Topics

Nothing beats the sight of a Tipperary jersey to get the Galway lads whining about past injustices! 
I think Tipperary are going better than last year and should beat Galway by about 6 points.

I hear Brian Cody intervened himself to make sure sure Gavin referees Waterford this weekend.

Referee Brian Gavin cleared to referee Sunday's All-Ireland hurling semi-final

Brian Gavin is free to take charge of Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final between Kilkenny and Waterford after an Offaly Hearings Committee cleared him of the charge of allegedly making abusive comments to a referee after a local club game.

Gavin, who has taken charge of three All-Ireland finals, was reported by referee Pauric Pierce for making the alleged comments after an Offaly junior football quarter-final between Clara, the club where Gavin is chairman, and Kilclonfert. Clara lost the game.
Referee Brian Gavin

Offaly's Competition Controls Committee proposed the ban on receipt of the report from Pierce, who is the Offaly Board's Coiste na nOg chairman.

Gavin sought a hearing which was due to take place next week.

But Croke Park intervened and requested that the hearing be brought forward to last night (Thursday) to avoid a distraction for Gavin as he prepared for Sunday's match.

Gavin was determined to clear his name and preserve his reputation and is understood to have vigorously rebuffed the charge at the hearing. 

Wexford 4-17 Kilkenny 1-09 

I'm sure Kilkenny will tell us it was a bad Kilkenny team and not a good Wexford team.

Jimmy was one of the all time greats, a really stylish hurler and a true gentleman as well.
Hurling has lost of one its best.

Only 3 from Cork and 8 from Klare, even though Cork were within seconds of winning the All Ireland.

Goalkeeper
1.Anthony Nash (Cork)

Full backs
2. Richie McCarthy (Limerick)
3. Peter Kelly (Dublin)
4. David McInerney (Clare)

Half backs
5. Brendan Bugler (Clare)
6. Liam Rushe (Dublin)
7. Patrick Donnellan (Clare)

Midfield
8. Colm Galvin (Clare)
9. Conor Ryan (Clare)

Half forwards
10. Séamus Harnedy (Cork)
11. Tony Kelly (Clare)
12. Danny Sutcliffe (Dublin)

Full forwards
13. Pádraic Collins (Clare)
14. Patrick Horgan (Cork)
15. Conor McGrath (Clare)

It's great to see the Christy Ring Cup final is getting some prominence again and being restored to its August slot in Croke Park.
I think Limerick will win in by 3 or 4 points.

FORMER Wexford hurling star Paul Codd – who once famously accused GAA officials of being "tinkers and rogues" – has been declared bankrupt in the High Court, with debts of almost €5m.

Mr Codd was adjudicated bankrupt after a petition brought by Co Cork farmer David Deasy over an unpaid €530,000 judgment he secured against the former hurler.

Court documents show Mr Codd last November estimated his debts, combined with those of his now-dissolved company Paul Codd Ltd, were €4.9m. The papers show he blamed the collapse in the property market and a drop in the value of the land for his loan for the purchase of the land being declined. He said this left him "in a position where the total contract price could not be paid in full".

He said that he had intended to pay outstanding sums using profits from crops grown on the land.

Mr Codd claimed that despite this offer, Mr Deasy gained access to the land with a tractor attached with a harrow in September 2011 and destroyed a potato crop leading to losses to him of €136,800. Mr Deasy said in other court papers that he wasn't liable for the claimed losses. He said the potatoes were his property because they were planted on his land and he wanted to clear the land in advance of its sale to another buyer.

Restructuring

In his filing, Mr Codd said he had arranged a €2.8m restructuring loan with a financial firm Gerrard Knox Consulting in an attempt to part-pay his creditors, including Mr Deasy.

In later documents, Mr Deasy expressed scepticism about Mr Codd's €2.8m restructuring loan, pointing out that Mr Codd had not told him how much he would receive from the loan.

He denied he was being unreasonable in petitioning for Mr Codd's bankruptcy and listed a number of occasions from 2008 onwards when he had attempted to negotiate with him.

