The year 2008.
The Sunday before the All Ireland. Driving down a blue and white bedecked Quay in Waterford. On my way to the funeral of Waterford great Larry Fanning. All Apologies by Nirvana comes on the radio. I start welling up. We won’t be fucking apologizing to anyone next Sunday, I roared to myself.
We were apologizing to everyone the next Sunday.
The year 1991, the day I started to dispise Tipperary. Aidan Ryan and John Power battling for a ball under the Cusack stand on the side line, Ryan the coward gave Power a shoulder in the back out into the barbed wire. A cowardly act resulting in us losing the game. In fairness twas nothing to what that tramp Maher did with one hand to Michael Rice in 2012.
The year 1996…
Dunne played the ball.
I love this. All the finals you’ve seen Kilkenny win and you pick a memory of your hatred of Tipp. 
John Power would be disgusted with that post. He never needed minding from anyone.
Typical Kilkenny obsessed attitude.
It’s like the Oirish Man Utd fans…Well after Liverpool’s downfall, they were going around getting numbers 19 or 20 on the back of their replica XXL jerseys.
Still upset over what he called a ‘shoulder’…thought the Kilkenny boys were always going on about it being a manly game.
9 years of age.
Myself and the sister (then 11) squeezed into one of the old seats in the Hogan.
Me in a Tipp jersey. She in a Kilkenny one.
Her bawling crying at the final whistle.
Great days.
I was posting something there about 1996 but then deleted it because it read all Roy Curtis.
The
1980
For the semi final I drove with my uncle and his friend from Connemara (we went there on holiday as my mother is from there) and en route as we exited Galway city we were in a car crash as another car t-boned us. I was on the other side of the collision and was not injured. The car was damaged so we pulled in and as everything was closed found a plank of wood, and the adults wedged the damaged wing off the tyre/ wheel and we continued on our way. I was delighted at being in my first car crash and having a story to tell my Da when we got to Dublin.
As an aside, Years later in 2013 I was in another car crash en route to the All Ireland final (drawn game) when a Muslim doctor ran into the back of me as I drove past Clonskeagh. As he apologised and gave me his details I was worried about time ticking to throw in.
A month later I was back in Dublin, was lifted over the style and sat right in the corner of the Upper Hogan Stand (railway) end to witness Galway smash Limerick and unbridalled joy. I remember the roar at the end is really about all. The aul lad lit a bonfire on the side of the N4 in West Dublin.
Every home in Galway had a team photo beside the Sacred Heart. We had a team photo in the hall for years. A big huge one.
It’s only the ones they lose they really remember in Kilkenny. Maybe that’s why they win so many.
1986, 11 years old, I attended most Cork training sessions that year to rob sliothars,
Thursday night before the final I was behind the goal picking the balls back to the players who were shooting, Tom Cash (captain) wasn’t looking and I hit him in the top of the head, he went down like a sack of spuds, I was shitting it, he was grand and I went home with about a dozen Cummins all stars.
That Sunday he lifted the cup, I remember they played Sinittas so macho as the Sunday game outro, I watched that hundreds of times
There was very little wrong with that Padraic Maher pull, a bit wild but clearly going for the ball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zzAIbUnhWw
Nothing compared to Tommy Walsh breaking a hurley off Gizzy Lyng’s shins or hitting the ref across the head in 2011
And both of Tommys misdermeanors resulted in both player and referee retiring due to the injuries they sustained in the savage attacks from the 5’8" midget from Tullaroan right??
The packed platform at ballinasloe train station in 1979, waiting with my father and uncles and cousins.
The shocking sight of Battery Heights in Athlone as the train veered for the Mullingar cut.
The sport pages big broadsheet newspapers laid out across the tables of the nicotine soaked carriages.
“Who’s goin ta win, Mattie?”.
The rain and Kilkenny breaking my 10 year old heart.
The mixed grill at The North Star before the train home.
The picture of my uncle, the last surviving adult from that day, with Johnny Coen and the MacCarthy cup I got from a cousin last October…
Fairly sure Michael Rice didn’t retire in 2012. Even so, an accidental if a bit wild slap like Padraic Maher’s in 2012 is much more forgivable than breaking a hurley off another player’s shins or hitting a referee in the head with a hurley. I like Tommy Walsh but he was much more of a tramp on the hurling field than Padraic Maher was/is
If you asked “her” we’d have won a lot more.
He didn’t mean to hit Gavin you clown and it was literally a tap to the head.
Every player who ever played the game has had hurls broken off their shins and other body parts.
Maher should have seen the line at least three (3) times that day, the slash across TJ Reid deserved a double red alone.
Rice didn’t return as far as I recall. Hard to play with your hand in bits. When did he play hurling after that?
I remember giving out afterwards about Seamus Hickey getting no protection and my father telling me it’s an All Ireland final, you’ve to mind your own corner
He came back alright but he was maimed for life, never hurled since it happened