THERE are moments in games that will stay with you for longer than the Covid19 pandemic. Take last Sunday at Rossa Park as an example.
City upstarts O’Donovan Rossa against hurling bluebloods and county champions Cuchullain’s Dunloy.
Ten or 15 minutes in, a beautiful low ball was swept in to the feet of Rossa attacker Tiarnan Murphy.
A Dunloy defender tracked Murphy all the way and was always within arm's reach. You couldn’t have faulted the defending.
But sometimes a player’s first touch is that good it doesn’t matter what a defender does. Running towards the ’45 to gain possession, Murphy’s first touch was majestic.
With one flick of the hurl, the sloithar spun beautifully into Murphy’s palm and with one swivel to his left the ball sailed between Dunloy’s posts at the Shaw’s Road end of the field.
In that one sumptuous play, Murphy’s brilliant score reminded the few hundred spectators congregated on the grassy bank that hurling will always be a far superior game than football, that the Antrim Senior Hurling Championship remains one of the greatest sporting endeavours on this island, that the Stormont Executive should not follow their southern counterparts by playing games behind closed doors, and that the hurlers of O’Donovan Rossa have been one of the great entertainers since the easing of lockdown.
There were some wonderful performances on either team last Sunday.
There aren't many finer sights in hurling than Keelan Molloy in full flight, or 'Shorty' Shiels’ peerless radar, or Conal Cunning's for that matter, not to mention Ronan Molloy's baseball glove of a right hand.
It seems a long time ago now that I watched Chris McGuinness having a storming game for Dinny Cahill's Antrim down in Laois in the All-Ireland Championship one Saturday night.
He's still going strong in the blue and yellow of Rossa.
The mercurial James Connolly has had some glowing moments too across the two championship games, Stephen Beatty never has a bad game, throw in the livewire Murphy brothers and the warrior spirit of Michael Armstrong and Niall Crossan and you have the makings of a team that should be pushing to reach their first county final at senior level since 2004.
Last Sunday’s drawn game was also compelling evidence the club scene warrants greater attention from the mainstream media and that those same media outlets don’t necessarily need to be feeding off the ‘inter-county monster’ for eight or nine months of the year.
The pandemic has allowed more elements of the GAA's mainstream media to gaze at the underbelly of the club championships. We’re able to see the encouraging trajectory of teams, even if they don’t reach the latter stages.
Normally, because of the all-consuming inter-county scene, The Irish News sports team rarely get the opportunity to report on the early rounds of club championships.
If inter-county players feel they’re being spread too thinly between club and county and whatever else, the same could be applied to sports reporters.
Should the GAA opt for splitting the club and county seasons we’ll appreciate the folly of what went before and just how much the club scene was sold short by the Association's top brass.
From that perspective, this year’s condensed Antrim Senior Hurling Championship has been hugely instructive.
The series has been on a knife edge from the opening weekend.
And yet for all that O’Donovan Rossa have offered in back-to-back Sundays, they could find themselves out of the championship come four o’clock on Sunday afternoon.
Whatever way Group One finishes, it’ll be a crying shame for someone.
Maybe it will be Rossa who will be left kicking themselves for not seeing out their games against St John's and Dunloy.
Maybe it will be Ballycastle who have added plenty of colour themselves to the group.
Because of the quality of hurling and its many imponderables, Group One has outshone Group Two by some distance.
Despite their Houdini act in Rossa Park last Sunday – take a bow ‘Shorty’ Shiels and young Chrissy McMahon – Dunloy still have some questions to answer about their ability to retain their hard-earned county crown.
And it seems the bitter championship experiences of the last two seasons have hardened St John’s as they prepare to host Dunloy this Sunday.
But Rossa’s renaissance has really caught the attention and for those who have been lucky enough to get a ticket to watch their two championship games to date, they have been a joy to watch.
After a period in the intermediate ranks – which yielded an All-Ireland title a couple of seasons ago - Rossa were expected to be championship fodder for Dunloy and St John’s in Group One, and they’d fight it out with Ballycastle for third spot with no realistic expectation of making a dent in the latter stages of the series.
That may still be the prevailing narrative when the dust settles on Sunday night, but the club’s hurlers have left a lasting impression on 2020 just by their fearless, shackles-off approach.
When you have the county champions on the ropes for almost an hour and have them punching the air leaving the Shaw’s Road for stealing a draw, you know you’re doing something right.
Colly Murphy and his management team deserve a huge amount of credit for how Rossa have gone about their business in these weird and uncertain times.
Those behind the wire at Rossa Park over last two Sundays will testify to that.
