Gaelic Games

Kieran Cuddihy: Proximity to Kilkenny superstars was a big deal for me

Cats fans will travel with hope in their hearts this Sunday but the team of the early 90s will always be seared in my memory

Kilkenny fans watching the All-Ireland final in 2010. There exists (or maybe more accurately, existed) an entire generation of Kilkenny youngsters who assumed All-Ireland titles came thick and fast. The last seven years has surely cured them of that fallacy. Photograph: Alan Betson
Kilkenny fans watching the All-Ireland final in 2010. There exists (or maybe more accurately, existed) an entire generation of Kilkenny youngsters who assumed All-Ireland titles came thick and fast. The last seven years has surely cured them of that fallacy. Photograph: Alan Betson
Kieran Cuddihy
Wed Jul 13 2022 - 19:00

Hope is the thing with feathers. And everyone who travels to Croke Park on Sunday will carry it with them. Though perhaps those of us from Kilkenny will be clinging to it a little more tightly than our friends in green.

Limerick carry instead the weight of expectation. Being three-time All Ireland winners over the last four years bestows on them that privilege.

For a long time, it was Kilkenny fans who found themselves in that position. In fact, there exists (or maybe more accurately, existed) an entire generation of Kilkenny youngsters who assumed All-Ireland titles came thick and fast. The last seven years has surely cured them of that fallacy.

What allowed the misconception to take root was of course the massive success of the Brian Cody era.

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But it’s another version of the Kilkenny team that I am most fond of – the back-to-back winners of 1992 and 1993. The reason is partly down to simple human psychology – the nostalgic attraction to some marquee event from our youth.

Though in my case it’s also explained by something more personal – a sense of connection I always felt with that team. The reason for that connection is because my father was the Kilkenny team doctor for 16 years, from 1985.

Kieran Cuddihy: `It was a regular occurrence during those years for our dinner to be interrupted by the doorbell. Standing outside might be DJ Carey, Bill Hennessy or Willie O’Connor in need of a few stitches or a cert to run across the road to St Luke’s for an X-ray.'
Kieran Cuddihy: `It was a regular occurrence during those years for our dinner to be interrupted by the doorbell. Standing outside might be DJ Carey, Bill Hennessy or Willie O’Connor in need of a few stitches or a cert to run across the road to St Luke’s for an X-ray.'

It was a regular occurrence during those years for our dinner to be interrupted by the doorbell. Standing outside might be DJ Carey, Bill Hennessy or Willie O’Connor in need of a few stitches or a cert to run across the road to St Luke’s for an X-ray.

Proximity to genuine superstars like that was a big deal for me. It gave me a certain cache in the halls of my primary school. And I wasn’t shy about leaning on it. John Power? Yeah of course I know him. What’s Charlie Carter like? Ah he’s sound, you know yourself.

But of course I was guilty of my own misconceptions. You have to remember this was before the Premier League existed, before Sky Sports. Most people only had two TV channels. Our access to information was nothing like it is today.

So we relied on the evidence within our own individual orbit to understand the world. And the evidence within my orbit was that sports stars had jobs. They had to go to work in the morning after training or on a Monday after a match.

This led to no small amount of confusion on my part after watching an episode of Question of Sport. They had a round where the contestants had to guess the identity of a mystery guest. The guest was always a sports person but they would be filmed carrying out some random task.

In this particular episode, the mystery guest turned out to be Gary Lineker and the random task he was engaged in was planing a piece of wood.

So I assumed he was a carpenter and that every Monday he went off to work on the building sites around North London. I was only put right after my parents happened to overhear me telling someone what Lineker did to make ends meet when he wasn’t playing football.

But even my childish naivety didn’t keep me immune to the reality that by the time of the 1992 final, we had gone nine long years since the last taste of success. Nine years might not seem a long time in some counties, but we’ve never really subscribed to the whole ‘an rud is annamh is iontach’ thing down by the Nore.

My abiding memory of that day is sitting in the old Hogan Stand with my mother. My father was on the sideline. And on the pitch, the game revolved around the imperious Pat O’Neill at centre back.

People have told me since that his man-of-the-match heroics really only began in the final few minutes but emotion trumps reality in situations like this. To me, he was a man mountain in black and amber, repelling wave after wave of Cork attacks.

I’m of an age now I’m when unlikely to forge such emotional connections to sporting events again. I know enough to realise that these players are merely human. Their feet, like mine, are made of clay.

But I’ll travel on Sunday with my own kids. And they still live in a world of misconceptions, fallacies and wonderful naivety. Maybe Paddy Deegan or Richie Reid will become their Pat O’Neill, the player they imagine to be on the playground and pitches over the months ahead.

Certainly that’s the hope and there is no cure when it comes to hope and Gaelic games. It is a buoyant thing and it will lift the spirits of all who make their way to Dublin.

Limerick are favourites for a reason. And their ranks are swelled by some of the best hurlers currently playing the game in Kyle Hayes, Gearóid Hegarty and Declan Hannon. They will seek to make Croke Park a cold place for anyone in black and amber on Sunday.

But remember, hope can be heard in the chilliest lands. And where it is heard, a chance exists. And sometimes, all you need is a chance.

Kieran Cuddihy is a presenter for Newstalk