Someone once told my uncle Denis that the only things that mattered to lads around Moher were hurling, dogs and the IRA. An eclectic and sometimes dangerous cocktail. As a small chap growing up among the Treacys I knew nothing of my Grandad Mattie’s involvement in the latter, but you could hardly avoid either of the others.
My earliest memories are of his huge Mastiff Teddy who was the last dog in the house after he grew too old to breed terriers and greyhounds. Fast terriers and slow greyhounds, I seem to remember. And if there was a defining aroma of the house that resembled a cross between a train station and a dressing room with nightly games of 45 and whist of all things, it was of the black collared white jerseys of the Good Counsel hurlers stored under the stairs.
According my Da, Grandad Mattie was wont on occasions to sing Carden’s Wild Domain, a song about the hated Carden landlords who owned 8,000 acres mostly around Templemore but stretching into Killea and as far as Upperchurch. John Rutter Carden was known as Woodcock for his skill in avoiding numerous attempts to shoot him, one of which led to two men being hanged in Nenagh. His father had been High Sheriff during the terror of the 1790s.
Hurling was an intimate part of our lives. Mattie Treacy had come to Dublin at the end of the Civil War and hurled with Commercials. They were nearly all Tipp men and involved as publicans or barmen in the licensed sale of porter. The team above won the Dublin junior championship in 1925 and my grandfather (second from right front row) played on the Dublin team that was beaten by Cork in the All Ireland final. He played senior for several years after that.
Which is all by way of a torturous and self-indulgent excuse to talk about the hurling final tomorrow. After Dublin beat Limerick in the quarter-final some of us were briefly dreaming about a repeat of the last final that Dublin had been in, back in 1961 when narrowly beaten by the great Tipperary team that won four of five finals between 1961 and 1965. Cork put us back in our box two weeks ago.
1961 almost led to a revival of Civil War hostilities in Brandon Road. Granny Treacy arrived home from Croke Park with my father and pointed her finger at my Grandad smoking his pipe surrounded by his dogs. “Not one word out of you Mattie Treacy”. We do occasionally know when to keep quiet.
He’s sure to be sitting beside the celestial radio above puffing away and listening to the first-ever clash of the giants of Munster – Tipperary and Cork – in an All Ireland final. Their epic encounters over the years have become the stuff of legend. Even the names would have you trembling – The Rattler Byrne and the Hell’s Kitchen of Carey, Doyle and Maher in the blue and gold. Willie John Daly, and Jack Lynch, and of course Christy Ring for Cork.
They are the names I heard growing up from people who had seen them and made them seem like otherworldly beings engaged in titanic battles in the searing heat of Thurles or the Ennis Road, Limerick watched by tens of thousands. An echo of our ancient past which is appropriate given that the game has been played for as long as we know anything really of our people.
I have been fortunate to have seen many of the great hurlers from Tipp and Cork over the past 50 years, from a time when my uncle Matt was a selector on the Dublin team having played in the 1960s. Tipp were in a bad way in the 1970s but the revival of their age-old battle with Cork in the Munster finals of 1984, ’85, ’87 – Tipperary’s first Munster in 16 years incredibly – and 1988 was worth the wait.
None of that will matter tomorrow other than the palpable link with the heroes and epics of the past. On form Cork are favourites, and rightly so. They have been hugely entertaining to watch over the past few years and it is their best chance to end an unprecedented ‘famine’ of 20 years since they beat Galway in 2005.
When you are talking to Cork people you realise that it has become somewhat of an obsession. They have to win. Or else face what Norman Mailer might have described as “existential death” when he was writing about boxing.
Tipperary will not be sentimental about that. They were beaten well by Cork in the Munster championship but that was a bit of a non-contest once Darragh McCarthy was sent off in the first minute. He starts tomorrow, having won an appeal, and hopefully the ghosts of Hell’s Kitchen will be advising him to be a bit cute. Not soft mind, just careful.
Tipp have looked like a team transformed this year under Cahill and lads like Jake Morris, Jason Foley and Ronan Maher have been rejuvenated. The key challenge will be how the Tipperary backs handle the Cork forwards. Pace and power and accuracy destroyed Dublin who made the error of individual match ups. Zonal defence or, God help us, deploying a sweeper might limit them but not stop them. On a going day no-one will stop them.
I am slightly prejudiced of course. There have been strong links between Dublin and Tipp hurling for generations. You never have to dig too deep to find a father or mother or grandparents who have produced sons to wear the blue of Dublin rather than their native county. As my grandfather apparently was fond of saying, “There was no hurling in Dublin before we came up.”
I would love to be there tomorrow but would feel slightly guilty if I did happen upon a ticket – something I suspect will not bother many people who will be paying their first visit to Croke Park this year, or in some cases ever, for the final. Of the 60,000 Cork people who were at the semi final, not even a half of them will have a ticket, most likely.
Tipp people, and not only Tipp people, will be gathered in Talbot Street tomorrow at 12pm to commemorate Seán Treacy who was shot dead by British undercover agents in October 1920. It is a traditional gathering that has taken place on the Sunday morning of every final Tipperary have appeared in for almost 100 years. Sometimes it is said there are tickets about.
So tomorrow, we ‘Dulchies’ as some refer to us, will again be like small children pressing our noses against the window of the sweet shop. As will hurling people of almost every club and county whose team has never made it to a final, let alone won one. We will enjoy it nonetheless.
Tipp Abú