SIDELINE CUT:Even for a county long synonymous with the game of hurling this weekend promises to bring something special to savour, writes KEITH DUGGAN
1136: Statutes of Kilkenny declare that too much hurling "led to the neglect of military service".
Clearly, nobody listened.
1887:Tullaroan and Mooncoin contest the first Kilkenny county final. 19 teams entered that year's county football championship. Four entered the hurling. The big ball would never again have it so good. The score was 0-1 each at half time and both teams fielded 21 players.
1900s:The Roll Call. Paddy "Icy" Lanigan, Dick "Droog" Walsh, Jimmy "The Wren" Kelly, Pat "Dexter" Aylward, John "Lovely Johnny" Dunne, Jack "Sag" Carroll, Jim "The Link" Walsh, Phil "Fan" Larkin, Martin "Goggy" Brennan, Liam "Chunky" O'Brien, Mick "Cloney" Brennan, John "Fox" Power, DJ "the Dodger" Carey, Michael "Titch" Phelan, Adrian "Ronnie" Ronan, James "Cha" Fitzpatrick, Michael "Tayto" Fennelly, Martin "Gorta" Comerford.
For nicknames, the Cats have ’em licked.
1904:Somewhat tardy out of the blocks, Kilkenny win their first All-Ireland senior championship. By then, Tipperary had already racked up five titles, Cork had six and the exiles in London had gotten their hands on the cup before the Kilkenny men. They were in no hurry.
1912:Although Kilkenny wore stripes of various shades, this year marked the debut of the famous black and amber in an All-Ireland final win.
1916-1919:The longest championship. The county competition started in October 1916 and because of inconveniences like Martial Law and the War of Independence, it was not completed until June 1919. It was decreed that the winner of the match between Tullaroan and Mooncoin would be declared champions for all three years. It was Mooncoin's treble.
1950:Praise indeed. "As I say, it depends on what you're into, and, like Chekhov, I feel that civilisation means "Turkish carpets and beautiful women" and so I tell the visitors who come to me for advice that the county for them is Kilkenny. Not, indeed, that they are likely to find either in Kilkenny, but they may at least find the only things which can compensate a man for their absence, beautiful country and good architecture. For me Kilkenny, with its sensuous hills, its trees, its river valleys and the blue mist that rises from them, its absence of furze, is the loveliest of Irish counties. It is still thirteenth-century country which you can imagine as the setting for the Canterbury Tales.
And this from a Cork man, Frank O’Connor, writing in The County Books series.
1963:In Other Words: Kilkenny win for the first time in six years and Frank Sinatra has a global hit with Fly Me to Mooncoin. Or something like that.
1970:Birth of Denis Joseph Carey. Career statistics will include five All-Irelands, nine All-Stars, two retirements, 25,000 letters begging him to come back, several hundred stitches, a car stolen from a petrol station, that 2-8 against Galway in 1997, a goal scored via the crossbar and instant reflexes, numerous broken bones and not one bad word about anyone.
1972:Eddie Keher reels Cork in. He is out on the wing and takes a pass from Chunky O'Brien and lets fly with a spinning devilish shot which deceives everyone. He celebrates in quintessential 1970s style, by running stoically away from goal with blood streaming down his face. It was sunny that day, of course. Always sunny then. In August 1974, Keher went on to score 0-13 in the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway. Three days later, when word went around that a man had walked seemingly on air between the skyscrapers of the new World Trade Centre in New York, half of Kilkenny wondered if Eddie was in Manhattan for the week. But it turned out to be some French guy. A few weeks later, Keher scored 1-11 in the All-Ireland final against reigning champions Limerick.
Year Unknown: Famous Kilkenny quote.
“The hurling tournament ended with a festive supper, much lovemaking and many subsequent marriages between the pretty colleens and the stalwart young hurlers.”
Quote has at various times between attributed to Brian Cody, Martin Comerford and Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde.
1976:Sack the Stylist. The Kilkenny men appeared for the Leinster final looking resplendent in black shorts to match the black and amber shirts. Wexford promptly walloped them by 2-20 to 1-6. The black togs were bagged, thrown into a cupboard in Nowlan Park and have not been seen since.
1979:Boney M have a Christmas number one hit with Mary's Boy Child in 1978. Henry Shefflin born just weeks later. Coincidence, some would say.
1983:Very Superstitious. They say Liam Fennelly was named at 12 in the programme for that year's final but played at 15 because no KK man had ever captained a winning side while wearing 15.
1989:The Mrs Winder years. KK hurling in the doldrums with Galway having won the double and Tipperary back out of Munster for the first time since '71. To cheer all of Noreside up, local kids form Engine Alley, briefly the best thing in Irish pop music scene. It didn't last but by 1992, KK were back winning All-Ireland titles again.
1993:Floridians. Glenmore's Eddie O'Connor invokes not the past but the future in his captain's speech by calling on the GAA to reward the champions and beaten finalists Galway with a holiday following a hurling final that took a one million punt gate. Florida was the destination of choice. The nabobs at Croke Park, after due consideration, offered a break in Killarney by way of compromise. Eddie invited the authorities to "cop themselves on". Eventually, the Cats flew to the winter sun of the Canary Islands, provoking a flurry of Cats-got-Canaries type headlines.
2004:PM O'Sullivan of Ballyhale wrote of the obscure and wonderful career of Loughlin "Locky" Byrne in the Sunday Tribune. Byrne hurled with Mount Sion and Waterford and then Mooncoin and Kilkenny before TB whipped him away in the winter of 1941. He was just 27. The closing passage is worth learning by heart:
“Life is precious precisely because it is fragile. Jim O’Meara, native of Ferrybank and a hale 84 years old, remembers standing with James “Dashy” Byrne before his son’s coffin. “I thought,” Dashy said to him, “that he was made of steel”. Silence was the only courtesy. Jim remembers a barrage balloon during the burial, trailing a dangerous cable. A world was at war, far from Ferrybank.
The grave is neat, tidy and well kept, down by the left at the back of Ferrybank church. His is the lowest-lying name on the headstone. A memorial plaque, funded by both county boards, is surely wanted after such distinctions – perhaps laid by the Suir in what was Sallypark. There could be no better symbol of an extraordinary and doubled career – none, that is, except the composition of his pallbearers. Half were Mount Sion men. Half came in the road from Mooncoin.”
2005:The end of the road? Madcap stuff as Galway's tyros put five goals past Kilkenny in the semi-final that nobody saw coming. Except, perhaps, Brian Cody. For the second time in four years, Cody's worst dreams were shaded in maroon. The popular consensus was Kilkenny were in for a fallow decline. The popular consensus was wrong.
2007:The Perfect Storm. Kilkenny produce perhaps the most complete All-Ireland final performance ever in destroying neighbours Waterford. 3-30 was achieved with just a lone wide. And they were only warming up.
2010:Written In Stone? "And in Kilkenny, it is reported on marble stones there as black as ink." September 5th, 2010 may well be carved into them.
