On Gaelic Games: After the high old times of the 1990s, this decade continues its remorseless reassertion of traditional values. By Sunday evening the record sequence of All-Ireland wins by the Big Three will have been equalled. Between them, Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary will have won the last eight titles, writes Seán Moran.
You have to go back over 100 years to find that level of dominance, the same counties taking every All-Ireland from 1902 until 1910. This will be the fourth Cork-Kilkenny final in eight years, another record.
Yet it's hard to argue against a final pairing that so faithfully reflects the power base of the game at a stage when history is in the air. Three-in-row achievements are rare, and for a team to be on the verge of one marks out a special era for the game. In that context, it's appropriate that Kilkenny should bar Cork's path, just as was the other way around two years ago.
It's sometimes said that hurling has nothing to be diffident about in terms of its restricted elites.
Premiership soccer in England is cited as an example of a competition with enormous popularity that contains just as few leading contenders as the Liam MacCarthy ever did.
Whereas strictly speaking true, this ignores the power of tradition in Gaelic games and more especially in hurling. In England, some clubs with big traditions are still big; others have fallen away, and just in the past 20 years or so. Conversely, a billionaire with a chequebook can create an invincible modern tradition of his own.
Hurling's high skills platform makes it almost inevitably the preserve of an oligarchy. How else can youngsters be persuaded to put in the time necessary to acquire and maintain those skills if they see nothing to encourage them in terms of high-profile teams and success? Kilkenny's is a remarkable story. With their tiny population, they were the 20th century's most enduringly successful hurling county.
Never having had to suffer more than 10 years without an All-Ireland, Kilkenny's strike rate since winning their first in 1904 has been almost one every three-and-a-half years. This has fed an enduring tradition that today is maintained by the game's most comprehensive development structure, a board under the chair of Brendan O'Sullivan, raising talented, well-coached players and also providing an early outlet for those with an aptitude for coaching.
Despite its status as hurling's leading county, Cork doesn't appear to have such good-quality roots, in that its underage success - admittedly in the more demanding context of Munster - lags behind Kilkenny's and even that of provincial rivals Tipperary, and it's less obvious from where the heirs to this outstanding generation of seniors will come.
It's not that underage silverware is a prerequisite of senior success, but a quick survey of Cork's history indicates a bit of a parallel between droughts at the respective age levels. Having won the first minor in history in 1926, the county went nine years before adding the second. There was a comparable gap of 10 years between the senior successes of 1931 and 1941.
The famous barren period at senior level between 1954 and 1966 was coterminous with a comparable 13-year gap, 1951-1964, at minor. It has also cut the other way. Of Cork's previous three-in-a-row successes, those in 1976-78 and 1941-44 were preceded by three successive wins at minor in 1969-71 and 1937-39. Then again, the 1952-54 treble was quite unheralded; but on balance there seems to be a connection.
The recurrence of Cork-Kilkenny finals is also remarkable: one nearly every five-and-a-half years allowing that the recent rate has raised the frequency.
The first All-Ireland meeting between the counties was in 1893 and scheduled for the Ashtown Trotting Ground in the Phoenix Park. On arrival, the teams refused to play because they found the grass to be 12 inches high - conditions airily dismissed by Michael Cusack.
The GAA founder had inspected the field a couple of days previously and declared it "as much a hindrance to one side as the other". A Cork official, Michael Deering, took a less laissez-faire attitude as the mood of the spectators threatened to get ugly. Deering suggested the goalposts be moved to an adjacent field, and the match was played with Cork winning what might be euphemistically termed "well", 6-8 to 0-2.
One of the architects of Kilkenny's almost immediately created winning tradition was Sim Walton, who, as well as playing a central attacking role ("And there goes Walton, the posts assaulting" - in the words of a contemporary chart hit) in the seven triumphs in 10 years, 1904-1913, that kick-started it all, had shown commendable vision after his first All-Ireland had ended in the 25-point blitz by Cork in 1903.
As secretary of the Tullaroan club, he had a major say in the composition of the following year's team, and, rising above sectional interests, he invited players from Mooncoin, Piltown and Threecastles to join the Tullaroan contingent. The result was the county's first All-Ireland achieved against Cork - a 26-point turnaround in 12 months.
Since the outstanding Cork side of the 1940s defeated Kilkenny in 1946, the Leinster county has won seven of the 11 finals between the counties. Cork's wins have generally been significant: in 1966 a team flush with under-21s beat raging favourites Kilkenny to bridge a 12-year gap since their previous title. In 1978, Cork's most recent victory completed the last three-in-a-row achieved by any county and the only time since the 1890s a Cork treble or four-in-a-row has featured a win over Kilkenny.
A nagging concern for Cork with another three-in-a-row up for grabs has to be that the fixture has often been a graveyard for favourites, probably because both counties can genuinely see no reason why they shouldn't win an All-Ireland final against anyone, including each other.
We may resent at times the heavy yoke history sometimes appears to place on hurling, but that doesn't diminish the fascination of that history or the interest and anticipation prompted by its modern manifestations.
smoran@irish-times.ie
