For the second year in a row, the day after Kilkenny exited the All Ireland SHC, a number of national publications carried a photo of TJ Reid with his young daughter Harper. Each time, the snap was captioned as follows: Will we see TJ in black and amber again?
We can but hope. Certainly if the mechanics of the game and TJ’s alacrity at still doing his stuff is anything to go by, there’s no reason why not.
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The reality is that similar feelings of foreboding prevail every time any senior, successful sportsperson reaches the end of a given season. Purely out of a fear they may not be seen on such a stage again.
For a long time yesterday – the second Monday of Wimbledon 2025 – it appeared we may have reached that point in the career of the great Novak Djokovic.
Having lost the opening set to Australian Alex De Minaur on a 6-1 scoreline and gone 2-4 down in the second, it appeared the sensational Serbian was about to fade into the SW19 sunset which would of course have prompted similar ponderings to those related to the Ballyhale bastion 24 hours earlier.
Also like the dairy farmer turned gym instructor, mind you, most pertinent available equally no reason for the big hitting Serb to step off the baseline anytime soon. Now, one is in no way suggesting that he was or is even tempted to do such a thing. If, however, he did think the fuel gauge was flashing red, he had ample opportunity to knock off the engine if that’s what he so wished. And few could have argued if that was his chosen course of action.
But no. Rage against the dying of the light can be hard to hold off as the great refuse to give in. Thus, Djokovic relentlessly gnawed away at the deficit in front until, almost with a sense of glorious inevitability – or inglorious if you happen to be Australian – the dogged world No. 6 summoned every molecule of energy within himself and every scintilla of lift which could be garnered from the enthralled, ecstatic crowds. To leave himself just three hurdles away from the Winners’ Enclosure at The Championships for an eighth time.
So, the Djoker plods along inexorably possibly towards another crown, but spare a thought for his fellow three-and-a-bit decade competitor Grigor Dimitrov. The Bulgarian appeared to have current world Number One Jannik Sinner beaten up a stick, being two sets up and 4-2 up in the third, but then, in a gut wrenching twist that nobody wanted or would take any joy in. the World No. 19 appeared to either dislocate a shoulder or broke a collarbone and was thus forced to retire.
Sinner can consider himself blessed to have advanced. For inclination is that – if Dimitrov had been able to play on – he would almost certainly have finished the job off and eliminated the most un-Italian sounding Italian this writer has ever come across. So the world’s best survived, for now, but the joker in the pack still holds all the aces.
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