All Ireland Senior Hurling Final - Port Láirge vs Cill Chainnigh - 7/09/2008

[joemamas]

speech is brutal, time to cut them out.

Great team though

[ONeill]

Ruthlessly brilliant.

The telepathy was a joy to watch - always on hand to help out a team-mate after a fumble or misplaced pass, with ultimate ease.

[orangeman]

Forecast is quite good for Sunday  - Kilkenny will have too much for them all over the field - expect Waterford to rough them up in the first 10 - they'll throw the kitchen sink at the cats - will it be enough ? Will they need to throw the Fridge / freezer at them as well ?

Waterford tried a bit of roughing up  - forgot about the hurling thogh - Kilkenny can do both.


Best team performance probably of all time !

[anglocelt39]

Great team on the way up caught good team on the way down with awesome impact. Waterford lost by a point to KK in 98 and ended up today with FIVE of the 98 team on the park (Browne, McGrath, Shanahan, Flynn and Bennett) plus Tom Feeney on the subs bench. Who had KK from 98??? nobody is my guess. Really sorry for Tony Browne and Paul Flynn, they deserved better than that. Tipp the only outfit I see that can possibly challenge them in the medium term future and that won't be next year either I reckon.

[Treasurer]

Just awesome.  You'd have to feel for Waterford, but what a display from Kilkenny.

[Hoof Hearted]

sunday game man of the match went to the entire team for the complete team performance. class

[Shamrock Shore]

Saw the game on the radio. Watched Sunday Game.

I think hurling has reached its peak. That performance cannot be matched. 2 wides! 3-30 in 70 minutes!

Waterford were unwilling patsys to an awesome Kilkenny performance. No other team, since time began, be it your Hell's Kitchen, Christy Ring, Mick Mackey, John Doyle, Tony Doran, Larry O'Gorman, Babs Keating, The Dooleys et al and their relatives would have lived with Kilkenny today.

I was up for Waterford but your have to doff the auld cap to the perfect performance.

Cody, the Alex Ferguson of Ireland, deserved the bauble tonight.

Well done Kilkenny.

[gallsman]

Kavanagh was there in '98. Best performance I've ever seen. Even when Waterford still had a shout they couldn't do anything- all their big players were completely destroyed.

[Silky]

Breathtaking display from the cats. Unbelievable stuff.

[Declan]

Unbelievable stuff. Greatest performance in any code I've ever seen. Perfection personified

[Bud Wiser]

Jesus what was that? Even now it is just a blur to me.  One of the greatest displays of hurling I have ever seen, ever in all my life.  If the Waterford backs had began pulling when the first few balls came into them instead of before the game started it would have made a small difference, but very small.

One other thing, I predicted at half time that Cody would bring on James Mcgarry for the last few minutes and he did and I have to say fair play to the Waterford fans who stood up and joined in the standing ovation he got. The woman beside me had a tear in the eye and I thought to myself - only in the GAA. A special type of people with a very special sport are we indeed.

Off to City West at 11am, does be a great morning over there if anyone is going.

[Zapatista]

Jesus what was that? Even now it is just a blur to me.  One of the greatest displays of hurling I have ever seen, ever in all my life.  If the Waterford backs had began pulling when the first few balls came into them instead of before the game started it would have made a small difference, but very small.

One other thing, I predicted at half time that Cody would bring on James Mcgarry for the last few minutes and he did and I have to say fair play to the Waterford fans who stood up and joined in the standing ovation he got. The woman beside me had a tear in the eye and I thought to myself - only in the GAA. A special type of people with a very special sport are we indeed.

Off to City West at 11am, does be a great morning over there if anyone is going.

That pretty much sums it up for me too.

The Kilkenny Cork semi was my first ever hurling match and Kilkenny blew me away with what I seen. Then they go and get better

[Bud Wiser]

Kavanagh was there in '98.

Before the ball was thrown in yesterday the Cats that were on the field at the start had 52 All-Ireland SH Medals between them.

On the bench yesterday was a second team:
       

                    James McGarry (5 All-Ireland Medals)
John Dalton (2 All-Ireland SHC Medals)  P.J. Delany   James Ryall (4 All-Ireland SHC Medals)
John Tennyson (2 All-Ireland SHC Medals) Canice Hickey
Michael Fennelly (2 All-Ireland SH Medals)  Doncha Cody (2 All-Ireland SHC) Sean Cummins (2All-Ireland SH Medals)
Richie Mullaly (4 All-Ireland SH Medals) Michael Rice (2 All-Ireland SH Medals)  Willie Dwyer (3  All-Ireland SHC Medals)
Eoin Reid (2 All-Ireland SHc Medals and TJ Reid and Richie Hogan have 1 All-Ireland SHC Medal each.

I think the only one of them on the team that started that was without one was Cha.

Then when you think that the bench is so young it looks like this team will be back a few more times. Richie Hogan, DJ's Nephew and TJ Reid are only 20 and not to mention the Minors, Juniors, Intermediate have all won this years All_irelands in a clean sweep.

God we have a lot of work to do in Laois! I wonder is Davy Fitz available.

[AZOffaly]

Fantastic performance, fantastic team, fantastic manager. The best team in the country by a country mile. Hats off to them. I feel sorry for Waterford, what a wake up call, but I hope people go easy on them. We've seen for the past 6 or 7 years what this Kilkenny team is capable of when disposing of teams not as good as them. The rest of the country is seeing it now too.

[Rub-a-dub-Dub]

That surely was an awsome display but the question is, are Kilkenny so far out in fornt or are the other teams just not that good? I think they are that good, however, it is not good for teh game. It reminds me of the 50's when Real Madrid spent all the money on buying players to sit ont he bench just so they would not have to play against them!

Although Kilkenny is not buying players, obviously, there is a financial discrepancy here that nobody at the GAA seems to want to talk about. The fact of the matter is that there are counties out there who filter all of their funding into one sport. In Kilkenny's case it is hurling, most of the northern counties it is football. It is the same for most of the stronger hurling counties in the past, Tipp, Waterford, Limerick, they all may have football teams but in fairness, they are token teams to make up the numbers.

Now, if say Wexford dropped the football and concentrated on the hurling only, maybe Kilkenny would have a challenger in Leinster. I think the GAA needs to look at this as a mtatter of urgency, I do not believe this crap of them being 'Born with hurleys in their hands'. There needs to be a level playing field. Search online and I dare you to prove me wrong, a disproportionate number of sports grants go to hurling in Kilkenny, from the GAA and National Lottery etc. If we want to be serious about promoting our game it does not serve it well to have one team consistently winning championships, maybe the GAA needs to impliment a ruling to have a proportionate amout of their funding spent on other GAA sprorts in each county. This may level the playing field.

This is not a rant nor a jibe at Kilkenny, greatness should be recognised in every sport, but I feel the future of the game needs the run away teams to be curtailed in some way.