Tipperary + Kilkenny = 4-50: the highest-scoring (70-minute) All-Ireland hurling final in championship history.
Any game that sets a record like that wouldn’t normally win the approval of too many defenders. Not when their primary job is to stop those points from being scored.
Yet there is some consolation in that it was also the first time in championship history that neither team’s total score of 31 points was enough to win.
For Tipperary corner back Paddy Stapleton there is further consolation from Sunday’s drawn final in the fact he not only stopped several potential points – including one memorable catch not long after John O’Dwyer had drawn Tipp level – he also scored his first ever championship point in 24 appearances.
Indeed, after the first championship draw between Kilkenny and Tipperary in history, Stapleton didn’t need much consoling at all: not when his team were trailing Kilkenny by four points on Sunday, with just over 10 minutes to go.
“I suppose if you were four points down, with 10 minutes to go, and you were offered a draw, you’d have taken the hand off and all,” he says.
“And then you get the free to win it. But look, that’s the sort of free that’s going to be scored only every couple of goes. I don’t think we’re going to be that disappointed really. We came back, showed great fighting spirit, and off we go again.”
Frantic endgame
Stapleton’s point actually came in the frantic endgame, helping Tipp draw level: “A good enough time to get it,” he says of his first championship point. “As long as somebody did, we were all right.
“And it was such a big panel effort. A couple of lads came on and made a difference, and that’s what it’s all about. Like, Michael Cahill drove us on from midfield. But we all know by now that it’s a 20-man game. If you can’t have five lads to come off the bench, you’re going to struggle.”
Truth is Stapleton himself struggled at times during Sunday’s game, yet finished as strong as he started – covering every inch of his ground to ensure Kilkenny didn’t buy any further scores in the closing five minutes
“We had to try and do something. We were after letting a couple of balls in. Personally, you’d be disappointed with a couple of the goals that went in so we knew we had to fight to the end.
Mindset
“But it was just ball after ball. If you thought any more about it you’d probably just get swallowed up. Because you know it’s 50-50 with your man beside you. It’s probably the same for a junior hurler playing a junior championship match. The mindset is no different. The next ball comes and you try to get it.
“And Eamon [O’Shea] and the backroom team have that well instilled in us, to keep going, keep playing the ball, 10 points up, 10 points down, five points up or down. We have to do the same things. And I think we stayed true to that, attacked every ball, forwards and backs. Of course Kilkenny were the same.”
One of the apparent elders of the team (Stapleton made his debut in 2008), he’s also asked how Sunday’s performance rated in all his years with Tipp – even though that sounded like a loaded question
“It’s hard to judge, year on year. I think most days, most teams think they fight their hardest. Personally I’ve seen a lot of our lads fight like that and I’ve seen them fight in training.
“Maybe people forget that these lads are able to back themselves and go hard for 70 minutes, no problem. It was a hard fight, but it was in us to do it.”
And do it all again, presumably, on the last Saturday of the month.
