Final test looks like history repeating

GAELIC GAMES:Kilkenny are wounded while Tipperary are tweaking but it's hard to look beyond the two rivals meeting up again on the first Sunday in September, writes SEAN MORAN

ONLY A county with Kilkenny’s rich body of work could provide so much data based on All-Ireland finals. It’s all of six years since the county was absent from hurling’s September climax and only last year did they actually lose on the big day during that period.

It has been widely remarked however that the pinnacle of performance came in the one-sided eeriness of the 2008 final when they pushed themselves to the zenith regardless of the opposition, leaving Waterford as onlookers.

The slippage of winning margins a year later didn’t appear to undermine the ability to win matches and in a final that they were about to lose they rallied and dispatched Tipperary.

Initially Tipp’s performance appeared to create heightened pressure. Who wants to be presumed champions 12 months in advance having just lost an All-Ireland?

But Tipperary turned the tables unwittingly but spectacularly by blowing out in Páirc Uí Chaoimh a year ago this weekend and shaking their own reputation to the point that a more obvious pressure began to exert itself more than three months in advance of the final.

Kilkenny’s five-in-a-row ambitions became akin to a loud buzzing noise throughout a summer when the threat of the county’s most obvious opponents appeared to have been silenced.

It’s hard to know the precise impact of this on last year’s All-Ireland but Kilkenny, noted for the firm hand on the tiller and a distrust of hoopla, passed a most uncharacteristic couple of weeks in the run-up to the final. In that most empirical of camps, where players can blast their way into selection contention by deeds on the training field, the talk became of miracle cures.

Brian Cody appeared for once uncertain. The catalyst for this was the state of Henry Shefflin’s knee. It was as if the Kilkenny manager didn’t quite trust the players to stage the historical coup in the absence of the team’s spiritual leader.

If so, the anxiety was justified. Shefflin has been such an immense presence. Last year his scoring feats made him into the leading marksman in championship history. That however has always been almost an irrelevance in terms of what he delivers on big occasions.

Certainly, the steadiness with which he bangs over frees keep the team on track as well as demoralising opponents and plain scaring defenders about the advisability of fouling. Frequently though his scores from play have been messages to the opposition.

His relentless persecution of Simon Whelahan in the opening minutes of the 2000 final forced an early switch, but by then Shefflin had been instrumental in the 2-2 to 0-1 lead that defined the course of the match. The targeting of Seánie McMahon for an early score in 2002 equally set a tone and a year later, his point from the left restored Kilkenny’s lead against Cork in the final 10 minutes.

He made the controversial penalty count in 2009 when Tipp had taken the champions to the brink.

It’s safe therefore to point out that Kilkenny, with Shefflin there to direct operations, are an entirely different proposition to the team without him. Maybe he wouldn’t have altered the course of last year’s final but by the time of his premature withdrawal he had been the team’s most influential player despite being hampered by his knee injury.

The problem in all of this for the Leinster champions is that injuries have cast them in an unflattering light. The scale of the casualties going into the league final proved insurmountable but was that didn’t explain the dispiritedness.

Two of Shefflin’s most able allies, Tommy Walsh and JJ Delaney, have been bothered by chronic shoulder and hamstring injuries respectively recently.

Fit and restored, they help to reconstitute the substance of a team that will do business, as will the return of Michael Fennelly, but no longer is there the sense of a rising generation who will address the problems of last year – like JJ Delaney, Derek Lyng and Martin Comerford did in 2002 after the team had taken an unscheduled gap year the previous season.

Tipperary are in the unusual position of changing management after a landmark All-Ireland. Declan Ryan has a clear understanding of the young talent in the county which, even if the suspicion lingers that most of those ready to step up to senior have already graduated, will be vital for the inevitable tweaking in the weeks ahead.

There are generous options around the field and, even if the possible loss of both of the All-Ireland centrefield for Sunday’s opening encounter with Cork isn’t ideal, normal service will be resumed later in the summer.

Although Galway were present in body only on the day in question, Tipperary’s victory in Pearse Stadium in the league was so full of intelligent movement and clear vision on the ball that it gave a hint of what they can bring to the game and in that instance they were missing four current All Stars.

Fortified by last year’s experience in Munster, Tipperary are expected to start more surely and steadily but the priority is to be there in August with the team picking up steam, as has happened in the past two seasons.

Galway’s inability to reach the All-Ireland semi-finals for the past six years is peculiar in a county that routinely occupies third place in the MacCarthy Cup betting. This year hasn’t been as optimistic as last when a coherent strategy looked to be coming together in the league success.

Tipperary showed the importance of ball winning in the half forwards and Galway still look short of that given Joe Canning’s range of abilities doesn’t include bilocation – all of which appears to reduce the county’s prospects to the eternal potential for a big performance “on their day”.

Waterford continue to persevere. Four years on from what might have been their peak, many of the big names have departed and although the flow of young players has been impressive the team no longer has the ignition to launch fireworks.

Competitive and wholehearted, they can exploit any early-season bugs in Tipp’s system but are they capable of defeating both of the All-Ireland’s top-two contenders in the one season?

Dublin are the big springers to date. Confident and well able to win ball through their successful league campaign, they have yet to make their mark on the championship in any way beyond last year’s defeat of Munster opposition for the first time in decades of championship hurling – the win over Clare being followed by a hapless capitulation to Antrim.

They need to rectify that – and concede fewer goals – if they are to push on; an All-Ireland semi-final the most likely shape of a satisfactory season for Anthony Daly.

Cork’s reputation for being able to emerge like mushrooms overnight is unlikely in years to come to be calling on 2011 as supporting evidence.

History is against the notion of the same two counties contesting three successive All-Ireland finals but chances are that’s what we’ll be getting next September.