Weekend wrap: Cork and Tipp get Championship off to a flyer
By Conor Neville
Who knew that Ger Loughnane and his Munster brethren up in the RTÉ studio were so self-conscious about their beloved provincial championship serving up crap games in the presence of Henry Shefflin?
Clearly the dreary Munster championships of 2015 and 2016 were all the more painful to endure because Kilkenny’s finest was suited and booted beside them in the studio.
“Lads, not in front of Henry!”
Certainly, Loughnane devoted an inordinately large portion of his post-match analysis yesterday to metaphorically nudging Shefflin in the ribs and reminding him that ‘this is what the Munster hurling championship is all about, sunshine.’ It may give our armchair psychologists some insight into the effect those long years of Kilkenny rule had on the psyche of proud Munster hurling men.
It’s not as if Henry has spent his first two years in the punditry business claiming that the Munster championship is a con-job that’s been hyped beyond belief. Or at least he hasn’t done it on air.
Either way, the Munster championship delivered its first game worthy of mention on a TG4 documentary since 2014 and perhaps before.
Yesterday assuredly belongs on a compilation alongside 1984, 1987, 2004 et al…
Mayo have often been underwhelming in the early rounds under Stephen Rochford. In James Horan’s time, they dispatched lesser opposition in Connacht with a bouncy swagger. Messages were sent out to all and sundry. They were addicted to signalling their intent.
By contrast, these days, they seem to treat such matches less as games in their own right and more as cold and routine experiments whose only worth resides in how they’ll serve the team when September arrives.
The result is a bloodless spectacle and usually a moral victory for the opposition. Few leave feeling enthused. It almost feels like they resent having their focus switched from the Dublins and Kerrys of the world.
A radical proposal emerges from the combative Twitter feed of Ewan MacKenna. Namely, that the TV schedule folk quit giving such prominence in early summer to big guns playing at half pace against easily outgunned minnows and instead seek out even encounters.
Carlow-Wexford by a mile the game of the footballing weekend. Pity TV focused on the same few big names that don't care until August. #GAA
— Ewan MacKenna (@EwanMacKenna) May 21, 2017
Carlow-Wexford admittedly might have been a hard sell for the advertisers but it surely would have provided a more rewarding and enthralling experience for the viewer than Mayo-Sligo.
It all got underway on Saturday evening and, as is his wont, Joe Brolly opened the programme by making a persuasive argument for switching over the channel.
The march to Croker starts here. Join us this weekend. #RTEgaa #SundayGame pic.twitter.com/6B8TSoMqUE
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) May 19, 2017
RTÉ teed up their first live game of the summer with a montage aimed at any bemused Yanks curious about this strange sport which a BBC Newsround presenter once called 'Gaelic soccer'.
When we returned to the Clones studio, the Dungiven Johnnie Cochran frankly disclosed that the championship was a farce, essentially inviting the montage makers in Montrose to throw out all their Sigur Ros albums and instead just roll out the Benny Hill theme tune every time.
It’s difficult to know what the Americans would have thought - presumably they would have been confused by the mixed messaging.
Certainly any passing Sky Sports executive would have choked on their feed of Wetherspoon’s fish and chips had they witnessed Brolly tossing out that. As we know, it’s long been their official policy to bill every Stoke-West Brom game as the most important and potentially momentous event in the world since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Compared to that, Brolly's resolute indifference to commercial concerns remains admirable.
Two weeks ago, during RTÉ Radio One’s coverage of the New York-Sligo match in Gaelic Park, New York GAA stalwart and engaging co-commentator Pat Donohue startled some listeners by complimenting a New York defender for a “smart and clever professional foul”.
Indeed, he showered a few more complimentary adjectives on the New York defender for his decision to haul down a Sligo attacker with a goal on the cards. Not one to go in for moral hand-wringing about cynicism and the like, he made no apologies for regarding the foul as an unambiguously good thing. And you imagined he’d struggle to understand why an intelligent person would regard it otherwise.
For some reason, the compliment worked best in Pat’s strong Bronx-tinged voice. It’s difficult to imagine it being translated back into an Irish-accented commentator’s voice at this stage.
"You can forget about him as far as he’s a man," it was not.
Back on the GAA mainland this weekend, no one chanced such a heretical or impure statement. Remarkably little controversy on the refereeing front though Derek O'Mahony was booed off at half-time by the home crowd for correctly black carding Kieran Hughes in the early moments of the Monaghan-Fermanagh game. Standard.
It's reasonable to conclude that the world was not waiting on the scoreline of the first televised championship match of the summer. Early on in the Monaghan-Fermanagh game in Clones, Kerry's veteran speed merchant Darran O'Sullivan tweeted -
That was some try by @SimonZebo unreal move! #SambaRugby
— Darran O'Sullivan (@Darransull86) May 20, 2017
We believe this could well prove to be Jim's masterpiece in giving full respect to the opposition.
Huge challenge for Jim Gavin to talk up Carlow.
— Kieran Cunningham (@KCsixtyseven) May 21, 2017
Always a true blue, Bernard Brogan had other things on his mind.
Best of luck to @campaignforleo a great supporter of Irish sport, local constituent for D15 & man for the big seat. pic.twitter.com/BMAI78Vll5
— Bernard Brogan (@bernardbrogan) May 21, 2017
0 – The amount of times Cork have lost three Munster First Round matches in a row. The stat still stands proudly. Had Cork lost as predicted yesterday, many scribes were readying themselves to employ the stat to illustrate the decline of Cork hurling.
33 – The number of minutes it took Tipp and Cork to amass more scores than the whole of the Mayo-Sligo game beforehand. Hurling snobs assemble!!
Conor Lehane "We really stood up" pic.twitter.com/h1JIdKtlsR
— RTÉ GAA (@RTEgaa) May 21, 2017
We can verify that there are plenty of questionable young folk out there who spend a fair percentage of each game scanning their phone for twitter reaction rather than watching the action.
Yesterday, every time they looked up from their screens, they more than likely saw Conor Lehane in possession charging at the Tipperary defence.
A mighty performance, which would have been more sensational still had he not dropped in a few wides along the way.
