Has Kieran Shannon lost it?

[seafoid]

One of the features of the present as compared to say 20 years ago is the large increase in  hacks writing about GAA over the period. The volume of published comment concerning the GAA has increased exponentially.  Some of the additional material produced is interesting but much of it could have been spelt out in the pub on a friday night with no need to print and nobody would have been worse off for it.  Who cares about the percentage  of passes completed in the all-Ireland final ?

Armagh will go down as a decent mid 00s team remembered in the same sequence as Paris Hilton and celeb journos the equivalent of Kieran Shannon will write articles about how Paris influenced celebrity over the decade and it'll fluff out a few magazines.  But that's about it. 

Kids in 10 years time will note they won one all-Ireland while Tyrone won more and that's really where it's at.  Who talks about underachieving catalyst teams from the 1990s? Nobody.

[tyssam5]

One of the features of the present as compared to say 20 years ago is the large increase in  hacks writing about GAA over the period. The volume of published comment concerning the GAA has increased exponentially.  Some of the additional material produced is interesting but much of it could have been spelt out in the pub on a friday night with no need to print and nobody would have been worse off for it.  Who cares about the percentage  of passes completed in the all-Ireland final ?

Armagh will go down as a decent mid 00s team remembered in the same sequence as Paris Hilton and celeb journos the equivalent of Kieran Shannon will write articles about how Paris influenced celebrity over the decade and it'll fluff out a few magazines.  But that's about it. 

Kids in 10 years time will note they won one all-Ireland while Tyrone won more and that's really where it's at.  Who talks about underachieving catalyst teams from the 1990s? Nobody.

That's very harsh on Armagh, I think it's only fair to accord them some kind of 'influencial' tag, it's the least we can do, after all they'll never hear that nice clink that two Celtic crosses make in the same pocket.

[GalwayBayBoy]

Shannon has always tirelessly championed two teams down through the years. The Cork hurlers and Armagh footballers. Mainly because of their "professionalism" and use of sports psychology. Two concepts he holds dear to himself along with his collection of Bob Rotella books.

[Armamike]

Read the article again ladies, Shannon's not claiming Armagh to be the greatest team of the decade or anything like that. At least he backs up his thesis with some key points - unlike some of the rants that pose as posts on this board.

[Rav67]

I'd agree with all of that apart from what he said about JOM's Galway side

[Dinny Breen]

Shannon has always tirelessly championed two teams down through the years. The Cork hurlers and Armagh footballers. Mainly because of their "professionalism" and use of sports psychology. Two concepts he holds dear to himself along with his collection of Bob Rotella books.

True, I'm actually a fan of his writings but he wrote Brian Corcoran's auto-biography with Brian, so his impartiality would have to be questioned. A good read btw.

[Old Bill]

Read Eamon Sweeneys article in the Indo about the Armagh footballers and Cork hurlers if you want the exact opposite viewpoint!

Any chance of putting it up on the board?

[Jinxy]

Here you go.

Hype comes before the fall

The Cork hurling and Armagh football teams, whose eras appeared to come to an end last weekend in Croke Park, had a lot in common. They were very talented sides who brought a huge sense of occasion to their big fixtures. They polarised public opinion and were tireless self-mythologisers. And, in the final analysis, they underachieved and fell short of the greatness which once seemed theirs for the taking.

It is no mean achievement to be among the best teams of your time but both Cork and Armagh had ambitions beyond that. They wished to be remembered as the outstanding teams of their era and it is now unarguable that this distinction will fall to Kilkenny hurlers and Kerry footballers, no matter what transpires over the next few weeks. The figures speak for themselves, Kilkenny's four All-Irelands to Cork's two, Kerry's quartet against Armagh's single day in the sun.

You could explain this simply by noting that Kilkenny and Kerry had better players than Cork and Armagh. Yet Cork and Armagh contributed to their own downfall by mistaking their greatest vice for their greatest virtue. This was what held them back from making that final jump to greatness.

Greek tragedy is so powerful because the victims are not bad people. They are very good people who are undone by one fatal flaw. This flaw is often connected with hubris, an exaggerated pride in one's achievements and character. Hubris worked its spell against Cork and Armagh and meant that, in the final analysis, there was something tragic about the way they never became the teams for the ages they wished to be.