He said: "I have not taken the decision to apply for petition for bankruptcy in respect of Mr Codd lightly. However, I have lost all confidence in his ability or intention to pay off the judgement I have obtained."

In February, solicitor Thomas Walsh quit as Mr Codd's representative in the case.

Mr Codd did not respond to attempts to contact him for comment last night.

Mr Deasy said last night that "Mr Codd has no legal right or moral entitlement to this land."

He said: "I have made every effort to accommodate Mr Codd, which has not been reciprocated."

He said he had been unable to transfer ownership to Michael Martin because of Mr Codd's occupation of the land.

And Mr Deasy added: "This inability to transfer title to the new owner and attendant liabilities has placed my own farming business in financial jeopardy."

Am I about the only one who finds this term annoying?
I've been in Dublin the last while and seems to be very common.

It is very often used in a derogatory sense. The type of comments are things like:
"Premier Emperor is a big gah head", "a draw to make more money for the gah", "typical of the gah, ripping people off".

To bug these people, I tell them I've no idea what the f**k 'gah' is.

Former Miss Ireland Holly Carpenter is going out with meathead prop Cian Healy.
I mean seriously.   


Former Rose of Tralee lovely girl competition winner Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain is going out with coat hanger and all round dry shite Ryan Tubridy!
For fecks sake lads!


These are mismatches of Tipperary vs. Leitrim hurlers proportions!

Seán Óg Ó hAilpín retires


Cork legend Seán Óg Ó hAilpín has announced his retirement from inter-county hurling.

In a statement issued through the Gaelic Players Association, he confirmed that his 16-year career is over.

Ó hAilpín retired in 2010, but returned last year to re-establish himself in the team. He insisted, however, his decision this time is final.

"This time it's for good. I always felt it was premature to end my career in 2010. It was great to get the opportunity this year to re-establish myself in the team and contribute in a meaningful way to Cork," he said.

"I would like to thank all the players I played with over my sixteen year career. I have always taken immense pride in wearing the Cork jersey and representing the county I love. I wish the Cork team the best of luck and success in their future endeavours."

Ó hAilpín won five Munster SFC medals and three All-Irelands, and was voted Hurler of the Year in 2004.

Marty Morrissey famously said there won't be a cow milked for a week when Clare won the Munster football title 20 years ago.
Since there is no grazing land in Clare, it would have been business as usual.

What could be said when other counties win something? What activity won't get done for a week with the celebrations?

Dublin - There won't be a spoon burned for a week.
Monaghan - There won't be a drop of diesel laundered.
Donegal - There won't be a Honda Civic written off
Wexford - There won't be a strawberry picked
Louth - There won't be a cigarette smuggled
Kildare - There won't be a stable cleaned out
Roscommon - There won't be a sheep sheared
Antrim - There won't be a petrol bomb thrown

Any others?

McEnaney wants tougher stance from hurling refs

The head of the GAA's national referees committee has called for significant improvement from hurling match officials in 2013.

Pat McEnaney has said his committee is disappointed that "seven to eight clear red cards" were missed by referees in this year's hurling championship.

He described such a situation as "unacceptable" and signalled a change in approach in 2013.

His comments come as former GAA president Nickey Brennan questions the performances of the officials in two of Kilkenny's last three championship matches that resulted in serious injuries sustained by two of their players.

Michael Rice required the insertion of seven screws in an operation on a hand that was left shattered after a blow from an opponent's hurl in the All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary, while TJ Reid's kneecap was fractured by a blow from a hurl in the All-Ireland final replay against Galway.

"The two incidents involving Rice and Reid were very serious and we are once again left wondering how the GAA can punish the aggressors if such incidents are not handled properly by the match officials," wrote Brennan in his weekly 'Kilkenny People' column.

Review

McEnaney said he wouldn't be specific about any particular incidents but admits that, overall, he finds it hard to disagree with the former president's views and confirmed that the NRC has conducted its own review with referees since the championship.

"As a group, I'd have to say we weren't happy with it. There were only two red cards in this year's championship. We felt in our review that there should have been seven to eight more red cards that were clear offences. That's a figure of 16pc that we got right, which is not satisfactory," he said.

The former football referee, who took charge of three All-Ireland finals, has been head of the referees' committee since April and frank in his assessments this year.

Brennan pulls no punches either in his analysis. "I know that some Kilkenny players have stepped over the line on occasions and were rightly punished for their misdemeanours," he wrote.

"Such punishment was accepted and the team moved on to the next challenge. It is therefore ironic that at the end of another championship year, two of Kilkenny's star men, TJ Reid and Michael Rice, will play no part in their club's current championship campaign.

"Both were the victims of appalling indiscipline in which the perpetrators went unpunished for reckless use of the hurley.

"I accept that neither player went out intentionally to cause the Kilkenny opponent a serious injury, but in the heat of a contest unsavoury incidents sometimes occur which have no place in Gaelic games.

"It is simply not good enough to talk about hurling being a man's game and whatever happens on the field being left there."

Earlier this year, on the eve of the hurling league final in May, Kilkenny manager Brian Cody made quite an impassioned plea to officials to stop trying to take the physicality out of the game.

The GAA's Central Competitions Controls Committee can rarely give out retrospective suspensions now because of a change in the protocols in revisiting incidents already dealt with by referees.

McEnaney is adamant, however, that his group are convinced there should have been five times as many red cards in the 2012 championship.

"We have to accept that we missed them and that's a good starting point for us in 2013."

McEnaney sees room for improvement overall in football too but is satisfied that there was improvement in the critical areas they targeted in 2012 -- body checking, the protection of the high fielder and interference by opponents with injured players who are lying on the ground.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/hurling/mcenaney-wants-tougher-stance-from-hurling-refs-3264703.html

Canning takes aim at Shefflin conduct

JACKIE CAHILL

GALWAY'S JOE Canning believes that Kilkenny's Henry Shefflin was guilty of unsportsmanlike conduct in last Sunday's All-Ireland senior hurling final.

And Canning insisted the Cats were handed "very easy frees" by referee Barry Kelly in the Croke Park showpiece.

Canning admitted Kilkenny are a bit "cuter" when it comes to dealing with officials on the field of play and he referenced a first-half incident when Shefflin ran "30 or 40 yards down the field" to remonstrate with Kelly.

Canning, who converted a free in the third minute of stoppage time to tie the game, also revealed how his direct opponent JJ Delaney was unhappy with Shefflin's decision to take a point from a 68th-minute penalty.

Canning, 23, was speaking to reporters yesterday at Semple Stadium in Thurles at an event to promote Saturday's Bord Gáis Energy All-Ireland Under-21 hurling finals.

And he stoked the fires ahead of the eagerly-awaited senior rematch with Kilkenny on September 30th by admitting: "I suppose they are a bit cuter. In one instance in the first half, Henry ran 30 or 40 yards down the field and was giving out to Barry Kelly and Damien Hayes for a free.

"That's not sportsmanlike either at the same stage. That's the way it goes – that's probably the experience they have. Hopefully we can get that and use it to our advantage as well. You need everything you can get during those games."

Canning also admitted he mishit the late equalising free that ensured a replay between the sides on September 30th.

He said: "I kind of mishit the last one, to be honest, I didn't mean to hit it that low. There were three Kilkenny players in front of me, it was lucky enough it went over."

Canning said he did not see the controversial late award, when Kilkenny defender Jackie Tyrrell was penalised for a tangle with Galway substitute Davy Glennon.

He said: "I don't know – to be straight up about it I didn't see it. I was over the far side, in at full-forward. I didn't actually watch the match since.

"I don't know – obviously I've read papers and stuff. Some people say it wasn't a free and others say that it was. You get stuff during a match as well – when they got a ball moved forward 15 yards and the same thing happened in the second half with the same players involved, and it didn't get moved for us and we could have been in for a score.

"You get them things during a match. I thought, on the field, sometimes they influenced frees and stuff like that. So they got very easy frees during the game as well. We're happy enough, if it was an easy free, to take it."

And Canning lifted the lid on Kilkenny defender Delaney's reaction to Shefflin's 68th-minute point, when the eight-time All-Ireland medallist put the ball over the bar when a goal would have put the champions three points clear.

When Canning was asked if he thought that Shefflin was about to go for the jugular as he stood over the penalty, he replied: "Yeah I thought he was.

"JJ wasn't too impressed anyway behind me! He thought he should have went for it as well. People asked me after what I would have done. I probably would have went for a point as well because at that time of the game, a point was very crucial. If he missed it, people would said why didn't he tap it over the bar.

"It's a very thin line and he's probably the most experienced player on the pitch. At the time, he thought it was the right thing to do. If it was saved and we went down the pitch and got a point or a goal, it could have swung things in our favour. He probably took the right decision at that time in the match."

Canning added: "He probably would have went for it himself. 'I'll just put it that way!'"

On his own late equalising free Canning admitted he had "massive doubts" before standing up to convert.

He had missed a similar chance just a few minutes earlier and he said: "Obviously you have doubts and I had massive doubts from missing the one before but that's part and parcel of it as well.

"That's the one I think of more than the one I scored, how the outcome might have been different, but then you never know, if you'd got the first one you mightn't have got the chance for the second one, so you never know."

Canning went on: "You're just trying to concentrate on getting the lift right, getting the strike right. I've had the same routine for years, since you're young every free-taker has the same routine, maybe tweaks it or whatever but you have to trust it, no matter what. That's all I was concentrating on, hoping not to have everyone in Galway after my head afterwards!"

Canning also admitted that he did not enjoy the experience of a first All-Ireland SHC final because of the huge pressures involved.

He stated: "I think when you're out on the field, you don't enjoy it. It's not a place to enjoy it – you enjoy it after the match if you win and obviously you don't enjoy it if you lose. But when you're playing in such a high-intensity game, mentally more so than anything, the mistakes and stuff are costing you that extra point or two in a match, you don't enjoy those things.

"And anybody that says , I personally don't believe them if they say they enjoy playing a match like that.

"It's a thing you look back on and say, yeah, I've played in it but at the end of the day, you want to do your best and it's like training, when you're training as hard as you can, you don't enjoy running them laps or anything like that.

"It's the same as a match – when it's high intensity, you don't enjoy that."

Canning was also pleased with the performance of referee Kelly, insisting that every hurler deserves the freedom to express himself on the field of play.

He said: "Everybody is protected on the field. Nobody goes out to hurt another player or anything like that, or do anything stupid. At the end of the day, you go out to hurl and everybody is the same.

"That was the way it was on Sunday. Everybody went out just to hurl their own patch and that's the way it should be."

...Brian Cody's head at the end.
He looked like a fella from Ballymun on holidays in Santa Ponsa who forgot to put on the sunscreen!

Hurling's 2nd biggest all time rivalry and the biggest rivalry of the last 5 years.

I think the Cats are ripe to be skinned. Beaten out the gate against Galway, average against Limerick in a game they should have been bouncing back in.
Richie Hogan suspended after a referee inexplicably took a Kilkenny player to task for dangerous play, Michael Fennelly still coming back from injury.
Now their website has collapsed!

Tipp have been in 2nd gear so far this year and hopefully are coming to the boil. There is a bit of concern about our backs being a bit loose. In attack we are really starting to fire. Bonnar Maher is possibly the most under rated player in hurling at the moment. Lar still has the intelligence and lethalness of old and hopefully the stamina. Pa Bourke is starting to hit a rich vein and I expect something big from Eoin Kelly.

Tipperary by 7.

Tessio from The Godfather


Anthony Cunningham

One of the greatest spectacles in sport will take place in Tom Semple's field Stadium on Sunday.
Both teams will be well up for this game. Cork are have upped it under Jimmy Barry this year and will be hard bet. Their win over Kilkenny will spur them on.

Tipperary have a long list of missing players, I don't think Paul Curran and Conor O'Mahony will start, but home advantage should swing it for us.

Tipp by 3!

Can anybody shed some more light on this fella?
I remember him jabbing Paul Ormonde in the head with a hurley years ago.
Then he spent most of the next few years getting kicked off the Antrim panel.

On his day he is good as forward from the big counties, but he seems to have issues.
What are the odds on him putting the head down and doing it consistantly for Antrim?

Kilkenny's apology for fan's attack on Daly

Brian Cody and the Kilkenny County Board have apologised to Anthony Daly and the Dublin County Board for the unprovoked attack by a patron on the Clare native at Nowlan Park on Sunday.
County secretary Ned Quinn last night stated: "The Kilkenny County Board have apologised to Dublin for an incident involving one spectator at the end of the game."

Quinn could not make any further comment as it remains to be seen whether the board will take further action against the individual in question.

However, Kilkenny are likely to review match-day protocols in relation to the amount of stewarding around the substitutes/management sideline areas.

Dublin chairman Andy Kettle revealed Cody and Quinn were quick to express their regret for the incident, which took place at the final whistle.

With Dublin's footballers in Newry, Kettle didn't attend the hurling game but spoke to Daly about the matter.

"An incident took place, a man came out onto the pitch from the stand and jumped on Anthony's back and a few unparliamentary words were said to Anthony.

"The Kilkenny County Board, through Ned Quinn, were quick to apologise, as was Brian Cody. Nobody likes to see these things. As far as we're concerned, we won't take it any further.

"If the Kilkenny County Board want to take further action, that is entirely up to them. Anthony didn't want to make a big deal of it. His focus is entirely on Tipperary next Saturday."

Kettle believes adequate stewarding remains an issue for a number of counties.
"The stewards that populate our grounds are all there voluntarily and sometimes you don't get the quotas you're looking for.

"Then again, if somebody is so determined to do something, it is very difficult to stop them doing it.

"Also on Sunday, stewards in Portlaoise had to restrain Armagh selector Paul Grimley from remonstrating with referee Michael Duffy."

'They were going to put an end to it and they'd caught me, a high-profile player'
From the Sean Potts book 'Voices from Croke Park,' Tony Keady tells Vincent Hogan about the ups and downs of his hurling career

Suddenly it is night in Oranmore and maybe four hours have slipped away, loose as water over a weir. We've talked the light from the day, but there is one last place to visit.

Tony Keady takes me across the yard to his workshop. This is where he loses himself to the whine of the bandsaw and shriek of the planer, cutting hurleys, shaping their personalities. Maybe two dozen lie already finished, curved and perfect, beside a nail gun. On a wall, facing the door, hangs an ice-hockey stick.

He has always been drawn to the possibilities of wood because he understands that lovely, tactile thing of holding a pet hurley.

Making them is just a hobby now, an outlet for his hands. He is tickled by how they've changed, telling a little story to capture the distance travelled. What felt like Keady's first big day in hurling brought him the prize of a bicycle. It was an U-14 tournament final in Salthill, Killimordaly against Mullagh.

BIKES

The 'Connacht Tribune' put up bikes for every member of the winning team and had them lined up along the Pearse Stadium sideline, glinting almost sinfully in the sun. For a 14-year-old in 1976, a bicycle was a prize worth fighting for.

He remembers Killimordaly being awarded a '65' near the end and one of the club's great old mentors -- Bill Joe Creavin -- stomping onto the field with instructions. Creavin smoked a pipe and it stayed welded to his mouth as he caught Keady by the shoulders and shook the young free-taker to attention.

"I'll give you 10 shillings if you put it between the posts," said old Bill Joe, the smoke stinging like astringent in Keady's eyes.

"That day, I had a hurl with the handle cut straight across the top," Tony remembers. "And I had a stone on the top of the handle, taped on for a grip. Back then, they had none of the technology they have now for making lovely handles. You just taped something on the top to give you a grip.

