
When it's Cork v Tipp, best to expect the unexpected
When it comes to sport, it feels like we've reached our saturation point. It is impossible to keep up with everything. Would you even want to? How does a sport manage to keep itself relevant when there is so much going on? For the most part, it seems to be clips, clicks and giggles. Scroll through whatever social media that you've chosen to annihilate what's left of your brain cells and you're overwhelmed by nonsense. Apologies, content.
The streets won't forget this, that was the best game ever of that, SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh is a great venue, but I can't park on the halfway line. Hyperbole has been the chosen weapon in the race to find the lowest common denominator. However, we saw something very different in Thurles and in Ennis last weekend.
The occasions and the action were able to speak for themselves. It was impossible to distill what we saw into something bite-sized. There was a purity to it. Yes, the Munster Hurling Championship is alive and well. Where would we be only for it? To paraphrase the greatest hurler of them all, would the GAA only be half-dressed without it?
I'm not one for hyperbole, but tomorrow the next chapter of the greatest rivalry in sport will unfold in front of a packed Páirc. A Cork juggernaut that was as good as derailed last Sunday in Ennis will lock horns with a rejuvenated Tipperary who held the greatest team of modern times to a draw a couple of hours later in Thurles.
Like all great rivalries, the fortunes of the protagonists have fluctuated over the past 136 years. Go back over the history of it and it's surprising how little tit-for-tat there is from year to year. When a team wins one, they tend to win a couple. Five is the magic number for Cork. They achieved that on four occasions while their longest streak is six, but that stretched out from 1976 to 1985. Tipp like the number four. They achieved that on three occasions but the hegemony they enjoyed over Cork from 1958 to 1968 is their high-water mark, the high-water mark. Seven games, seven wins.
What of Sunday, then? Well, after the League Final three weeks ago, many pundits may have mentally accrued the points in Cork's favour already. However, to quote the great truant Ferris Bueller, 'life moves pretty fast.' The second half of that game was about as false as our secondary national competition gets and this rivalry has turned the formbook on its head often enough in the past to ensure that the future can never be written in stone.
Take, for example, 2007. Cork had beaten Tipperary in the Munster Finals of 2005 and 2006. They'd beaten them on that famous day in Killarney in 2004. They'd also beaten them in the 2000 Munster Final and the 1992 Munster semi-final. Interestingly, Cork haven't enjoyed back-to-back championship wins over Tipp since.
Anyway, both teams had fallen in the Munster semi-finals so this game was to decide who would top the qualifier group. A post-Semple Gate Cork lost a thriller to Waterford while Tipp had drawn twice with Limerick before falling at the third attempt. Tipp were mired in controversy. Brendan Cummins didn't start, neither did Eoin Kelly. Cork were hell bent on getting into a fifth successive All-Ireland Final.
Some 53,286 souls were present the previous year when Cork won the Munster Final, but only 12,902 bothered to show up to this. Cork raced into a 0-8 to 0-3 lead, but from there, Tipp grew into it and 2-3 from Willie Ryan gave them their first win over the old enemy since 1991. Both sides went out in the next round, Tipp with a whisper to Wexford, Cork with a scream to Waterford. I worked with a man from Cahir at the time. It's 26 miles from Thurles to Cahir. It took him three days to complete that particular marathon. Sometimes a game is just a game.
Try this one for size. A young team loses an All-Ireland Final that they certainly could have won, perhaps should have won. They're expected to push on and surpass one of the all-time great teams and be the next big thing for years to come. They beat their nemesis in the league but when championship comes they ship three goals in their opening game and are faced with the same questions that haunted them from the previous campaign.
No, this is not Cork 2025, but Tipperary 2010. In what turned out to be the last kick of a once great machine, an Aisake Ó hAilpín inspired Cork beat Tipp by ten points. The year, however, would belong to the Premier men. Cork haven't beaten Tipp at home since. Throw in 2017. A young and improving Cork showed great form in the league but nobody expected them to beat the All-Ireland champions in their backyard. Enter Michael Cahalane.
