Young guns show well in hurling final as Coolderry dethrone blues

A county final is a wonderful day for followers of football or hurling in any county, but it’s still probably not fair to judge a county exclusively by the fare on offer. After all, anyone who watched Thurles Sarsfields beat Drom and Inch 0-14 to 0-5 in the 2009 Tipperary hurling final would have walked away pessimistic about the future of hurling in the Premier County, all the more so after the county’s then great white hope, Seamus Callinan, struggled so badly to make inroads against a club defence. Yet twelve months later, Tipperary are All Ireland senior and under 21 hurling champions and Mickey Cahill, the young man who contained Callinan so well in Semple Stadium last October, has two All Ireland medals from playing a part in both those squads. Casting a cold eye on Offaly’s showpiece occasion last week, it was clear that glass half full or glass half empty was the verdict, depending on the tint of the viewer’s spectacles. On the positive side of the ledger, several young hurlers performed very well on both sides. For Coolderry, David King continued his fine form of the year so far while Kevin Connolly and Eoin Ryan, in particular, showed that they have bright futures ahead of them as well if they choose to apply themselves and make the most of their considerable gifts. For Tullamore, Kevin Waters didn’t always get the run of the ball but his attitude and willingness to work hard at winning possession and discommoding opposing defenders spoke volumes about his character. He has 20kg of muscle mass to find in the coming years, as do most hurlers his age, but based on some of his tackling on Sunday, he’ll relish the challenge and should improve hugely for his experience in 2010. Overall, Coolderry’s hurling was admirable, with each sector looking after their core responsibility. The full-back line marked tightly, the half-backs lorded the air and dominated the Tullamore puck-out, the midfield worked hard and covered at both ends of the field, the half-forwards scrapped and fought for loose possession while the inside forwards took their scores well and always looked dangerous. Both sides were well set up, and at the risk of dusting down an old hobby horse, it was great to see two sides who understood the importance of getting the sliotar into the hand. Coolderry once and Tullamore twice engaged in utterly avoidable ground hurling for no reason other than they could, and on every occasion it ended badly for the exponents of the tactic. In modern hurling, ground hurling is only the right thing to do when lifting the ball is simply out of the question, and these clubs appear to have taken this lesson on board. On the other side of the ledger, it’s disappointing that Coolderry took the honours without ever being subjected to a severe test. Tullamore did briefly burst into life at the start of the second half, but three points up with twenty minutes to go is not a predicament, it’s a favourable situation that could turn precarious if you’re not careful. Of course Coolderry can’t help that Shinrone and Kinnitty were beaten teams after fifteen minutes, or that the group stages have become a farce where many teams are effectively safe after two or three rounds, but they’ve found the going tough when real pressure was applied in recent seasons and it was disappointing not to see if things have changed under Ken Hogan. From a Tullamore perspective, it was always likely that the club would struggle on a day when Shane Dooley didn’t perform to his usual incredibly high standards. Instead of being outstanding he was merely good, and Tullamore needed him to pull a lot more than his own weight. However when the blues who wear white finally do sit down to analyse their year, they should start to look a bit deeper than the truisms about how they never quit and always find a way to win in close matches, and start looking at how and why they continually leave themselves with mountains to climb. Great comebacks are all very well, but it’s not realistic to constantly have to retrieve huge deficits and at some point they’re going to have to learn to hurl throughout matches, including the first ten minutes. Intermediate final Perhaps most worrying of all from a county perspective was the intermediate final. Again it’s unfair to judge a championship by the final, the most nerve-wracking day of all for both sides, but the standard of hurling was desperately poor. Both teams struggled to move the ball quickly or even get the ball into hand, scoring opportunities fell as much due to chance as any creativity, and more tactical innovation could be found in a national school game at break time. Drumcullen is central to Offaly hurling’s history and it does the county no good to have a club of their stature languishing at intermediate level, but perhaps it’s time to consider that the problem is not the clubs but the intermediate grade itself? For St Rynagh’s, this was their third trip to the last four of the Intermediate championship in four years, yet in all that time, their senior team has not made a single senior semi final. It beggars belief that a middling senior club should be able to come so close to theoretically having a second team of senior standard as well, so the alternative hypothesis must be that the intermediate grade is simply not good enough. If that is the case, then surely both the fixture congestion issue and the standards issue would be addressed by having ten teams as opposed to twelve playing at both senior and intermediate level. Of course getting clubs to support such a proposal would be extremely difficult, but the statistics make for compelling reading. In the last thirty years, fifteen different clubs have been promoted from intermediate, and of those fifteen, Ballyskenach reached a senior semi-final four years after promotion, Tullamore reached a semi-final eight years after promotion and the other thirteen either failed to get that far, dropped back down the levels or ceased to exist. Contrast this with other counties, where the intermediate winners go on to win senior within five years on a regular basis. Drumcullen deserved their success this year and indeed they deserve to return to senior even more so due to the circumstances behind their relegation. However that should not change the fact that they, along with several other clubs who retained senior status in 2010, are way off the standard required to win a senior championship or even going on a good run. Clubs worshipping the golden calf that is their status doesn’t change this fact and the Offaly glass will never be any more than half full until this is addressed.