Galway vs. Kilkenny 2012 Leinster hurling final

[Asal Mor]

Forgot to mention Tony Og - powerful at centre - back. I thought he was our best defender.

[seafoid]

Forgot to mention Tony Og - powerful at centre - back. I thought he was our best defender.

but he gave the ball away twice for 2 soft goals

[Asal Mor]

Forgot to mention Tony Og - powerful at centre - back. I thought he was our best defender.

but he gave the ball away twice for 2 soft goals

Right ya are seafoid. Must admit I hadn't noticed that. Probably not our best defender on reflection

[seafoid]

http://www.rte.ie/sport/player/#!/clip/809/

[Dinny Breen]

For all you new hurling fans out there excellent article from Donal Óg Cusack

http://gaa.ie/gaa-news-and-videos/daily-news/2/1107121316-on-the-line-donal-og-cusack-on-hurling/

   Did anybody see that coming? I was at both Leinster semi-finals and I certainly didn't. Kilkenny didn't. Was it a mugging or a changing of the guard?

Games can turn on things we can't see. Eleven years ago, Galway scored a goal against Kilkenny in the fourth minute of an All-Ireland semi-final. Kilkenny never fully got the momentum back and suffered a famous loss.

On Sunday, Galway got a goal after just two minutes. The winning margin was much bigger but again, the game was about momentum. Momentum is like a knife in a brawl. Prise it out of your enemy's fingers and you are on top.

Momentum can kill you or save you. After half an hour, the scoreline had a surreal look. Galway were 16 points clear. Richie Power then scored a point from play. More like it.

But a small series of events followed...Joe Canning flung over a brilliant point at the other end. Just before half-time, Kilkenny broke through the middle but, in keeping with a pattern of Galway's defensive play, they were able to swarm the would-be attackers. James Skehill emerged with the ball in hand and the whistle went.

Momentum at tipping point

Galway went in with a 14-point lead but I had the feeling that the momentum was at tipping point. A goal at that stage would have swung it back in Kilkenny's favour, but now the knife was on the floor. They would have to come out and fight for it.

Anthony Cunningham is new to management at this level, but he would have known his players' heads were full of mixed thoughts at half-time. Fourteen points up against Kilkenny? They would be waiting for the backlash. Yet the chances of beating Kilkenny were far greater now than they had been when last they left the dressing room. Momentum makes you believe.

Brian Cody had never really been in this place before either. Galway were doing a Kilkenny on Kilkenny - outnumbering, outfighting and outmaneuvering them in the middle third of the field, an area Kilkenny have dominated for so long. Cody sent for reinforcements in that area, but it left Henry Shefflin isolated in attack. For a while his great side were in meltdown. Yet those last five minutes of the first half restored the faith. Get the momentum back and win with a thousand cuts.

Cyril Donnellan had other ideas. He hit the first point of the second half. Crucial. Still, Kilkenny goals came eventually, and when they did, they might have threatened to swing that precious momentum back.

Tony Óg Regan had had a huge day at centre-back but he made a mistake for the first Kilkenny goal. He saw a canyon of space open in front of him and abandoned the game plan of hurling the ball quickly into space and went on a solo run. He hit a stripy cliff face and got stripped of the ball. A few seconds later Richie Hogan had it in the net.

It would have been cruel on Galway and Tony Óg if those few seconds had tipped the game into Kilkenny's lap. When the momentum is at the tipping point in a game of inches, it's the few inches between a player's ears that count.

I remember an incident in the All-Ireland semi-final against Clare in 2005. We were the All-Ireland champions. Clare had outfought us for much of the game but with 10 minutes left we regained the momentum.

When momentum is with you and you are coming from behind, it is critical to keep the play going. I was conscious of this, and during a break in play I went as far as our half-forward line to make a point. Our focus needed to be on the ball and nothing else. No getting involved with the opponents. No-one staying down injured.

I remember talking to Niall McCarthy. Nially was marking the great Seánie McMahon. Seánie was looking at me and I was keeping an eye on him. I knew he knew. A couple of months later I met him at an All Star event and we shared a beer.

The conversation drifted to that game. He raised the incident and we both agreed that he should have clocked me! Seánie wasn't interested in adding me to his list of victims but he recognised how easily an incident like that could have broken our momentum.

Galway were brave when the momentum hung in the balance after the first Kilkenny goal, and then again for the second.

Imitation and Innovation

But how did Galway get in a position to do this to Kilkenny? Intelligence and hard work. Yes, they matched Kilkenny physically but this only gave them a platform to operate from. They had a plan. Galway's style was some imitation and a lot of innovation.

In the past few years the old notion of teams playing in a 3-3-2-3-3 formation has vanished completely (I wonder will the day ever come when I open up the centre pages of a match programme and the teams aren't laid out in this traditional format? I think we will.) It's a fluid game now and players have to think as much as they have to sweat. At times on Sunday it was 3–5–4–1–1 (Galway) v 2–5–4–2–1 (Kilkenny).

Kilkenny think better than most teams. Their wing-forwards track back into the middle third and beyond. Hunting. Their centre-forward takes his man out of the way. And Kilkenny win the big battles in the middle third. When they gain possession the opposition's half-back line is like a scattered army.

Galway, and especially Tony Óg Regan, succeeded in keeping the shape of their half-back line. Regan looked more like Brian Hogan than Hogan did for most of the game. He held the ground in the pocket behind midfield and in front of the full-back when he needed to and he read the game brilliantly. A huge performance.

The positioning of Damien Hayes in midfield was another Cunningham masterstroke. Lots of teams have come up with the idea that Galway used: drag a corner forward out towards the middle. Not many lads have the hurling brain and energy that Hayes has.

Around Hayes, Galway's wing-forwards were doing incredible work. We're used to seeing Eoin Larkin working the length of the field but David Burke put as much energy into that job on Sunday. While Noel Hickey and Jackie Tyrrell were sprinting out towards the corners, Kilkenny goalkeeper David Herity would have been looking at the Galway half-forwards breaking like cavalry.

If the ball wasn't going to the corners it was being dinked into the space around the 45-metre line where Burke and Cyril Donnellan picked it up again and again.

And then, of course, Galway had a deadly weapon of their own in Joe Canning. He was immense. I was in his company at an event earlier in the year in Dublin and saw him down at the Fitzgibbon Cup in Cork. He looked lean. He came into the championship in better condition than ever. Galway have devised a plan which doesn't just revolve around 'giving it to Joe.' That's going to make him and Galway more unpredictable and more effective.

For all the deserved praise of Galway, it's important to remember that Kilkenny actually shaded the last 40 minutes. That should serve as a warning to the rest of us. Epitaphs have been hastily written. Kilkenny have been seriously wounded but not fatally so. When the knife was on the floor they came out fighting. We should remember that.

This is Hurling Country

For all the beauty of Galway's performance, the sad thing is that the game had a GPO, Easter 1916 feel to it. We'll talk about it for years to come and many will claim to be there but only 22,150 people actually were there.

Not good enough. Last week I got a call from the mother. She was excited and talking fast. Never a good sign. Mrs So and So wants you to... lovely woman...would be wonderful....great work they do.

So after a couple of phone calls I ended up in Ballymaloe on Sunday morning to help Bord Fáilte sell hurling to tourism representatives from England and Australia. The original idea was for me to be galloping around the fields with a ball on a stick. Don't think so. If our tourism reps went to Spain they wouldn't expect to have a man with a cape pointed out to them in a field. "Oh look! It's a bullfighter!"

Instead I gave a little talk about hurling. It struck me what a poor job we do of selling hurling - not just to tourists but to our own people. Hurling is an amazing part of our culture. It makes us unique in a world where everything is increasingly the same. You have to experience a game to appreciate its beauty. We take it for granted.

We opened Croke Park to rugby a few years ago and that was the right thing to do. I chatted to a friend in Croke Park on Sunday and we wondered did rugby gain more than we did from that time. While we had them as guests we should have kept an eye on the way rugby and its sponsors have sold their game as part of what we are.

This is Rugby Country?? Not the part of the country I grew up in anyway! We should be careful or else we might be convinced that it is.

The Leinster final was another chapter in a golden age for hurling. Sunday's Munster final is a different sort of occasion now. We need to sell these days with the same imagination and drive that Galway brought to the table.

[seafoid]

"Hurling is an amazing part of our culture. It makes us unique in a world where everything is increasingly the same. You have to experience a game to appreciate its beauty. We take it for granted."


So true. I think Kilkenny especially should be making way more out of its hurling heritage than it does. It is a pure hurling county where the sport has an incredible place in the culture. East Cork and North Tipp are similar.   

It could be done for the fuball as well. 

[AZOffaly]

North Tipp has several footballers at the moment. In fact the current Tipp senior captain is from Borrisokane, and Hannigan, the big midfielder is from Shannon Rovers. There's also a lot of North lads on development squads in football all the way through.
The current Tipp Senior Champions are a North Tipp side called Thomas McDonaghs (an amalgamation) and the U14 A champions are Newport.

Viva la revolucion!

[seafoid]

The full match

You have to laugh at Eoin  Larkin at the start saying Kilkenny have had a bit of luck over the recent past. Just the odd all Ireland, like , awful flukey  really

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WdsXXrL5VU