And then there was this one. Cork hammer Tipperary in Thurles in a game that they must win to reach the All-Ireland Series. The loss sparks an existential crisis within Tipperary and the consensus is that the rebuild will take years. However, 349 days later Tipperary closed that gap and draw a game that they should have won. No, that's not tomorrow, that was 2023.
The moral of the story? Expect the unexpected. More than anything else, as Public Enemy told us back when Tipp were beating Cork by nine points in Limerick in 1988. Just don't believe the hype.
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RTÉ News
12 hours ago
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Iconic images from a night that will live long in the memory for all those lucky to be there in person to experience it. It was a pleasure to be there to call it on radio and I was mentally drained from it all by the time Robert Downey lifted that cup so I can only imagine what way those players and management team were feeling afterwards. Limerick will need every bit of the three weeks off to get the bodies right after that physical battle and allow the minds time to come back down and breathe once again. For many players the body will recover quicker than the minds because it can be solved with stretching, pool sessions and cold plunges. But there are no physical stretches for the mind. Only time and space to help yourself to get over it all and get ready to go at it again. This might mean a few days off completely, then back to some light pitch stuff by Friday. Then, it's back into third gear work by Sunday and you should be ready to go again by next week, both physically and mentally. So when you think of it the three weeks off allows only one week of proper training, with the week after taken up with the recovery and the third week just fine-tuning before more knockout hurling. One of the most important people in the room during this period could be the sports psychologist. Questions will be asked where did it go wrong, what did we get right? Everything is fine when you win. The right subs came on at the right time, tactically we got it spot on, our match-ups were on point. When you lose then, you're questioning everything from the way you ate the chicken and pasta to did I put my grips on properly this time? But it just came down to a literal puck of a ball. The margins are so small that maybe not much, if anything, needs to change in the coming weeks for Limerick. I fully believe they will be back in Croke Park and will be meeting Kilkenny and that has the potential to be a battle akin to the 2019 semi-final. For Cork they'll still be walking on air. Their victory will give them the real belief now that they can finish the job this year but I feel they are there now to be knocked off. We saw the passion they brought to that game Saturday night because they were hurting from a few weeks ago. Where will the drive and hunger come from next time against Galway or Tipp? That will be their biggest challenge now I feel over the coming weeks. To get themselves back into a kill or be killed mindset for Croke Park. Find an angle of hurt or disrespect from somewhere to come at this game and bring that hunger and desire they showed in the Munster Final. If they bring that fight to Croke Park they will take serious beating - maybe they just won't be stopped now if they do. I believe Tipp are still involved in this year's championship (or so I read in the paper). That's nice for us here in Tipp. Not much if anything is being said and it is a lovely way for the Premier lads to be coming into knockout hurling. I honestly do feel it is a punishment rather than a reward for the Joe McDonagh finalists to be asked to go and play again this weekend. I mean let's be honest - what is the point of these games? We're asking both Kildare - who will still be enjoying themselves at the time of writing - and Laois - who won't be over the heartache - to tog out again on Saturday against a top tier team coming into the game after three weeks of rest and are no doubt bursting for road. The prize for Kildare is next year - not next week. I think we are doing them an injustice asking them to go out and play again on Saturday. Some will say, 'oh they deserve a crack at the Liam MacCarthy.' They do and they will get that next year when they are in a much better place to perform for it. Fixture-makers have constant headaches over the squashed calender. One solution could be to do away with this week of fixtures. Just send the provincial winners into the semi-finals and match up the provincial finalists and the third place team in the province. We haven't had an upset here since Laois defeated Dublin in 2019. That was a very good Laois team, so arguably not even much of a shock at the time. But we won't see that happen again for a long time. Partly because the top tier teams are aware of what happened the Dubs that season. Forewarned is forearmed. No shocks this weekend, Tipp will win, as will Dublin. But I really do hope the hurling people of Kildare enjoy every second of the day on Saturday as a precursor for Liam MacCarthy hurling in 2026. What a story and when the Team of the Year or Manager of the Year Awards are being spoken of I really hope this Kildare team and their manager Brian Dowling are in that conversation. YT: