PM O'Sullivan The Ciotóg SideJust what is it about Wexford and streakers? Last weekend's Leinster final featured two such interventions in short succession. Three seasons ago, we saw the same craic at the same juncture, with a New Ross man subsequently charged on foot of acting the bare galoot ("offending modesty and causing scandal").
Kilkenny, betwixt and between, won their 63rd Leinster title more easily than anticipated in this column. The fact that Black and Amber were not tipped to do so well probably guaranteed a victory. Unlike Slaneyside, Noreside rarely fares badly when expected to struggle.
It is tempting to link these interruptions to present pessimism, adopting the streak, for all its silliness, as somehow symbolic. Writing here on Wednesday, Seán Moran noted a widespread source of disgruntlement: "The re-emergence of the traditional counties after a phase, now wistfully referred to as "The Golden Age", when five All-Irelands in a row were won by teams from outside the big three," This view's canonical expression has already become Denis Walsh's Hurling: The Revolution Years (2005). Marvellously fluent, this study details how the championship jettisoned old moulds ("what hurling was like before 1995") before returning to an intensification of those confines.
For many, the newest of the new structures is too unwieldy and fosters non-events. Some even favour reversion to an old-style knock-out format. Ger Loughnane has been honest about failings in original HDC emphases: "Any system that penalises the provincial winners has to be looked at." To that end, John Allen has called for straight passage to an All-Ireland semi-final.
Here is where those streakers possess an oblique resonance. One way, of course, it is just half-cut lads acting the maggot. Another way, there is local significance. The carry-on is the acting out of a concession, a forestalling of criticism by hectic anticipation of it. Why bother mocking an emperor when he himself, unabashed, makes song and dance of nakedness? Wexford's post-1996 inertia can be acknowledged and deflected with one bare-arsed caper.
A fanciful tale? Intense emotion will find the strangest outlets. Which or whether, Walsh's brisk eloquence and excellent use of quotation should not eclipse blind spots in this nostalgia. The unexpected is always green in the ground. If anyone had stated in late 1994 that Clare would not be flattered by winning the All-Ireland in each of the next four seasons, there would have come replies urging a spell of psychiatric care.
The idiom of Walsh's volume is likewise suspect. Having covered the Rebels' strike in late 2003, he simply moves to a new paragraph: "Within two years Cork were All-Ireland hurling champions again." The calm, clause-less syntax is a take on causality. One event led directly, it is implied, to the following one.
Really? Caveats properly apply. This stance is a variant on what historians gloss as 'Whig narrative', where the past is portrayed from the standpoint of hindsight's 20:20 perspective. Writing in the June 2003 issue of Breaking Ball magazine, Denis Walsh could see no great future for Cork hurling. For him, at that point, the Leesiders' immediate route was twisted with chicanes.
If the code's contour in 2006 is, like that New Ross man in 2003, scandalous to behold, certain recognitions are due. While Loughnane might now accept the error of previous HDC ways, his jubilant reaction to Wexford's fine victory in 2004's Leinster semi-final drew this remark: "A monopoly in anything is not good." The statement has become no less curious. Properly defined, monopolies involve the (illegitimate) absence of competition. The record books include several teams Kilkenny had to overcome on their way to accepting the Liam McCarthy Cup 2002-03.
This observation has nothing to do with the present writer's county of origin. It is a simple matter of coherence. The new structure was happily accepted at the time for reasons that leaned on a risibly narrow rationale: making it more difficult for Noreside to keep winning Senior All-Irelands. People said so out loud, confusing novelty with competitiveness.
Cast minds back, if you doubt the context. This hysteria found its nadir in a TG4 poll mounted during half-time in the 2003 Under-21 All-Ireland final, one that sought to canvass whether Black and Amber's supposed dominance was deleterious to hurling's progress. Anyone can say anything. Such is one of life's iron rules. But it is analytical clarity that counts, events having rusted brittle rhetorics. Cork's relative lack of underage success - no minor title since 2001, no Under-21 title since 1998 - has muted similar hysteria. If, however, their minors win out in 2006, as they well might, expect a marked change in register. Sports journalism can be a very ovine pursuit.
Hurling: The Revolution Years introduces itself by adopting a version of the concealment trope for pre-1995 realities: "Underneath the lipstick and mascara of Munster finals and big days in Croke Park, the hurling championship was pale and sick." Soon, the HDC will grant governing structures their next inflection. This process afoot, cosmetic changes, on the basis of one county's success, should play no part.
A bare and plain coherence will be all.
PM O'Sullivan is an academic and a hurling writer, whose column, The Stubborn Nore, appears on www.kilkennycats.com.
