Hurling & Camogie

Christy O'Connor's 2017 Hurling Review

About 40 minutes after the League final in April, Anthony Daly was snaking his car out the Ennis Road from the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick when he saw Conor Hayes at the side of the road. Hayes was looking at his phone so Daly spotted his opportunity. He rolled down the window and summoned his best Micheal O Muircheartaigh accent. ‘Who will be the next Galway man to lift Liam MacCarthy after Conor Hayes?’ he roared before driving on.

Galway had been waiting nearly three decades for someone to follow Hayes as the next man to lift the Liam MacCarthy but the odds of finally finding a successor certainly shortened that day in Limerick.

It was only April. Tipperary, who were short Seamus Callanan, were extremely poor but Galway still hit a level that suggested that this team was ready to take the next big step and finally get the big job done.

The hype was in full swing on the pitch after such a blistering performance, as it so often had been after a Galway league win on the eve of so many championships over the previous decades. Some pundits were already saying that Galway didn’t need to win the league in that manner but none of that hype mattered in Galway this time around because Micheal Donoghue managed it so well. The squad were back training that week.

The league final display contained nothing but positives. If anything, it was an example to the group of what they could achieve if they maximised their potential.

The Galway forwards were on fire that afternoon but a couple of them were still bound to be looking over their shoulders afterwards with Conor Cooney and Johnny Glynn trying to get into the starting 15.

When Galway finally ended a 29-year famine in September, both Glynn and Cooney were on the team.

The manner of Galway’s league final victory also altered the general perception towards Tipp, who were most people’s favourites to win the All-Ireland beforehand.

Tipp spent the summer scrambling after that league final, and yet, they could still have won the All-Ireland, only losing an epic semi-final to Galway by one point, in the game of the championship.

Tipp will look back on the season with regret, along with a number of other teams. Clare could have won a Munster final against Cork, and could have beaten Tipp in an All-Ireland quarter-final but they never really caught fire in both games. Limerick could have beaten Kilkenny but they still failed to win a championship game. Dublin were wiped out by Galway and Tipp. Offaly were destroyed by Galway and Waterford.

Laois were well beaten by Wexford and Dublin. Westmeath, who came through the Leinster Round robin with Laois, really rattled Tipperary but those other hidings did detract from the overall quality of the championship.

On the otherhand, while the championship was nowhere near as good as the memorable and electric summer of 2013, it still did contain traces of that electricity. Kilkenny and Tipperary’s struggles that year added to the mood of the 2013 summer because it opened the door for so many others and there was a similar feel to this year.

With both teams gone out of the provincial championships by early June, it was the first time since that 1949 the All-Ireland finalists were beaten in the first round the following year.

The novel final pairing of Galway and Waterford added to the uniqueness of the occasion but it was also a neat metaphor for so many other breakthrough and different elements of the hurling season; Wexford beat Kilkenny in the championship for the first time in 13 years; Cork had been Munster champions in 2014 but their provincial title this year was one of their most glorious of the modern era because it was so unexpected, beating Tipperary, Waterford and Clare along the way.

After soulless Munster finals in 2015 and 2016, the provincial decider in early July was a hark back to the halcyon days of Thurles bursting at the seams with excitement and vibrant colour. Wexford’s renaissance under Davy Fitzgerald drew the biggest crowd to a Leinster final in history.

The breathless Kilkenny-Waterford qualifier in 2013 was one of the standout memories of that championship and the two counties produced another exhilarating qualifier contest again in July, which was also decided after extra time.

The greatest triumph for Waterford was not beating Kilkenny for the first time since 1959, but in how they had to beat their neighbours twice (after leading by eight points late on in normal time) before they had the match won.

Kilkenny were a pale shadow of their former selves and yet they still found the energy and wherewithal to draw a match in which they were comprehensively outplayed. In that context alone, Kilkenny were faithful to the culture and principles which Brian Cody has long espoused.

Waterford returned to their sweeper system that evening, which they had abandoned for the Munster semi-final defeat to Cork. The sending off of Damien Cahalane in the All-Ireland semi-final was a huge turning point in their subsequent All-Ireland semi-final meeting but Waterford’s system was still a key factor in overturning Cork.

Waterford have long been harshly portrayed as a cold, m, mechanical, defensive team but the irony of their portrayal was underlined in their performance against Cork in August when Waterford registered 4-19. There was further irony in Waterford and Wexford’s progression this year with defined sweeper systems because the 2017 championship reached a whole new level in points scoring, with more points (white flags) scored per game than any other championship in history.

Galway were the perfect example.

Their 0-33 against Offaly broke the record for the most points scored in a championship game, before Waterford broke it six days later with 35 points against Offaly. Galway failed to score a goal in four of their five championship matches but they didn’t need green flags because they could pick teams off with points from all angles, hitting 0-26 in the final against Waterford.

And David Burke finally got to succeed Conor Hayes as the next Galway man to lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup.