It’s been a sobering few days for hurling: news of Tipperary icon Jimmy Doyle’s sudden death at the age of 76 emerged on Monday evening after a weekend of provincial semi-finals that had left the general mood subdued anyway.
Wexford and Limerick were two counties that a year ago had looked to be heading in the right direction, only for their current shortcomings to be ruthlessly exposed a few days ago by the top sides of 2014, Kilkenny and Tipperary.
They joined Dublin, another aspiring contender left demoralised two weeks previously, in a qualifier draw that could have been a verse from Desolation Row.
But that’s the way the game is. Hurling has never been able to summon credible vistas of equality and redistributive justice because it is so hierarchical a sport.
It’s an unforgiving game and the fate of well-beaten teams illustrates that. In sport if one skilled practitioner takes on another who isn’t as gifted, the severity of the outcome will vary if they’re duelling as opposed to playing table tennis.
That’s why eras when Cork, Tipperary and Kilkenny are in simultaneous recession become cherished as Golden Ages; other counties get to have a go. The current age has proved less than lustrous in that regard with just one win in the last 16 years not snapped up by hurling’s Troika.
They are ruthless setters of standards. Any county hoping to get past them has to earn it and that’s the tradition. There is so much public elation when an outsider county wins simply because it is rare.
Bruised dignity
After Wexford's evisceration in Nowlan Park, Liam Dunne spoke with the bruised dignity of someone who has been to the mountain top even if it looks a long way from the foothills he currently occupies.
He was there 19 years ago when the county won what now looks like an almost anomalous All-Ireland – the only one in 46 years – in the hectic and exultant summer of 1996.
It was a carnival in the county – as it is for any county in that situation. GAA celebrations have that priceless quality of connectedness.
Nearly everyone knows someone associated with the team so there is that sense of personal involvement whether that’s because of players with whom you or your kids went to school, people from the local club or neighbours.
That feeling can’t be contrived. Counties like Wexford, Offaly or Clare or Limerick know that they’re unlikely to bestride a decade with three and four All-Irelands but they also know that if they work and try and ride any luck going they may get a crack at one every now and then.
They also know that talk of tweaking championships and ‘levelling the pitch’ offers no real way past the overwhelming protocols of tradition and expectation that distinguish hurling’s aristocracy.
But there’d be no point in titles and silverware if they were simply shared around on strict rotation.
So when it happens for a county unused to the highs of success, the sense of achievement is extraordinary.
What the All-Ireland says is that this year we are the best in the country at this – us, our community, the place we live. All around the country people are looking at us either metaphorically as champions or literally on the television news pictures and thinking, ‘imagine if that was us’.
Unassuming man
Jimmy Doyle
knew all about that sense of place. He lived in Thurles all of his life and hurling identity radiated out in concentric circles: Sarsfields, Tipperary and Munster who he was thrilled to represent on the same team as
Christy Ring
.
A quiet and unassuming man, he was, in the words of the cliché, someone who did his talking on the pitch.
A better phrasing of that idea is that there was probably no other arena in which he could express himself more eloquently and with such artistry as on the hurling field.
When the thunder rolled for Tipperary in the early 1960s, Doyle was lightning. Modest to the point of diffidence off the field, he moved with supreme confidence on it – the assurance of talent and countless hours of practice.
His scoring exploits made him at the time the top marksman in the history of championship hurling and also the game’s most marked player.
A litany of sly digs and psychotic belts broke his bones and damaged his back but all he wanted to do was play and he was single-minded, brave or foolhardy enough to insist on it at times when he might have prioritised his wellbeing.
Everything we know about Christy Ring suggests that he might find the end of the film Field of Dreams overly sentimental.
Nonetheless you'd like to think that he might let that pass and be there on some eternal field with two hurls and a sliotar, ready for the arrival of the young chap from Thurles who looked up to him but went on to become one of the select few to be spoken of in the same breath. E-mail: smoran@irishtimes.com