"Anyway, I put the '65' over and we went on to win the bikes. But I never saw the 10 bob from Bill Joe!"

The formal presentation never materialised either. At the final whistle, the Killimordaly team just sprinted towards the stand to claim their booty, cycling then from Pearse Stadium to the Banba Hotel for an after-match 'banquet' of sandwiches and cocktail sausages.

"It was the biggest prize ever put up for kids at the time," says Keady, smiling fondly. "To us, it was like nearly getting a car."

You may not know him, but his name will register somewhere in the attic of the mind.

In 1989, the 'Keady Affair' convulsed hurling. It ran for weeks and was embroidered with so many layers of intrigue that, for a time, it was easy to believe he must have been guilty of a heinous crime. But Keady's sin was one of simple omission. He played hurling in New York without the appropriate clearance.

The details are for later, but suffice to say, the story ran off the sports pages and into prime-time news. Radio phone-ins and television talk shows fussed over it, as if national security was imperilled. When Galway manager Cyril Farrell, hinted at withdrawing his team in protest from the All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary, the old 'Irish Press' upgraded the subject from the back page to a front-page lead.

'Big Match Revolt Looms' ran the headline over Martin Breheny's story on July 27, 10 days before semi-final day.

It is Keady's misfortune that the extraordinary events of that autumn will maybe forever thieve a little light from the issue of his greatness as a hurler. For he was centre-back on arguably the finest half-back line of modern times and a man who won everything there was to win in '88, short of the Booker prize for literature.

His status in Galway particularly was maybe best captured by Joe Connolly's observation of the night when confirmation came through of his suspension for that '89 semi-final. Connolly, who was at a parish function, recalls the news hitting the assembled "like a death".

Time has created enough distance for Keady to be wistful in his recall of those events now. Yet there remains a latent sense of injustice too -- of having been made a convenient scapegoat by the powers that be in Croke Park.

Some years ago, TG4 filmed an interview with him for their 'Laochra Gael' series and finished by asking if there was a single line he might choose to have carved into his headstone. "They should have let me play in '89!" responded Keady, almost involuntarily.

Sometimes, when he recalls the hurt of that time, he can't help wonder what it might have done to his father.

For even the tiniest nuance of his love for hurling was formed, in some way, by his relationship with James Keady. James died on August 20, 1985 after a virtual lifetime battling emphysema and they buried him three weeks before that year's All-Ireland final between Offaly and Galway.

That game would be just Tony's second senior championship game in a Galway shirt. Small blessing, at least, that his father lived to see the first.

"Looking back, I never saw any sport only hurling," he recalls now of a childhood in Attymon. Keady went to the local national school, where his closest friends would -- in time -- all become loyal team-mates with Killimordaly. Their evenings were enlivened by five-or six-a-side hurling matches that bubbled with natural intensity.

match

"There was a crowd that lived two and a half miles down the road from us," remembers Keady. "'The Burkes in Ballyboggan' they used call themselves. We'd have a match with them every evening after school. We had two fields. The one where the bus would pick us up, we called 'O'Brien's Field'.

"There was a hand pump on the side of the road and we'd jump in over the pump. The minute we got off the bus, the bags would be just fired on the side of the road and in we'd go. We'd have two sticks stuck in the field and a bit of baling twine going across.

"And the hurling was hell for leather. We'd have Eamonn Burke, Eanna Ryan, Gerard Hardy and my own brother Bernard.

"Loads of lads, well able to hurl. Those of us who went on to hurl for the county were always told by those who didn't, 'ye'd have made nothing if it wasn't for us!'"

James Keady was a constant, if fading, presence as his youngest son's talent became conspicuous around Galway.

