WHERE DO YOU start?
Let’s start at the very end. Like how we used to consume newspapers.
A sideline is floated into the Kilkenny dangerzone. Peter Duggan has the big paw out but this time for once, it eludes him. It goes to ground and a manic ruck is scattering bodies to the four winds.
David Fitzgerald ventures a hurl in at full-length and extracts the ball like a pearl from the bottom of the ocean. He lurches forward to draw a swarm of Kilkenny players before dishing a handpass across to Duggan.
He doubles on it. Cuts out the middle man. Introduces the element of surprise to make it an impossibility for Eoin Murphy to see, let alone stop.
Murphy’s eyes are on it, he leaps and keeps two hands on his hurl, flicking it just at the right point to push onto the crossbar.
Had it gone in, Clare would have drawn level again. As it was, Kilkenny survived.
There are all sorts of crude metaphors we could batter on the cliché anvil to explain this. To make sense of how Kilkenny could at times saunter through the Leinster championship and pick their moments to peak, as a direct contrast to Clare, who had been tempered in the Munster inferno.
Perhaps the simplest way is this; with Kilkenny, you could point to around 13 starters who have a 8.5 out of 10 player ratings on the big days.
With the opposition, you sense that most days, they need half their team breaking even and the other half being spectacular. This was no different.
From the dead ball, TJ Reid hits 0-12. His Clare counterpart Mark Rodgers had an incredible afternoon hitting 0-10, scoring two points from play. But he misses a free at the very end and at the very start.
When Clare are just one point behind, having hit the next score after the Kilkenny goal, their defender Diarmuid Ryan flakes at a loose ball on the Cusack Stand side. It would take something special to concede from there. And yet TJ floats his cut over like a golf stroke.
A minute later, Kilkenny are deliberating on what to do from a sideline on the other side. Paddy Deegan chips it into TJ’s hand. He sends Cian Kenny away to take his point. Kilkenny at this stage three up. Going through the gears with eight minutes left.
Only for the spectacular to strike.
Shane O’Donnell is proving a human highlights reel this summer. A catch he made a few weeks back became a viral sensation and here it seems as if every ball dropping like a comet is cushioned beautifully onto his stick.
Tony Kelly had started the move, and now it is in O’Donnell’s hand facing the net he scored a first-half hat-trick in an All-Ireland final ten years ago. Tommy Walsh is all over him and he flings him to the floor like a rag doll. A bullet is released into the top corner. Not even Murphy could stop that.
That score brings them level again. They might have been further ahead only for the Hari-Kari episode in the 56th minute.
Let’s briefly look at that before drawing a discreet veil across. It came at the very apex of Clare second half domination. Going man for man and giving the Cats a chasing, confidence was a seductive drug flowing through their adrenalin.
There was a couple of examples that it had flowed right down to the place where you don’t want it; your full-back line and goalkeeper. You don’t want men thinking of expressing themselves in that sector. You want them paranoid and jumpy and mad to get the ball out of their postcode.
But after a Deegan point for Kilkenny that broke a run of five consecutive Clare scores, goalkeeper Eibhear Quilligan plays a short puckout to Rory Hayes.
They get a bit Harlem Globetrotters on it whereas they should be more Hell’s Kitchen.
Belligerent lot that they are, Kilkenny aren’t crazy on the whole flicks and tricks scenario developing. Billy Ryan claws and pulls and sticks with Hayes as he is trying to leave the burning building, and Hayes miscontrols the ball. TJ is onto it, robs the ball, gets it to Eoin Cody – net.
From that point, Kilkenny score 0-7 to Clare’s 1-3. It was won, but a game of this kind doesn’t really deserve a nuts and bolts explanation of how the outcome was delivered.
Instead, think of the two saves at either end of the pitch just as the second half was getting going.
At one end, O’Donnell took the ball on his stick, dashed directly to goal and pulled the trigger. Eoin Murphy, yes, stopped it.
In the next play, Eoin Cody is meandering along the endline and bald headedly goes for it, slapping the ball off the turf for the extra play from the hand. He lets go, and Quilligan is equal to it.
How about the fact that on 33 minutes, TJ Reid was back in the left corner-back position, making a nuisance of himself to preserve a half time lead and winning a free all the way back there?
Or on 23 minutes. O’Donnell plays a give and go with Duggan, transfers to Mark Rodgers at the Davin End and Conor Fogarty blocks the shot down at full stretch?
Another save, on 17 minutes. Billy Ryan is about to shoot for a point but smells the possibility of a goal. He checks back to buy space off his marker and passes to Reid. He then takes a step aside to give him a clear view of the Clare goal. Quilligan stops it. Reid converts the ‘65’ by way of apology.
And at the end of the day, Quilligan is left sitting distraught on the pitch, all on his own for almost three minutes before anyone approaches him.
Hurling. Bloody hell.
