IF A reminder were needed of the difference in life between winning and losing, it was visible in Dublin’s pubs yesterday.
At Chaplins Bar in Dublin’s Hawkins Street, two floors of Tipp supporters were nearly bursting with pride, cheers, joy, happiness and beer. “There is no one in Tipp today!” declared one woman, as Seán Allis of Hollyford, near Thurles, said the match was “The best ever! The best ever!” And then repeated it.
“We stopped the Cats,” he explained adding the Tipperary team really should have beaten the Cats last year as well, and may well have done if there had not been a small matter with the referee.
“But there was terrible pressure on Kilkenny,” said Barry O’Meara of Borrisokane. “That five in a row is asking too much. But then, Kilkenny never came up against a strong team in years.”
Philip Ryan was watching the match with a friend from Cork. “I’d have to be a Tipp supporter, my father owns [Chaplins],” he said, making it plain it was not the kind of pub for neutral thought on the subject of hurling. On the street, people were smoking and beaming at one another. A supporter cheered and waved from a window on the first floor.
Earlier however, across the city at the Leeson Lounge, it had been as if a wholly different football match was being watched.
The traditional haunt of Kilkenny supporters, with a dazzling array of television screens, was not even full.
It was silent and tense as patrons stared at the televisions, but as the second half wore on despondency set in, faces looked away from the screen, and a punter at the bar opened a newspaper.
“Come on Kilkenny” shouted Teresa Stone, as Ritchie Power stepped forward to take a free from 65 metres out. With seven minutes to go and five points behind, the Kilkenny supporters said nothing, perhaps knowing it was all still possible . . . but unlikely. And it was not to be. The groan was painful to hear. Supporters looked at each other and shook their heads.
When it was all over, Mark Rothwell from Castlecomer said: “Tipp were the better team on the day” a remark later repeated by Paddy Guilfoyle of Urlingford on the other side of the room. “But we still love our team and Brian Cody – don’t forget to say that,” Teresa Stone told The Irish Times.
