Austin Gleeson turned 30 in June. Let that sit with you for a minute. For some of us, Gleeson will always be 18 years old, flagpole-thin on his championship debut, swerving this way and that like a dodgem gone rogue, sprinting away from five Cork defenders and finishing off his stick into Anthony Nash’s far top corner. “Tá sé óg agus tá sé láidir,” said MacDara Mac Donncha on commentary.
That was in May 2014. Yet there he was last Sunday, winning the Waterford semi-final for Mount Sion with two stupendous catches in injury-time. The first, he finished himself with a ludicrous point from the right sideline. The second, he dished off to set up Adam Regan for the winner. Regan was Mount Sion’s Young Hurler of the Year in 2024 – Gleeson is still pretty láidir, but óg is for others now.
Only Gleeson could have conjured up an endgame like that. Two plays in 89 seconds, bringing Mount Sion from a point down to a point up on the stroke of full-time. It was the sort of heroic, extreme and deeply maverick intervention that nobody else on the pitch would have attempted, never mind been capable of. Circus act stuff, when nothing else would get it done.
We all know Mount Sion’s reward, of course. A final against Ballygunner, the club for whom the Waterford championship has been a plaything for pretty much the entirety of Austin Gleeson’s career. He is the poster boy for a generation of Waterford hurlers who haven’t won a county medal.
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Gleeson made his senior debut for Mount Sion as a schoolboy sub in 2012 and was the centre back linchpin two years later when they met Ballygunner in the county final. He picked up his second yellow card of the day late on that afternoon as Ballygunner romped to a 2-16 to 0-8 victory. He was 19 years old. Ballygunner have won every Waterford title since.
It’s wild to think now that on that October day in 2014, Ballygunner were a side primarily driven by heartache. They had been pipped on the line the previous year by a Passage side that had plundered two late goals in the final. Beyond that, they were on a lamentable streak of five lost finals in a row against Mount Sion, stretching back to 2000. Even after it, the Waterford roll of honour still had Mount Sion on top with 35 titles and Ballygunner an ocean behind them on 13.
All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. Before Ballygunner ate the Waterford championship whole, Mount Sion’s proud history was littered with spells of similar dominance. Between 1948 and 1965, Mount Sion lost precisely three championship matches. Even as recently as the turn of this century, they won six titles in eight years. Go back to the 1920s and 30s and the other big city club Erin’s Own had a nine-in-a-row of its own.
This will end, is the point. It always does. When Crossmaglen were munching their way through 19 Armagh titles in 20 years, two whole generations of footballers in the county were doomed to play out their time knowing they hadn’t a hope of winning a county medal. But once Cross lost to Maghery in 2016, the aura was bruised and everyone suddenly fancied themselves. They’ve still won four of the last nine titles but it’s not a done deal any more.
That day feels a long way off in Waterford, clearly. A fortnight ago in Walsh Park, Ballygunner’s second team won the county intermediate title, meaning that as of now, there is the dismal but very real prospect of Ballygunner having two teams in next year’s senior championship. Nobody really knows how it’s going to work out.
“We haven’t even thought about that,” club chairman Dave Sheehan told local Waterford reporter Tomás McCarthy. “It’s going to be a serious challenge. Not only for Ballygunner but also for the county board insofar as how we’re going to structure that so that everyone gets a fair crack at the whip.”
A worry for over the winter, maybe. For this weekend, we arrive at the time of year when everyone says solemn prayers for the Waterford finalists and throws in a line about admiring all the good work Ballygunner have done but wouldn’t it be great to see them beaten all the same. Mount Sion can’t do anything more than turn up and have a go in the knowledge that the only sure thing is that Ballygunner’s reign can’t last forever.
Indeed, there was a spell last weekend when it looked like it might not last past Sunday. De La Salle were five points up on 44 minutes and had a man extra after Patrick Fitzgerald picked up two yellow cards. But two late goals from Dessie Hutchinson got Ballygunner out the gap – they’re 65 games unbeaten in the Waterford championship now.
All known indicators point to them making it 66 on Sunday. It isn’t just that they’ve won 12 finals in a row – 11 of them have been turkey shoots. Tallow got within four points in 2015 but otherwise, they’ve won every final by at least nine. There’s no logical argument for saying Mount Sion can possibly get close to them this weekend.
But then you look at Austin Gleeson being interviewed on the pitch last Sunday, his breath heaving and his hair starting to show signs of thinning, his post-match chat veering between defiance and self-recrimination, and you glory in a player who can still produce miracles 13 years after arriving on the scene.
And you wonder idly just how impossible can impossible logically be.
