cummins, babs Keating are from South Tipp but they are rare once in a lifetime players. The main point is that we dont have full use of our county's population when it comes to Hurling. Kilkenny more or less have. Picking 15 decent hurlers from 70 or 80,000 people, who literally love the game (as you pointed out above), is not that amazing. Unfortunately I would say you'd be hard pressed to find 70 or 80,000 such fanatics in Tipp, 50 or 60,000 maybe?
Not begrudging KK a thing fully deserve to be where they are and I fully agree that it is an indictment of the rest of the counties that ye are where ye are. However I just think the population issue doesnt stand up to scrutiny.

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I don't see what density has to do with anything , surely its the population that matters to A's point.

I'm no expert , but could you set out what proportion of TS and TN potitical areas are hurling or football.

My stab at same would be

TN - 95% - of 61010 (2002 cenus) - that equals approx 58000
TS - 60% - of 79121 (2002 cenus) - that equals approx 47500
Total 105500

Kilkenny - 95% - of 80339 (2002 cenus) - that equals approx 76500

SLR - Limerick Pop is 175304 (city 54k and county 121281

Other Hurling Co's
Cork 447829
Waterford 101546
Laois 58774
Meath 134005
Offaly 63663
Wexford 116596
Galway 209077
Kerry 132527
Clare 103277
Dublin 1122821

Please note the obvious that, the male population is approx half in each county (although for all you single men , in DunLaoghaire-Rathdown the split is 91337 men to 100455 women)

posted 06 October 2003 11:33 PM         

quote:

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Originally posted by Arrigle:
[B] You know what my name is,
[B]

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I'm afraid I don't know it.
Mine is Liam Cahill. What's yours?

posted 06 October 2003 11:41 PM         

Good post , I can understand the feelings to a point , especially re the muck SW put up.

I'll try and get to the finers points at some stage.

Its really odd here sometimes , when we do post , we're dammed as arrogant and when we don't , its considered to be smuggness.

Whether we agree with them or not ,it will be a lesser place w/o your posts.

posted 07 October 2003 01:07 AM         

(i)In terms of geographical area that provides players to the senior panel compare Kilkenny to Limerick. Point being that Kilkenny players are more widespread throughout Kilkenny as a county than Limerick, meaning that the quality is spread over a number of areas than Limerick, meaning more strong clubs.

(ii)Limerick City is primarily known as a soccer and rugby playing city. Compare the percentage of hurlers supplied from Kilkenny city to the Kilkenny Panel as opposed to Limerick. Kilkenny City have a junior rugby team, and a division 1 eircom league team. Limerick City on the other hand have 7 senior Rugby teams, umpteen junior rugby teams, an eircom league division 1 team, umpteen junior soccer teams

(iii) Look at the county champions. Adare Patrickswell and Ahane have accounted for every title since 1994. In Kilkenny (correct me if i'm wrong) O'Loughlins, Graigue/Ballycallan, Young Irelands, Glenmore, Tullaroan, Ballyhale & Dunamaggin and possibly more would have won titles in the same period

Primary Emphasis on only one game has to be a factor here.

(iv) If you were to do an advanced calculation and take each player from the senior panels in Kilkenny and Limerick, take the population of parish their club is based in, and take the ratio of population providing players to the Limerick and Kilkenny squads, you will find that the population of the parishes of the clubs providing players to the Kilkenny squad is far greater. This is simply because there are no other distractions. You tell me that there are 50K+ people living in Limerick, they are immediately discounted, because no club within the Limerick city population boundary provided a player to the Limerick squad this year or last year or even in 2001. You have to go back to 2000 for Michael Galligan & Shane O'Neill. Mungret, Patrickswell, and Monaleen are in the city division but were outside the city boundary for that census.

quote:

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Originally posted by Hattons Grace:
I don't see what density has to do with anything , surely its the population that matters to A's point.

I'm no expert , but could you set out what proportion of TS and TN potitical areas are hurling or football.

My stab at same would be

TN - 95% - of 61010 (2002 cenus) - that equals approx 58000
TS - 60% - of 79121 (2002 cenus) - that equals approx 47500
Total 105500

Kilkenny - 95% - of 80339 (2002 cenus) - that equals approx 76500

SLR - Limerick Pop is 175304 (city 54k and county 121281

Other Hurling Co's
Cork 447829
Waterford 101546
Laois 58774
Meath 134005
Offaly 63663
Wexford 116596
Galway 209077
Kerry 132527
Clare 103277
Dublin 1122821

Please note the obvious that, the male population is approx half in each county (although for all you single men , in DunLaoghaire-Rathdown the split is 91337 men to 100455 women)

To my eye , these numbers just prove A's point , and really the achivements of both Kilkenny and especially Offaly deserve much credit as both are punching well above their weight.

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posted 07 October 2003 01:43 AM         

quote:

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Originally posted by Hattons Grace:
I don't have a map or highlighter , please explain what you are saying ?

Is it that only 30% of the population are from hurling areas ?

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posted 07 October 2003 09:27 AM         

quote:

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Originally posted by spread it out wide:
Arrigle, excellent piece as usual. Keep 'em coming, and fcuk the begrudgers!!

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YAWH<>!

posted 07 October 2003 11:01 AM         

quote:

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Originally posted by LORY1:
As regards the duplicity of the aliases, infuriating is the only word. Made all the more so by the fact that it is practised by some of this boards best contributors.

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