Patricians Survive Plebian Revolt

The last big game before Christmas was last Sunday’s Munster club final between Kerry’s Dr. Crokes of Killarney and The Nire from Waterford. It was truly a clash of the patricians and plebeians of the game but The Nire paid scant respect to livery or genealogy and were unfortunate not to have at least gotten a draw. As was magnanimously conceded by Crokes, and newly appointed Kerry, manager Pat O’Shea.
Crokes were founded in 1886 which makes them one of the oldest surviving clubs in the country. During those 120 years they have won the All Ireland club title in 1992, three Munsters and six Kerry championships. They have also supplied many legendary players to the county team, as far back as 1903, and of course most recently The Gooch and Eoin Brosnan. Both were key to Croke’s prevailing on the day.
The Nire, on the other hand, even in the context of Waterford football, can boast of no comparable heredity. They won the first of their five county titles as recently as 1993 and this was the furthest they have advanced in the Munster competition. Most of them, including county senior Shane Walsh, also hurl together for Fourmilewater which has an even more modest history.
It was a match that looked as though it was over after eleven minutes by which time that consummate poacher the Gooch had scored two goals, both resulting from his vulpine instinct for the breaking ball and the final pass. He may have been criticised, unfairly and without due consideration for extenuating factors in my book, earlier in the year, but Gooch has proven himself again in 2006 to be one of the masters of the modern game. And unfortunately for the rest of the country he looks set to be around for quite a while yet.
Crokes might have gotten at least another goal but The Nire rallied and made some inroads in the teeth of a considerable wind blowing in from the City. Left half back Brian Wall kicked two excellent points but the Kerrymen still entered the dressing room seven points to the good at half time. There was a little bit of pushing and shoving just before the break but other than that it was a fair field with no quarter given or asked.
With the wind behind them, The Nire laid siege to the Blackrock end and Crokes were barely able to get the ball past their own 40 with some brave blocking ensuring that the halfway line became a southern Black Pig’s Dyke until the last seven or eight minutes when one of only three Croke’s attacks ended with the Gooch kicking over a sideline free.
In truth the match might have been won by Nire by that stage had they taken even half of the chances they created. Instead it took them over 15 minutes to get their first score of the half and in total they kicked nine wides as well as spurning a good goal chance when Shane Walsh blasted over the bar with only Kevin Cremin to beat.
Not only was that decisive in scoring terms, it was also The Nire’s last real chance as the Kerrymen suddenly realised the peril they were in and showed considerable verve in the remaining minutes during which they relieved the siege and managed to play down the clock.
The other main story of the week was the return to glory of St. Peter’s in winning the Dublin Primary Schools Corn Ó Donnchú senior football title beating Gaelscoil Thaobh na Coille by 5 - 4 to 1 - 2 in Parnell Park.
That brought back memories of my own days playing hurling with them. We never got to a final although the footballers did and my mother made us a huge blue and gold banner which myself and the brother defaced with some profound slogan like ‘Peter’s Rule OK’.
The man teacher in charge of the hurling was Tom Fahy, a Clare man who had played for Dublin in the 1952 All Ireland final against Cork when he marked Christy Ring.  Whatever about marking Ring he certainly marked my father and a couple of my uncles who he had taught in the Oblates in Inchicore.
When I told my father that he was in Peter’s his face took on the same expression as one of those Auschwitz victims who has just seen an SS officer buying a coffee and a Danish in a New York deli. Actually he wasn’t that bad and I would imagine that they fully deserved whatever they got!
His only dealing with myself was hurling and he spent many an afternoon ferrying us around Dublin to play matches. I loved it and even then recognised, as did probably everyone else, that we were in the presence of a great talent in Niall Quinn who went on to play for Dublin in an All Ireland minor hurling final before deserting us for Tan football. What can you do? All he has to show for his troubles is a large bank balance and a relatively straight nose.
Fahy ruled through a stern charisma and very rarely felt the need to say very much to us. But we liked him and we knew he probably had better things to be doing than dragging a crowd of snot nosed kids around Dublin for the greater glory.
The only time I remember him in anything approaching panic was one afternoon when we were on the bus home up Cork Street having beaten Star of the Sea in Sandymount. In those innocent days news had spread of an exotic premises called ‘Adam and Eves’. We hadn’t a clue what it was other than that it had something to do with sex. Another thing we hadn’t a bull’s notion about but we all knew about it from the Sunday World.
Anyway, as we were passing it by Fahy jumped up to the front of the bus and ordered us all to direct our eyes left in the direction of the Coombe maternity hospital. I was vaguely aware that there was some connection between what happened in there and what was possibly taking place in the ‘noody shop’ but I wasn’t that interested. Not when we had hurling and Dublin and Kerry to look forward to.