Emmet Moloney of The Irish Farmers Journal takes out his crystal ball and looks ahead to the GAA season…
1. – Kilkenny will come back to win the All-Ireland. This is hardly going out on a limb. Brian Cody is staying on, Liam Sheedy is not.
Kilkenny’s path to the All-Ireland semi-final is still relatively unhindered, Tipp’s is not. The Cats’ motivation will be heightened; Tipp’s uncertain due to a change of management. Kilkenny are 6/5 favourites to win the All-Ireland title in 2011 and that’s fair enough. It took the best display I’ve ever seen by a serious hurling team to beat Kilkenny in 2010, can that be there again in 2011? Doubtful.
The quality of the Tipperary U-21 side is a positive for the champions and with any modicum of stability in the camp, they should win Munster and at the very least reach a semi-final.
Galway’s performance against them last year suggests that they too are close to a breakthrough, but Tipp’s underage conveyor belt is the best in the country. It is a two-horse race again.
There will be slip-ups, but Kilkenny would be my strong bet to win the league and the Liam MacCarthy in 2011.
Ridiculous as it sounds, this team, the greatest we have seen, will feel they have a point to prove. Watch out.
2. – Kerry will beat Cork. Long term, I’d fancy Dublin for Sam Maguire in 2011 but there is one certainty out there and that is that Kerry will beat Cork in the Munster football final.
They are seeded to meet in that final and, as All-Ireland champions, Cork will be wearing a target on their backs when they land in Killarney.
The Kingdom don’t mind Cork winning the odd All-Ireland, but it must stay very odd because if the Rebels start getting the idea that they are better than Kerry, well, Kerrymen don’t like that. So, it’s the front door for them next summer and that demands the Blood and Bandage be beaten first time up.
If Cork have the temerity to continue on in the championship after that and reach the final with the old enemy waiting for them, (not too unlikely a scenario), Kerry will beat them again.
3. Cork’s hurlers will struggle. What has happened to this proud hurling county? Is it player power, officialdom or just a lot of stubborn people with no-one looking at the bigger picture?
They went out of last year’s championship with their tails between their legs, after Kilkenny destroyed them.
A few weeks earlier they had thrown away a Munster championship. Now their current manager is going out of his way to reignite the tensions by dropping Seán Óg in a public and quite baffling way.
Ó hAilpín the elder was one of their better players last year but so far is the only one to get his marching papers. Why this couldn’t have been done in the tried and trusted, gentle way, is beyond most sane GAA followers.
A message is obviously being sent. Here’s another one, lads: you’re going nowhere in 2011.
4. It’s a make-or-break year for managers. Hurling bainisteoirs Anthony Daly, John McIntyre and Davy Fitz have to deliver in 2011.
Daly has certainly improved the Dubs, but the time for tangible rewards is here. They will have to get to a league semi-final and put it up to a super power like Kilkenny or Galway. Offaly are their first-round opponents in Leinster and that will have to be won as well.
A Munster championship bought Davy Fitz an extension in Waterford. He’ll have to get the Déise up another rung of the ladder this year. He will have help, though. The underage conveyor belt is chugging away nicely down there.
John McIntyre’s passion in defeat won him another year – at least – with the Tribesmen. Leading the eventual All-Ireland champions by three points with a few minutes to go in Croke Park shows just how good Galway can be, but not closing the game out suggests they’re not there yet.
Dublin will do okay. Galway will fall short again. Davy? Well, no-one knows what Davy will do, but his team have a transitional look about them. Regardless, Kilkenny and Tipp are well ahead of the pack.
5. Limerick will return. And thank God for that. Proud hurling counties should never be allowed to just write off an entire year like Limerick just did.
The fact that this situation was allowed to deteriorate to that extent is a disgrace and the GAA HQ bear a lot of the blame as they should have sorted that out in the spring. Justin, naturally, had to go, and the next Corkman the Shannonsiders have sent for is made of stern stuff. There won’t be a peep out of them for a few months and that’s no harm, because Donal O’Grady has much work to do.
They will be helped by Division 2 hurling to start with and come next June they will be ready for Waterford. And they’ll beat them.
6. Attendances will continue to plummet. Don’t be fooled by the GAA spin that crowd numbers are holding steady.
There were only 22,000 at a Munster hurling final replay last July and there’s your proof right there. We need more double-headers, creative thinking and – strange as it sounds – less games.
The football qualifiers in particular have become far too long a process, designed to deliver four teams into the All-Ireland quarter finals. They were a worthy experiment but should be shelved.
Back to knockout, lads, and get creative on ticket pricing.
7. There will be some very strange results in the national leagues. Very strange scorelines.
I’m not Nostradamus, and I’m certainly not advocating it, but in these recessionary times people do funny things.
8. Joe Canning will remind us all again that he is the reincarnation of Christy Ring/DJ/Nicky Rackard. With Portumna knocked out of the Galway championship at the semi-final stage, he might even have a little time off this winter.
9. The weak will get weaker. Unfortunately, the emigration that will dominate 2011 will decimate some counties more than others.
The progress the likes of Sligo, Wicklow and Louth have made in recent years is now threatened by matters out of their hands. Dublin and Cork will always have the whip hand here because they have the population numbers to cope. Alas, the smaller counties will suffer, another unpalatable economic fact.
10. We’ll survive! This year will be very tough for the country and all of us in it.
But, come the summer, we’ll have matches, we’ll have fairy-tale stories, we’ll have Sunday Game controversies. We’ll have special days and, like always, the GAA will be there for us. Not such a small mercy.
Emmet Moloney writes for the ‘The Irish Farmers Journal’ and is a former sports columnist with ‘The Kerryman’.
