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INPHO/Morgan Treacy
review 2012

I was there... for Katie's Taylor Olympic gold -- kinda -- and some lovely off-Broadway hurling

Gavan Reilly was outside the ExCel looking in, but we’re counting it. He may have also seen Kilkenny.

ACTUALLY I WAS at remarkably little this year. If you count the pub beside the ExCeL arena in London — where myself and my housemates went over for a couple of days, holding out hope of picking up a few spares, then I was around for Katie Taylor’s semi-final.

Outside of the ExCeL itself, though, I can’t think of many better places of seeing Katie’s final than in the Irish Olympic House, so that was pretty good.

To be honest the one thing that springs to mind is a National Hurling League game in Nowlan Park on 18 March for the simple reason that it was the perfect example of the amazing entertainment you can get outside of Championship season. Dublin scored six goals against Kilkenny in a game they led until injury time, and still lost, with goals from Richie Power and Matt Ruth clawing it back from the death.

It said everything about Kilkenny’s staunch refusal to lose a game, and also makes you wonder why Dublin’s championship season fell so flat.

I wish I was there…

Much as it would be easy simply to say, “I’d love to have been there for Katie Taylor’s final”, if I’m honest there’s one game which jumps out at me more. I was in mid-air on 1 July when Meath beat Kildare in the Leinster SFC — a game few people really expected them to compete in. It’s since been trotted out that Kildare have never beaten Meath five times in succession, and having lost to them three times in the previous two Championships, Meath were maybe due a big win – but looking back at the footage at the end of a seven-hour flight to JFK, I was gutted I wasn’t in Croke Park to watch it. Meath were fluent that day. They were resourceful, coherent and fluid, hard-hitting and accurate. They were lean; they were more than the sum of their parts.

It’s been a pretty crappy few years to be a Meath supporter. There’s been a couple of All-Ireland semi-finals, but we didn’t merit to be in either and were deservedly thrashed both times. There was a Leinster title in 2010 that will be forever besmirched — and rightly so. In recent memory we’ve gone out of the qualifier series to the likes of Cavan, Fermanagh and Laois, and went out against Laois again this year.

But for that hour and a half on the first of July, Meath were back playing like the Meath teams of olde. Like the Boylan years. What we wouldn’t give to see a little more of that.

(On a side note: it’s been a pretty decent year for Meath teams beating Kildare ones – capped by my own hurling club, Kiltale, beating Confey in the Leinster Intermediate Club Championship. Take THAT, Sinead O’Carroll!)

Happy Christmas, Lance! It’s TheScore.ie’s Christmas card list