Both sides were emblematic of the era in which they played, coming in as that era reached its apogee and fading out as it reached its end. Their self-belief, their brashness and above all their willingness to collude with the hype which surrounded them marked them out as emblematic of the Tiger years, a time when modesty was seen as a worthless shibboleth from an unenlightened past which deserved to go the same way as superstition and sexual repression. They often walked the walk but they always talked the talk.

In the beginning, this indicated a salutary openness and honesty, echoing the words of Christy Ring that "modesty isn't saying you're no good when you know you are. It's knowing how good you are." But eventually it evolved into a somewhat unpleasant machismo in the case of Armagh and into a strange combination of boastfulness and paranoia in Cork's case.

The players, who we should remember were mainly young men in their 20s, were not entirely to blame for this. The media, enjoying the experience of teams who seemed to bask in the spotlight to the same extent that their predecessors had been wary of it, built both teams up far beyond the level of their achievements. I recall reading an article which wondered if Armagh, the winners of a single All-Ireland, might be the equivalent of Mick O'Dwyer's Kerry team which had won eight. And when Cork scraped a narrow win against a terminally flakey Galway team a few weeks back, we were greeted by media suggestions that this was the finest team to ever come from the Rebel County, something which necessitated the denigration of the 1976-1978 three-in-a-row team and complete ignorance of the 1952-1954 side of Ring, Lynch, Daly, Barry et al.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this trend came last week when it was suggested ad nauseam that Sunday's semi-final would finally decide whether Kilkenny or Cork were the outstanding team of modern times. With Kilkenny's four All-Irelands outweighing Cork's two -- it's 5-3 if you want to go back to 1999 and 2000 --this was a bit like a kid trailing by a couple of goals in a playground kickabout suggesting that the next goal wins. In the end, Kilkenny made the argument redundant but it's still remarkable to think that had the Rebels come through last weekend Brian Cody's men would now be derided in many quarters as the Ryan Lochtes to Cork's Michael Phelps.

There was a huge amount of excitement about the epic nature of Cork's victories against Galway and Clare in this year's championship, something which ignored the fact that Kilkenny would probably have beaten the pick of those teams by double figures. Those who like seeing games as Hemingway-style struggles of redemption and moral courage enjoyed the way Cork struggled through so many close games. Kilkenny, like the Tipperary team of 1961-1965, are perhaps just too good for their own good. But if the media are largely to blame for the over-rating of Cork vis-a-vis Kilkenny, the Rebels are not entirely blameless. When the Cats, in 2003, became the first team in a decade to win two All-Irelands in-a-row, the suggestion was that the real story was the throwing away of victory by Cork. Donal O'Grady harped on about Cork being delayed by an official on their way out to the pitch with the clear implication that this had somehow cost his team victory. There were dark mutterings about Kilkenny's tackling in defence and a hurl thrown by an official in the second half. To which we might profitably contrast Kilkenny's dignified silence about Tom Kenny's cheap attack on Cha Fitzpatrick.

It's remarkable too that in Brian Corcoran's autobiography, Cork's 2006 All-Ireland semi-final victory over Waterford is dealt with at length while their subsequent final loss to Kilkenny is quickly dismissed as just one of those things. That this notion had gained popular currency was suggested by Cork players outnumbering those of the All-Ireland champions in the GPA's 2006 team of the year. Last year there were intimations that Cork might have gone all the way had they not been upset by the suspensions following the fracas against Clare. Cork, or perhaps more accurately their camp followers, have never given Kilkenny the necessary respect. Expect to hear soon that Gerald McCarthy's managerial shortcomings are what held back the Rebels this year.

The irony is that this hubris harmed Kilkenny not one iota and Cork a great deal indeed. The insistence that every defeat could be explained by extra-curricular factors and that the team remained primus inter pares stunted Cork's development. Because, if there was nothing wrong, nothing needed to be put right. While Brian Cody chopped, changed and fine-tuned to keep Kilkenny fresh, the Cork team became set in stone and some players were allowed to go on for too long. The very group solidarity which Cork prided themselves on became the thing which may have cost them the third All-Ireland they craved.

