Ultimately it’s the visual images that will endure as the mental postcards of the 2025 All-Ireland hurling final.
Ronan Maher’s catch after 41 minutes was a beauty of an aesthetically pleasing and memorable image. It’s the switching of the camera shot that makes it. You see Maher approaching from the back on the panoramic bird’s eye view shot. Then the camera shot switches to the ground at the exact moment he catches the ball. Momentarily, on landing, he’s hidden by the referee on this new ground angle camera shot. You can sort of half see it, but you almost have to imagine him hitting the ground running with an almighty thud. Then he emerges from the forest. Leading the charge of the light brigade, as somebody once said.
This five seconds or so was an utterly classic visual image in the tradition of the warrior aesthetic. It was the image of a captain and a leader (captain leader legend innit) taking control, bringing gravitas to the situation.
In the inaugural Christmas 1991 edition of the Hurling and Football annual, the late GAA writer Raymond Smith of Tipperary wrote “Bury My Heart On The Killinan End”. He said that his wish was to die during the second half of a Tipperary v Cork Munster final at Thurles. His heart would simply give out. His lifeless body would somehow be passed backwards over the heads of the wedged in spectators, to the back of the terrace, where it would be gently and tenderly placed. Token resuscitation efforts would be made, but there would be nothing to be done, and a Tipperary flag would be gently placed over his corpse. Tipperary would win in epic fashion, and Smith’s lifeless body would later be carried out of the stadium and celebrated and wept both tearfully and joyfully over, like in a jungle tribe in Borneo, celebrated as the martyr like human sacrifice of this epic victory.
This catch by Maher fits the imagination as the sort of thing that would have tipped poor Raymond over the edge into the next life. Poor oul’ Raymond Smith died on Sunday the 2nd of April, 2000. That day Tipperary beat Cork in the National Hurling League in Pairc Ui Chaoimh. It wasn’t a Munster final and it wasn’t in Thurles but I suppose you can’t have everything.