GAELIC GAMES: MALACHY CLERKINfinds the All-Ireland final is not the only thing on the mind of the recently unemployed wing back
ALL-IRELAND semi-finals have long since been little more than pit-stops to Kilkenny. Pull in, fill the tank, move on. An occasion for stocking up on what you need and leaving what you want for another time. Sunday was the 11th year in a row that JJ Delaney faced the flag for an All Ireland semi-final and in the end, it turned into a routine bit of business. It’s not his way to describe it in such terms but we’ll do it for him all the same.
“It was a funny game of hurling,” he says. “It can slip by before you know it.
“Waterford were tipping away all along with the points and they showed their character in never giving up. They were always going for the goal but lucky enough, we got in the way now and then.”
Those 11 semi-finals he’s played in have usually gone in one direction.
Delaney has been on the losing side twice – against Galway in 2001 and 2005 – but all the rest have been won with at least a little in hand. Waterford have borne the worst brunt, exiting at Kilkenny’s hands one step short of September three times in the past eight seasons. If Sunday wasn’t the most vulgar display of power we’ve seen from Brian Cody’s side, his wing back won’t ruffle a hair worrying about it.
“It’s all about getting over the line. I’d take a bad performance and win rather than a good performance and lose any day of the week. No-one remembers in 10 or 15 years’ time how good you played, it’s who won the game more than anything. It’s all about winning at the end of the day. The ideal situation is to peak in the final – that’s the ideal thing to do but that doesn’t happen every day either. It’s just about grinding out the result and getting over the line.”
So he settles into a familiar three weeks. Except it’s different this year. Delaney joined the bulging ranks of the unemployed just last Friday and finds himself heading into the All-Ireland final with far more on his mind than who to find tickets for. Five years of sales experience counted for nothing when the company he was with had to bring down the knife. Last in, first out. He’s sanguine enough about it.
“Ah sure look, it’s happening to everyone. I’m not the only one after losing his job in the current circumstances. I’m lucky enough to have the hurling to concentrate on. It’s a great thing for me to concentrate on, I was concentrating on this for the last week.
“I’m hopeful I will pick up something but there’s no guarantees out there anymore. I mean, it’s just the situation that there’s at the moment in the jobs market, there’s not a huge amount out there.
“We’ll just have to keep the head down and send out the CVs and hopefully something will come of it. If something comes up I’m not going to pass it up just because the final is coming up. In an ideal world I could just prepare for the final but if something comes up in the meantime I’ll take it with both hands.”
For now, he shakes it off and carries on. He’ll tune into the other semi-final this Sunday and gives Dublin “a massive chance. Sure it’s only a few months ago since they hammered us”. All the same, it’s obviously Tipp who loom largest.
“You have to get back to the final anyway if you want to win it and Tipperary are the champions so, if you want to win it, if you want to win the All-Ireland, you’re going to have to beat Tipperary along the way at some point. We’ll see now who’s going to come through the other semi-final.
“We are where we want to be and we’ll just have to take it on.”
