A first title for Thurles Sarsfields but De La Salle are not far off the mark

Who would be an officer of a G.A.A. Board? It’s often a case you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don’t. I was one myself for long enough to know exactly what goes on. When an officer of a board, it’s often a case that you have to listen to the thunder and duck the lightening.

To listen to the thunder at times can be difficult, but sometimes you have to. Sometimes it’s a case that you don’t shoot the messenger as much as you would like to, as there could well be something in what they are saying if you are prepared to listen.

Why the G.A.A. persist with using Pairc Uí Chaoimh as a venue for games is amazing. The stadium is a disaster waiting to happen, and when it does happen, the G.A.A. will have some very serious questions to answer.

Full marks have to be given to the Munster Council for giving both De La Salle and Thurles Sarsfields the opportunity to play this year’s Munster Senior Club Final at either Walsh Park or Semple Stadium. Secretly, I am sure that they were hoping for an agreement to toss as they had the chance to get a considerable local support to the game as well as a reasonable away support. But playing the game at a neutral venue they were always going to be a drop in those passing through the turn-styles.

After an agreement was not reached to flick a coin they fixed the game for Pairc Uí Chaoimh which you cannot give any where near full marks to the council for and as a result of fixing the game for where they did they took a massive loss financially.

Just 2,433 passed through the gates of the Cork venue to see one of the best Munster Club Finals in a long number of years. 2,400 plus people in a stadium the size of Pairc Uí Chaoimh does not create an atmosphere. Even if the game was moved up the road to Pairc Uí Rinn which has a capacity of about 17,000 it would have been like been in a grave yard atmosphere wise, but a better one than at the considerably larger G.A.A. venue in the southern capital. Fermoy and Mallow may be even smaller than Pairc Uí Rinn and the facilities, especially in Fermoy may not be the same for the fans as they would in Cork City, but a terrific atmosphere could have been created.

De La Salle’s one hundred present record in Munster Championship hurling might be gone, but there can be no disputing that the better team won on the day. Thurles Sarsfields after coming through the Tipperary Championship, the beat Kilmallock in a dog fight on Kilmallock’s home patch before beating both Sarsfields and De La Salle with late shootouts to claim the their first provincial titles.

On the day Thurles Sarsfields showed slightly the greater hunger. More of their players on the day stepped up to the mark. Pa Bourke was a deserved Man of the Match. Padraic Maher also had a solid game as did Lar Corbett and Michael Cahill did an excellent job shadowing John Mullane. When introduced Richie Ruth and Ger ‘Redser’ O’Grady made telling contributions.

De La Salle too had some fine performers. Jake Dillon would have pushed Pa Bourke all the way for the official ‘Man of the Match’ gong while Eddie Barrett was also very impressive in the middle of the field and will have Michael Ryan and his fellow Waterford selectors wondering in the coming weeks if he would be worth a prolonged run in their set up in the new year and at the expense of who.

Most appear to be pointing to the sending off of John Keane late in the first half as the winning and loosing of the game. While he was a loss, I for one don’t know if his absence was as big as some make it out to be.

Sometimes playing with fourteen men can be an advantage. It has the effect that others have to up their game to make up for the numerical disadvantage, and it is often the case that the team with fourteen men is the one that comes through.

For me, the gaps that were there to be seen when De La Salle played Lismore in the quarter finals of the senior hurling championship were there again and this was the real winning and loosing of the game.

Against Lismore most (myself included) saw just one winner. Lismore played that game minus four players that played in the opening round of the championship. But the players that came in for them and some of the younger players that were part of the team all year really upped their game and they ran the eventual county champions to one point and hit four goals in the process and could have hit more.

Thurles Sarsfields at times against De La Salle got through the De La Salle defence too easily. Luckily from a De La Salle and Waterford perspective however they hit only the one goal.

De La Salle for all their efforts too hit only the one goal, a brilliant one scored by Paudie Nevin. Nevin beat Padraic Maher and raced towards the goal from the left hand side of the field and then gave Padraig Maher no chance with a well executed shot.

De La Salle prior to this were somewhat unlucky not to have hit two further goals. On twenty minutes, Jake Dillon hit the base of the post, and the ball was cleared to safety and resulted in a Thurles point within seconds of Dillon’s miss, and moments later Dillon again tried his luck but his shot this time was saved by Patrick McCormack.

De La Salle shortly after hitting the De La Salle net saw their numbers cut when John Keane was in the eyes of many was harshly sent off but the sending off was technically correct by the referee.

They went in trailing by just two points (1-11 to 1-9) at the break and when they came out for the second half and won a twenty metre free which they went for a goal from despite the goal been heavily guarded, which they missed you had to wonder was it going to be De La Salle’s day.

Hindsight is always a fantastic thing, and you cant but wonder would tipping the ball over the crossbar bringing the game back to just one point be the better of the two options.

In the second half, questions could have been asked for the De La Salle management team. With the game close at the start of the second half, Thurles Sarsfields sent on Ger O’Grady and Richie Ruth and between them they hit three points. De La Salle playing the whole of the second half with a numerical disadvantage did not use any sub till the last five minutes of the game.

Midway through the second half they lost Jack Kennedy for a short period of time meaning they were playing with thirteen. Again hindsight is a great thing but should the De La Salle management team at that time have taken the bull by the horns and sent on a sub to bring their quota of players back up to fourteen they might have faired better.

De La Salle will take a few weeks off now before they begin their plans for the 2013 campaign.

They will be there or there about in the county next year. In the likes of Jake Dillon, Eddie Barrett, Dean Twomey, Eoin Madigan, Stephen Daniels, Kevin Moran and Bryan Phelan amongst others they have some fine players and its only a matter of time before they will be adding to their already impressive tally of medals won, maybe even adding one won on Saint Patrick’s Day that they so much crave for.