Tony's form at underage with Killimordaly would earn him a wing-back spot on the county U-16s, his career having "really stepped up a notch" in secondary school with the Vocational in Athenry. He would win an All-Ireland U-21 with Galway in '83 against a star-studded Tipperary team that included Nicky English, while Galway -- managed by Michael Bond -- had future stars like Pete Finnerty, Ollie Kilkenny, Michael Coleman and Michael 'Hopper' McGrath on board.

Keady remembers his great friend and club-mate Eanna Ryan coming off the bench to swing that final in Tullamore.

Every day seemed to dawn cornflower blue back then, except for that single black cloud of his father's failing health.

"I brought my father to every match," he recalls. "But all the years I was hurling, he was sick. When he hadn't the strength, I used to pick him up in my arms and lift him into the front seat of my car and drive to all the games. Fair play to Phelim Murphy, he knew the set-up. Any time there was a match in Athenry or Loughrea, Phelim would let me drive the car straight in.

"And my father would watch the match from the car. I used always say to him: 'I'll park right behind the goals, it's the safest place. Nothing will hit you there!'

"In the end, he was only five and a half stone when he died. He'd been sick for 17 years and was hardly able to walk. I was the last one living at home and if I was going out anywhere, I'd always ring my mother to give her a number where she could reach me.

"My father smoked a good bit. If you pulled back the covers of the bed, you'd see Silk Cut boxes all over the place. I never took a pull of a cigarette in my life and when he would want one lit above in the bed, I'd light a newspaper in the range and bring it up to him. Many's the time I nearly set him on fire.

"I used always to curse a calm day because I reckoned he needed wind to give him a bit of breath. By the end, he was on nebulisers every day.

"If I couldn't bring him to a match, I'd have to sit down with him afterwards and give him a full report. Inch by inch. Down nearly to how many were at the game.

"You'd have to give him the full rigmarole. Everything. Because he adored hurling."

James Keady had strong allies in the desire to see his son excel at hurling. Along with the aforementioned Creavin, men like Tommy Hardy and Frank Burke seemed to live with an evangelist's passion for the game and, specifically, Killimordaly. "Bill Joe, Tommy and Frank were three great men in the club," Tony recalls. "Whatever they had to do to better the club, they'd do it."

One of their great days would come too late for James Keady, though -- Killimordaly's county championship win in '86, defeating Turloughmore in Ballinasloe. "We had a mighty, mighty team," says Tony, "but, for a number of years, we just couldn't seem to get over the line.

"Back then, you could genuinely pick out eight to 10 teams that could go on to win the county cup in Galway. There was nothing between any of them. We were probably good enough to win two or three, but we were very, very satisfied to win the one. It was an absolute dream come true.

"Winning a club (title) is something awfully special. The club is what made a man of you."

Matches in Dublin were, largely, beyond the family's range as his father's emphysema worsened and they did not travel to the 1980 All-Ireland final to see Galway crowned hurling kingpins for the first time since 1923. Keady recalls watching the game at home, his hand clamped around a hurley for the duration. And he remembers his mother, Maureen, sitting utterly engrossed, sporadically reminding her son how "some day this could be you."

They drove in to the homecoming that Monday night and the sheer glamour of it all was intoxicating to a 16-year-old. "It was hard to take it all in," he remembers. "The crowds, the Garda escort, the army. Everyone out to see the team.

"And you're wondering if you might ever be a part of something like that. 'Twas a serious feeling. All the talk back then was of the Connollys, particularly John. He was lovely to watch, his striking was always crisp and wristy, he had serious vision.

"I saw clips of him recently and it just brought home to me how I'd love to sit down some day and watch a video of him play a full match again. I play a lot of racquetball and golf with him today. He keeps himself in such shape, he looks like he could still hurl this minute.

"I'd be very friendly with other lads from that team too. The likes of Sylvie (Linnane), Sean Silke, Iggy Clarke, Steve Mahon and Michael Connolly. But, back then, you'd have been looking on them as nearly living on another planet."

That team was, of course, managed by Cyril Farrell. In his book 'The Right to Win' Farrell recalls seeing Keady play a challenge for Galway's U-21s against the county seniors in '84 and marking him down as "one for the future." He wrote of the player having "good balance, was comfortable left or right and looked very, very confident."

