Ulster football on tv Sunday. Going to be a tough watch.
GAA
Thriving club scene underpins Carlowâs success at higher level
Both the countyâs champions have reached this yearâs Leinster finals
Denis Walsh
December 1 2019, 12:01am, The Sunday Times
Superb run: St Mullinâs celebrate reaching the Leinster finalBRYAN KEANE
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Shortly after he was appointed Carlow hurling manager in 2016 Colm Bonnar attended the county semi-finals. What he knew then wouldnât have amounted to specialist knowledge but he wasnât ignorant either. It was just over two years since Mount Leinster Rangers had contested the All-Ireland club final and he expected them to take care of business. Bagnalstown held them to a draw.
On the Carlow panel that has won the Christy Ring Cup and the Joe McDonagh Cup under Bonnarâs leadership there are consistently more than a dozen players from Mount Leinster Rangers and usually only one from Bagnalstown; in the tropical micro-climate of the Carlow club championship that made no difference.
When the closing stages of this yearâs Carlow championship turned into an administrative saga Bonnar knew enough not to be surprised by the turn of events. St Mullins, who will contest their first Leinster final today, were awarded a walkover in the county semi-final. Their opponents, Ballinkillen, had refused to play because the county board had fixed a football semi-final for the previous day that involved five of their players.
Ballinkillen lost their appeal to the Leinster Council but once they did St Mullins refused to accept the match and pleaded with the Carlow county board to make a re-fixture. The board agreed. And then? St Mullins needed a goal from a free four minutes into stoppage time from their sorcerer Marty Kavanagh to force extra-time.
On their run to the Leinster final they have taken the scalp of Cuala, among others, but the closest they came to elimination was against Ballinkillen, a club with just a couple of players on the Carlow team. By petitioning for a re-fixture St Mullins would have known the perils they had invited on themselves.
âIt shows how tightly knit they all are,â says Bonnar, âwhen St Mullins wouldnât take the match. Something like that could throw the whole thing from the county teamâs point of view if it had gone another way.â
What Carlow have achieved under Bonnar in recent years has been terrific but the club environment that underpins the county team is truly extraordinary. There are just eight hurling clubs in Carlow, compared to 26 football clubs; only four of those clubs compete in the senior championship.
St Mullins won the junior championship this year with their third team.
Most of the hurling is done in an area that Bonnar says you could drive around in 20 minutes. âIn that part of the county theyâre at hurling morning, noon and night,â says Leo McGough, the well-known GAA archivist who coaches hurling in the schools in Carlow town. âItâs like the glens of Antrim or north Kerry. If St Mullins were playing an under-12 final on a Friday night inside in Dr Cullen Park theyâd bring 300 or 400 with them.â
For a second Carlow club to contest a Leinster club hurling final in six years is staggering on a number of levels. It is just over ten years since Carlow requested that their senior champions be allowed take part in the Leinster intermediate championship, a derogation that the Kerry champions had been granted in Munster. During their exile from the senior championship the Carlow champions lost to the Wicklow champions one year and even when Mount Leinster Rangers finally claimed the All-Ireland intermediate club championship they won each of their last five games by just two points. And yet 12 months later they reached the All-Ireland senior club final.
You will find pockets of hurling fanaticism in Westmeath and Meath too but their county champions have never reached the Leinster final. The Kerry senior champions are still knocking around in the Munster intermediate championship and have yet to win it.
When Carlow club football enjoyed a golden decade in the 1990s it was an entirely different dynamic. Eire Og won five Leinster titles in the space of seven seasons.
The Eire Og team that achieved so much under Bobby Millerâs leadership also had a couple of significant outsiders: Hugh Brennan from Mayo and Noel Fallon from Galway, both of whom captained the team. None of that applies to St Mullins or Mount Leinster Rangers: both of them hail from rural parishes where self-sufficiency is the key to everything.
Eire Og will contest the Leinster football final next weekend for the first time in 20 years; it will also be the first time that both Carlow champions have contested provincial finals in the same year. In half a century of the provincial championships only Offaly, Dublin and Laois (once) have managed such a thing. From every angle it is a wonder.
ON TV TODAY
St Mullins v Ballyhale Shamrocks
TG 4, 5.05pm, deferred coverage
Tullaroan beat Seir Keiran in the Leinster Intermediate final yesterday. Tommy Walshâs little brother, Shane scored 2-13 of their 2-25 total.
Classy refs jersey there.
This fact has made me less likely to watch it
Surely 2 of these provincial finals should have had staggered times for TV?
Laverty has the impish swagger of a Peter Canavan.
A shame for Kilcoo that Darragh OâHanlon isnât available.
What a goal.
Kilcoo cut through like a knife through butter there
Thatâs why limiting the hand pass would be madness. Wonderful move.
Opened them up fairly handy there. Could be a serious beating handed out
Goal for Glenties
A comedy goal
That was a very fortuitous goal.
Route one
Good tough first half of hurling in the Leinster Final. Portlaoise is an awful soulless dump of a venue for a match like this.
Bizarrely Theyâve been aiming for it all game though with those aimless kicks in. A lifeline
Another comedy goal for Glenties