Maybe it’s the pondering of the thing about faraway hills always being greener, but, for a certain time every year, the occupant of seat does wonder what it’d be like to have been domiciled in the catchment area of one of the serially successful clubs.
A St Vincent’s or a Kilmacud Crokes or a Corofin or a Crossmaglen Rangers or a Ballyhale Shamrocks or a Ballygunnar. Now, in the case of the Dublin clubs, the answer to the following would, limply, be ascribed to money.
Which cannot be the complete answer, but, you do wonder what is it that sets the highly successful clubs apart from the mere mortals. Whatever it is, it must be demoralising for their contemporaries who see them triumph year after year, as if a matter of routine.
Especially for those who have no excuse not to be at similar levels but aren’t. Where county final appearances are expectations rather than aspirations. At what point does a bit of introspection begin as to why the also rans continually come up short?
There are two clubs in Connacht – from different counties in the western province – who recently added to their unwanted collection of county final reversals and, as I can totally empathise with in a local sense from a hurling perspective, you’d have to wonder sometimes how they keep going back to the well.
Yet, every so often, there are signs that St Jude – patron saint of lost causes – does actually be observing what’s going on. Though, ironically, not to the benefit of the club named in her honour!
But there were a few other teams on whom she did look kindly, causing seismic shocks in a few corners of the country. None greater than the dethroning of the All Ireland Club hurling champions, Ballyhale Shamrocks by O’Loughlin Gaels.
Then, there was the extra time victory of Trillick over Errigal Ciarain in Tyrone, Na Fianna’s conquest of Dublin hurling and Kiladangan doing so again in Tipperary, thanks, largely, to a truly brilliant individual display by the mercurial Willie Connors.
However, it could only be described as the half day of the underdog. Simply as sides such as Watty Grahams (Glen), St Thomas’s (Galway), Na Piarsaigh (Limerick) and St Brigid’s (Roscommon) set about asserting their dominance in their own fiefdoms.
Probably, like a lot of things in life, there’s a happy medium somewhere in the middle. Something along the lines of being genuine, merited contenders on a constant basis knowing that the scales of probability with regard to emerging victorious are tipped in your favour rather than having to look over your shoulder to measure the distance between your hind quarters and the bacon slicer of relegation.
Until you arrive at that moment, though, maybe the field over the hedge will always look a bit greener.
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