By the summer of '85, Keady had moved from the periphery of Farrell's thinking to a place of pivotal significance.

He would make his senior championship debut at centre-back in that year's All-Ireland semi-final against Cork, a game weighted down with such an air of public presumption that only 8,200 spectators bothered to turn up in Croke Park. Cork were the reigning All-Ireland champions and had just retained their Munster title with relative ease. Nobody imagined Galway might be equipped to lay a trap.

The game was played in an ugly downpour, a gusting wind whipping sheets of rain into the stand, forcing the small crowd to take refuge high up in the back seats. It gave Croke Park an empty, almost echoey feel. A treacherous ambience for complacent champions.

Keady's role that day was to mark Cork's seemingly indestructible centre-forward, Tim Crowley. He remembers shaking hands beforehand and thinking momentarily: "I'm going to get eaten and spat out here!"

Within seconds of the throw-in, Crowley scored a point, Keady having lost his footing. Already, Galway's novice centre-back was inclined to look towards the dugout. The second ball that came their way got wedged under a divot and the two of them just pulled frantically, like workmen scything at a ditch.

Nothing moved but spray. Yet Keady and Galway would settle and three second-half goals in quick succession from Brendan Lynskey, Joe Cooney and Noel Lane pitched Cork into a 10-point deficit and unexpected crisis. Typically, they rallied near the end. But it was too little, too late.

Back then, Keady had just begun working in Dublin with the Bank of Ireland and his immediate boss Frank Kenny was first to reach him at the final whistle. Kenny, a Glenamaddy man "steeped in hurling," was dressed in suit, shirt and tie, an ensemble promptly destroyed as the two of them fell to the ground in a muddy embrace.

Galway's entire half-back line, Finnerty, Keady and Tony Kilkenny, would take a joint man-of-the-match award that evening.

"We weren't rated that high at all going in," Keady recalls. "They were the champions. We felt no pressure. If we won, we won. But we weren't going to lie down in the grass and go crying if we lost it. We had very level-headed fellas in that team. Great characters.

"I remember before the game, fellas were saying: 'Who do they (Cork) think they are? Why should they think they're better than us?'"

By now, sadly, James Keady's life hung by a thread and, for his youngest son, that was freighted with a good deal more importance than hurling. Even the thought of playing in an All-Ireland final seemed insignificant now. Everything Tony did on a hurling field had been predicated on the knowledge of what it meant to his father.

He remembers scoring a goal in a televised All-Ireland minor semi-final against Wexford some years earlier and Athenry's Jackie O'Shea, who was over the team, running out to him, pipe in mouth, catching him by the collar and shouting: "I can see the chair coming through the television at home."

So, in August '85, his father's imminent death obscured the excitement of reaching an All-Ireland final against Offaly.

Tony explains: "I knew he wasn't going to live too long. Every day he was still alive was a bonus. It had been going on for so long, you just didn't know when the day would dawn. So, every match I played, I could feel it as a burden on my shoulders."

Wondering.

"He eventually passed away on August 20 and to begin with, there was just no way I could get my head around hurling in the final. I had no interest in it. A lot of the players called to the house, encouraging me to go on training.

"Everyone was trying to say the right thing. You're listening to them but, deep inside, you're hurting so bad. But he was mad for hurling and I knew he'd want me to play. My mother kept saying it.

"So I went along. In the end, I even trained the evening of the funeral. I knew he was looking down over me. The problem was, when we lost that final, I was probably more upset for him than anyone."

A year later, Cork would take revenge for their semi-final defeat, beating Galway to win the Liam MacCarthy. For Keady, the defeat delivered him to an emotional crossroads. One of his brothers, Noel, ran a construction business in Boston and he was strongly tempted to fly over and report for work.

"I was still thinking of my father at that stage," Tony remembers. "A year seemed an awful long time to wait for another go at this. I was saying to myself: 'I'm winning nothing at this hurling...'