It’s a long, long way to Tipperary’s standard

Gerry Buckley

It’s a good while since I name-dropped to any meaningful extent, so permit me this one – and all in the best possible taste (as Kenny Everett – whom I never met or spoke to, and I won’t now as he is dead!) – used to say.

Back in September 2010, after Tipperary had prevented Kilkenny from winning a Liam MacCarthy Cup five in-a-row (Dublin’s Sam six-timer last year shows it can be done at the highest level – and seven is very possible, David Clifford or no David Clifford), I decided to post a copy of my ‘Fifty-Five Years of the Croke Cup’ book to the winning skipper Eoin Kelly, a Croke Cup winner with the famed St Kieran’s, Kilkenny in 2000.

Lo and behold, a few days later my mobile buzzed and an instantly likeable voice greeted me thus: “Gerry, this is Eoin Kelly here in Mullinahone, County Tipperary.” Note the extra part of the introduction. Yours truly simply loves meeting and talking to un-cocky sports stars. I relate ad nauseam how Con O’Callaghan, a man whose standards in the really important games the aforementioned Clifford has yet to reach (in my opinion), exuded humility when his father, my boyhood friend Maurice, brought him to the latter’s birthplace in Columb Barracks a few years back.

Back to Eoin Kelly. We chatted for ages after he had kindly thanked me for the book.

His lack of condescension towards my beloved Westmeath was admirable (my hurling snob son-in-law from Tipp please note!), albeit he did say when the matter was brought up (by me!) that he had found it hard to believe his father when he had been told that the Lake County had twice beaten the Premier County – and by seven points on both occasions – in National League encounters in Cusack Park in 1983 and 1985. Eoin was approaching his second and fourth birthdays respectively when a terrific team in maroon and white shocked their blue and gold-clad opponents in Mullingar.

Now, I will eat my hat, Eoin Kelly’s hat, and Con O’Callaghan’s hat, if Westmeath somehow overturn Liam Sheedy’s men next Sunday in TEG Cusack Park (throw-in 2pm). It is in no way meant to demean the achievements of the men of 1983 and 1985, of whom Sean Greville, ‘Jogger’ Doyle Snr, David and Michael Kilcoyne, and Michael Cosgrove, were particularly magnificent hurlers, to opine that the winter league format then in existence would have meant that Nicky English and Pat Fox (who openly wrote years later that Cosgrove had given him his worst-ever roasting in 1985) would not have been as fit that time of the year as the star-studded Tipp outfit will be when they grace Westmeath GAA’s splendid surface in five days’ time. In truth, with the Munster championship only around the corner and places up for grabs, it could well be another torrid afternoon for ‘Jogger’ Doyle Jnr and co.

Defeats by 30 and 33 points at the hands of Galway (at home) and Cork (away) would suggest that Shane O’Brien’s troops have no business playing the country’s elite sides. However, sandwiched between those two maulings, a very creditable three-point away loss to an understrength Waterford suggested that the gap has been narrowed somewhat between hurling’s ‘have’ and ‘have nots’. Every dog on the street knows that it will most certainly take the replication of the very best aspects of the Walsh Park display to come remotely close to next Sunday’s visitors.

A glance at some of the results in the chart hereunder will show that Tipp often overpowered their Lake County opponents, even in the winter. Averaging almost seven goals a game in the first seven clashes, the 1953 hammering makes for particularly grim reading. It is no exaggeration to state that early in the second half in the resplendent Páirc Uí Chaoimh nine days ago, a similar 12-goal haul from Kieran Kingston’s charges looked a distinct possibility (to go with a massive points tally for good measure). Thankfully, some key forwards in white and red were rested at that juncture.

How Westmeath have reacted to the drubbing by the banks of the Lee will determine how close they will get to Tipperary on Sunday. Down the line, the Joe McDonagh Cup is Westmeath’s level and the erratic form of main challengers Carlow and Kerry would suggest that the tier two championship is winnable at our fourth attempt. However, respectability against Tipp and Limerick on Sunday week will surely be an essential component in O’Brien’s preparation for the trip to Netwatch Cullen Park in the first weekend of July.

Back to 1983! This hirsute columnist was exactly three weeks short of becoming a father for the first time and, accordingly, had to cut back on what otherwise would have been a typically-OTT boozy celebration after our fabulous 5-12 to 3-11 win. My daughter went on to marry the aforementioned Tipp hurling snob in 2013 in Malta (incidentally, he is a lovely fellow). I was under strict instructions not to get GAA-related digs at the many Offaly guests in attendance in my father of the bride speech, but nobody said that I couldn’t mention Michael Cosgrove destroying Pat Fox. Otherwise, I am told that my speech was highly commendable!

The previous ten NHL games between Westmeath and Tipperary resulted as follows:

6/2/1938, Cusack Park, Tipperary 9-4, Westmeath 2-2

4/12/1938, Thurles, Tipperary 5-6, Westmeath 1-4

17/11/1940, Roscrea, Tipperary 7-5, Westmeath 1-4

10/2/1952, Cusack Park, Tipperary 5-6, Westmeath 1-4

15/2/1953, Thurles, Tipperary 12-7, Westmeath 2-9

12/2/1956, Thurles, Tipperary 7-5, Westmeath 1-5

24/2/1957, Cusack Park, Tipperary 3-9, Westmeath 3-0

2/10/1983, Cusack Park, Westmeath 5-12, Tipperary 3-11

3/11/1985, Cusack Park, Westmeath 1-18, Tipperary 1-11

23/2/2020, Thurles, Tipperary 3-27, Westmeath 0-16