A similar thing happened to Armagh who became convinced that they had won their first All-Ireland thanks to swarm defence, physical strength and negativity. In fact, the triumph of 2002 owed a great deal to the best set of forwards in the game at the time. Steven McDonnell, Ronan Clarke and Oisín McConville will go down as all-time greats, while John McEntee and Diarmuid Marsden were also terrific players. Only Kieran McGeeney in the backs was of the same stature. Yet Armagh dwelt more and more on stopping the other team than on setting their forwards free. Had they gone the adventurous route, two, maybe three All-Irelands might have been theirs.

Instead, they never fulfilled their potential. Last Saturday was the ultimate demonstration of what negativity had cost them as they defended in depth and handed the initiative to a Wexford team who might have been crushed had Clarke and McDonnell been supported properly up front.

It's the things we love that kill us. So it was with Cork and Armagh. That's the tragedy of it.

[bridgegael]

Still on the Tribune, they said in the match ratings that Davy Harte's 1-1 made him the top-scoring half-back in the championship. Aidan Carr has 0-24.
. 

and remind me how many did aidan carr score this year from play??

does it matter??

[Billys Boots]

Armagh who became convinced that they had won their first All-Ireland thanks to swarm defence, physical strength and negativity.

But (and I'm not winding) is it not the case that these are the very 'qualities' that are required to win the Ulster title?

[Sandy Hill]

One of the features of the present as compared to say 20 years ago is the large increase in  hacks writing about GAA over the period. The volume of published comment concerning the GAA has increased exponentially.  Some of the additional material produced is interesting but much of it could have been spelt out in the pub on a friday night with no need to print and nobody would have been worse off for it.  Who cares about the percentage  of passes completed in the all-Ireland final ?

Armagh will go down as a decent mid 00s team remembered in the same sequence as Paris Hilton and celeb journos the equivalent of Kieran Shannon will write articles about how Paris influenced celebrity over the decade and it'll fluff out a few magazines.  But that's about it. 

Kids in 10 years time will note they won one all-Ireland while Tyrone won more and that's really where it's at.  Who talks about underachieving catalyst teams from the 1990s? Nobody.

That's very harsh on Armagh, I think it's only fair to accord them some kind of 'influencial' tag, it's the least we can do, after all they'll never hear that nice clink that two Celtic crosses make in the same pocket.

Then you wonder why Armagh supporters weren't jumping up and down with joy when you hammered the Dubs!

[cornafean]

I do Kieran. They won two All-Ireland's after all and were desperately close to a third which you may have forgotten about. All that sports pyschology must be playing havoc with your memory. Plus the one time they actually met that Galway team they were beaten by them.

I agree. Galway 2001 were a better team all around than Armagh 2002. That said Armagh did beat Galway in 2003.

[feetofflames]

I actually find yer mans article very well thought out and interesting above.  Did  Armagh misuderstand the reasons for their own success.  Im not sure I agree, but is therea topic there for debate. 

[mouview]

I do Kieran. They won two All-Ireland's after all and were desperately close to a third which you may have forgotten about. All that sports pyschology must be playing havoc with your memory. Plus the one time they actually met that Galway team they were beaten by them.

I agree. Galway 2001 were a better team all around than Armagh 2002. That said Armagh did beat Galway in 2003.

Not in the championship. As for never fulfilling their potential, does this now make the Galway hurlers one of the best of the decade?

Jeez, the mind boggles to think someone suggests Armagh were better than Galway in that era. Nothing at all against the Orchard county but they won perhaps the luckiest AI ever; Kerry fell off the bike at half-time when all the needed was to keep pedalling.

[maddog]

I do Kieran. They won two All-Ireland's after all and were desperately close to a third which you may have forgotten about. All that sports pyschology must be playing havoc with your memory. Plus the one time they actually met that Galway team they were beaten by them.

I agree. Galway 2001 were a better team all around than Armagh 2002. That said Armagh did beat Galway in 2003.

Jeez, the mind boggles to think someone suggests Armagh were better than Galway in that era. Nothing at all against the Orchard county but they won perhaps the luckiest AI ever; Kerry fell off the bike at half-time when all the needed was to keep pedalling.

But they could only pedal as fast as they were allowed. In the second half of that match Kerry had no answer to Armaghs intensity. The better team on the day won.