Tipperary and Kilkenny’s mad perfection brings the best of enemies together

Something gave way during the sustained splendour of last week’s All-Ireland hurling final. Kilkenny and Tipperary managed to break the speed of the sound of enmity as their mutual obsession with the game carried players and fans alike into a place they had never been before.

Was it the greatest game of hurling ever played? So many of the stars of the 1980s and 1990s who appear on the radio and television shows now were reluctant to emphatically state it so, in part out of deference for the championship games that were played in the middle of last century for audiences who had to rely on imagination and radio commentary for a picture of the game. The fabulousness of how people imagined those games of the 1940s and 1950s allowed for no scuffed ground strokes or horrendous wides. In their mind’s eye, at least, those games were probably played in a welter of perfection.

But last Sunday’s match achieved just that state in front of a television audience throughout the world. When the drawn final was held up against the light for review that night, the gemologists agreed that they were looking at flawlessness. Kilkenny and Tipp had revealed a side of hurling nobody could remember seeing before. The old enmity had come good.

"I think in the end, even our own supporters started getting fed up," grumbled John Doyle good-naturedly one damp late August afternoon in 2009 when we met in his home. It was a week before Tipp and Kilkenny were due to meet in the final and the eight-time All-Ireland winner was looking forward to a resumption of the keenest rivalry in hurling.

Shamanistic spell

Doyle was referring to the period in the 1960s when Tipperary hurlers seemed to collect All-Ireland titles for fun and held a shamanistic spell over their neighbours, going unbeaten by Kilkenny for some 45 years. “As far as stickmanship and style is concerned they are the past masters,” he said of Kilkenny. “You have to hurl them close because they had some great players. The rivalry wasn’t bitter either, at least between the players. Between the supporters, it is probably a different matter.”

Probably. When capturing the rivalry in his memoir, Babs Keating recalled the heavy atmosphere in an elevator in New York shared with Kilkenny hurlers during Tipp’s period of pomp. The silence was so deep and fixed that it left a couple in the lift visibly uncomfortable as they ascended.

By 1987, when Tipperary emerged from their 16 summers of misery to win a Munster championship, the signs came out in Urlingford and Johnstown as they made their way back to Dublin: “This way to Croke Park”. On one level, it was just mischief and, of course, through work and marriage and the usual interaction of neighbouring counties, Tipp and Kilkenny people have much in common. When the old boys appear on radio or television chat shows now, the rivalry is leavened with guffaws and earnest declarations of respect. Players from the past few decades know each other through colleges and some have become friends.

But for all that, whenever you hear a Kilkenny person talk about Tipperary hurling or a Tipperary hurling person refer to the Cats, you don’t have to listen too hard to notice an edge. It is nothing personal. It is just that they loathe and despise and begrudge the thought of being beaten by the other county because there is no more exquisite misery. Nothing matches beating Tipperary for Kilkenny just as nothing exceeds beating Kilkenny for Tipperary. It is something inherited and barely logical and so they rarely come out and say it. But deep down, when it comes to hurling, there is no other way to say it: they f***ing hate each other.

And in the heat of it, they can't help showing it. You could hear it for sure in the seconds after Henry Shefflin buried that penalty in the quaking closing chapter of the 2009 final. And the following September, the Tipperary delight at not just finally beating Kilkenny but denying them five in a row was raw and elemental. (John Doyle died that December, aged 80, in the knowledge that Tipp were All-Ireland champions). It wasn't just about winning: it was about seeing them losing too. And again in 2011, the opposite was true. Losing to Tipp the year before was nearly worth it to Kilkenny just so they could come back and beat them again. You'd never tire of batin' Tipp.

In the 1980s, Tipp had their heads turned north long enough to engage in a brief but bitter rivalry with Galway. And during most of Brian Cody's reign, it was Cork who put themselves forward as the chief agitators. But the Kilkenny-Tipperary thing is at the heart of it. It won't go away.

Maybe that is why the lead into last Sunday’s final was underwhelming for GAA fans outside those two counties. Last summer’s blooming by Clare was greeted like a new dawn. And if Cork, their opponents, were of tradition, they had JBM on the sideline and it shouldn’t be forgotten that there is a full generation of Irish men out there who basically wanted to be JBM.

Perpetual scores

Last year’s championship was excellent and the final was novel. And let’s be honest, how many times did people grin and say wasn’t it great that THEY weren’t there, in their stripes. Maybe they were gone, people whispered. Maybe they were finally gone. But they weren’t gone. And after Limerick’s early promise and Wexford’s thrilling road campaigns, it all came back down to Tipp and Kilkenny, with their history and spite and brilliant photographs and their perpetual scores to settle.

And in the minor game, Kilkenny's latest batch were emphatic and extraordinarily cool in ending the romantic notion of a first Limerick minor title since 1984. Black and amber kids celebrating: these youngsters had been around three years old when Cody took over. It was like a sign: nothing would change.

Then the senior game started and the strangest thing happened. For decades, the mood of Tipperary and Kilkenny hurling games had been about oppression, about keeping the other lot down. From the early moments of last week’s final, a different dynamic was at work. The teams responded to one another, provoking one another into higher and higher states of play until everyone in the stadium and watching on television was left awestruck by what was unfolding before their eyes. The atmosphere in Croke Park was different. The counties were so engrossed by the spectacle and by a shared love of the game that the people forgot who they were. They were in it together. The respect and appreciation and the wonder was genuine. Nothing was feigned.

Maybe, in the mad perfection of last week’s match and the trippy intervention of Hawk-Eye, the hurling legions of Kilkenny and Tipperary finally realised that on Sunday last, there is no other county they would rather have played, no other voices they would rather have heard.