In fairness, you would have to commend Joanne Cantwell for refusing to sell the viewer a pig in a poke.
She was breaking the golden rule of television sport, whereby the presenter is obliged under pain of death to pretend there is no such thing as a bad match.
On RTÉ’s League Sunday highlights show last week, she brought her customarily sharp editorial sensibility to the proceedings. The hurling league had just delivered another weekend of supposedly top-flight games that might best be described as mixed middling in quality.
RTE's Joanne Cantwell. Photo: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
First up for analysis was Cork against Wexford in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Wexford manager Darragh Egan described it as “an enthralling tussle” in his post-match soundbites. Cut to Cantwell back in studio. “Not sure it was quite enthralling but it was definitely one of only a couple of games in Division 1 that seemed to have any real intensity in them.”
On pundit duty were Liam Sheedy and Dónal Óg Cusack. After they had their say, the presenter teed up the next package, Clare v Galway. She wasn’t about to get our hopes up here either. This game, she warned, “had all of the hallmarks of springtime hurling. Clare and Galway have had their ups and downs in this league campaign but their meeting in Ennis never really had the feel of must-win.” In other words, you can put out the cat and head for the cot, if you want.
After the action she turned to her guests with a question that was almost a veritable cri de coeur. “We could talk about a good comeback from Galway, the importance of getting a win, but is there any real point in talking about taking anything out of that game?” Joanne was channelling her inner Samuel Beckett here, pondering the futility of it all; which you’d have to say is most unusual for someone in her line of work, following in the footsteps of Jimmy Magee and Dickie Davies.
Sheedy replied that if it had been a training game that he was supervising, he’d have stopped it and presumably given the players a scorching for their lax attitude. Soon enough we were back into that perennial conversation about ‘The League’, the most sick and wanly child there ever was this side of a Charles Dickens novel. Certainly the hurling league, with its races almost always handicapped by trainers who are holding back their horses for the hard ground and big pots of summer. Sheedy was only stating what everyone suspected when he pointed out that Clare and Galway “must’ve been [doing] a massive training block in the last two weeks. Today they just weren’t at it and you’d be questioning to know did they really [put] so much into the week that they didn’t have the energy [for the game].”
Dónal Óg however wasn’t exactly wringing his hands in despair at the shabby state of the competition. There was nothing new about its current malaise; that’s always been the way. “The league as long as I remember it was always used for preparation [for the championship],” said the hall of fame goalkeeper, in a fairly sanguine tone. “All those management teams, strength and conditioning teams, the league is not the priority, they’re all trying to use it for different reasons. You look at Limerick, they’re going for four [All-Irelands] in a row, they have different priorities in the league ... Cork have different priorities ... Tipperary ... It depends where you’re at on the journey. If I was to ask you or most hurling people who are watching this, who won the last three [league] titles, I bet you if people were honest they’d struggle to tell you.”
Guilty as charged. But surely, as in the time-honoured fashion, something must be done about it, by someone somewhere sometime? This was the question put by Joe Molloy to Tommy Walsh on Newstalk’s Off The Ball show on Monday. Not necessarily, replied the Kilkenny nonpareil of yesteryear. Nah. Tommy was happy enough to see the league tipping away as it is. No need to be getting your knickers in a twist about this one, Joe. And in defence of his argument, the man who was the very soul of hurling in his playing days produced another moment of magic from his rich tapestry of contributions to the game.
If for example you’ve put in a hard day’s work, he began, quickly warming to his task, you’re going to be looking forward to a good hearty dinner that evening, aren’t you? Can’t argue with that, to be fair. “Say my dinner is a good chicken roast: you’ve your stuffing, you’ve your Wexford potatoes, you’ve your ...” At this point, Walsh’s culinary imagination is taking flight, unlike said chicken it must be added. You’ve your, “You know, gravy all over it. You can’t wait for it after a day’s work.”
And now comes the clincher. “What if you eat a steak dinner ten minutes before it? Are you going to enjoy it as much? So we’ve a big intense league for say two or three months, are we going to be able — as supporters now I’m talking about — are you going to have the same fervour and excitement and build-up to the championship [a few] weeks later? Because you have to remember, the championship is starting two or three weeks after the league final.”
Well, in all honesty, you wouldn’t have to be Nigella Lawson to know that you wouldn’t preface your roast chicken dinner with a steak dinner just ten minutes before the bird herself has landed on the table, replete with stuffing, “Wexford” potatoes, gravy and all. Sure you’d have no room for the sherry trifle and the cup of tea and the biscuits after that tamp. And county boards wouldn’t be too happy about paying for it all either, if the GPA started demanding steak dinners on top of chicken dinners every night after training. No sirree.
So, if we rightly understand what Tommy was getting at, his argument is that the league is merely an appetiser — an hors-d’oeuvre, an antipasto, an amuse-bouche, as they say around Tullaroan.
Once again, it is hard to argue with the great man. Although one might venture in passing that there were a few hairy Kilkenny hurlers, back when men were men — and Tipp ones too, we might add — who wouldn’t have baulked at a steak dinner before moving seamlessly on to the chicken dinner, and without bothering to change their knife and fork either.
Anyway, Walsh also pointed out that irrespective of the fare on offer, the games were attracting decent crowds in any case. The punters know they’re not getting the best of the sport at its organic, free-range finest, but what they’re getting is good enough for now.
And while Cusack’s gastronomic preferences may or may not entirely chime with Walsh’s, he too was of the view that the league serves up a good feed in its own right. “I think still there’s a lot to be appreciated about the games,” he suggested to Cantwell, “once we don’t expect [it] to be the actual championship.”
In short, even with a bad game of hurling, you are still dining in a five-star restaurant.
