Thrashed in Thurles

Tipperary 5-22Galway 0-12

Dara Bradleyin semple stadium

By now you’ve probably all heard a variation of the cruel joke – ‘fair play to the Galway players for sticking to their boycott and refusing to play in the All-Ireland U21 final at Semple Stadium’.

But there was nothing funny about Saturday night in Thurles as Galway slumped to a humiliating 25 points defeat – the biggest ever losing margin of any side contesting a final in the 47 year history of this competition.

It is also the worst losing margin suffered by any Galway outfit in a final in the modern era, be that at minor, U-21 or senior.  

The decision by the ‘suits’ in the upper echelons of the GAA to allow this final to go ahead in Tipperary, turned what most observers expected to be a fairly uneven contest into an absolute shambles. It must be said that Tipperary, playing like they did, would have won this match in Limerick or Portlaoise but the CCC turned a difficult task into an impossible one for Galway with a stroke of a pen.

This was a farce; a farce from the moment on August 30 when the Competitions Control Committee (CCC) reconfirmed that the decider would be played in Tipp’s backyard, to the moment referee James McGrath sounded his final whistle to put all Galway people out of their misery.

And of course, let’s not forget the other ridiculous situation of allowing the Tipperary faithful flooding onto the pitch afterwards – attempts by the stewards to stop them were pathetic. No, GAA President Christy Cooney hadn’t much to say about pitch invasions on Saturday night.Nobody has escaped from this sordid affair with reputations unscathed. The CCC was once again shown up for what they are in inexplicably deciding that Thurles was the fairest venue; while the Hurling Board officials, management and players must shoulder their share of the burden for this embarrassment.

Boycotting the final wouldn’t have done anybody any good and playing it didn’t do Galway any good either. But it could inflict serious harm on the fragile confidence of the young Galway players who may struggle to recover from such a hiding.

Galway played the decider ‘in protest’ but you wouldn’t have known it, apart from the virtual non existence of travelling support from Galway fans – many of them dyed-in-the-wool hurling people – who stayed at home on principle.

Perhaps the players should have refused to take part in the pre-match parade, a protest gesture to articulate their distain at having to play in Thurles and one that would have sheltered them from having to ‘run the gauntlet’ of more than 20,000 screaming Tipp fans during the traditional walk around the pitch before throw-in.

Hurling Board Chairman Joe Byrne and Secretary John Fahey fought hard to get the final switched but ultimately failed and now must take action to ensure this never happens again.

If they haven’t done so already, the Hurling Board needs to sit down this week and start drafting a motion to bring before the GAA’s Annual Convention this Winter that no final should be played in the home ground of one of the competing teams, and they need to begin lobbying other counties to support such a motion.

For more, see this week's Connacht Tribune.