Foul Play: Rebels With A Cause

The reign of terror is finally over. Or is it? Two months after Sir Alex Ferguson brought down the curtain on his 26-year Reich at Old Trafford, Brian Cody’s all-conquering Kilkenny, undoubtedly the greatest hurling team ever witnessed, have limped out of the Championship at the quarter-final stage.

Their exit was signposted well in advance, having laboured their way through five gruelling contests just to reach that stage, unrecognizably older, slower and wearier than the unstoppable force which had spent a decade laying all comers to waste. They could have no arguments with the Cork result: Henry Shefflin’s red card for two relatively innocuous yellows was undeniably harsh, but you could hardly say it turned the game, so anonymous had King Henry been during the preceding half-an-hour’s combat. The Cats never gave up trying, but they never looked remotely like winning.
So the curtain is presumed to have come down on a 14-year epoch which, if we’re honest, was seen by plenty of observers as ‘bad for the game’, in much the same way as the reigns of Michael Schumacher or Stephen Hendry or Glasgow Rangers or Pete Sampras were less than universally welcomed.
Time will pass and people will ultimately recall this Kilkenny team with a sense of awe and appreciation, but let’s not kid ourselves that it was all that enjoyable for fans of the sport at the time. A one-horse race is inherently less exciting than a proper contest, and the Cats of 2000-12 had been just that bit too far ahead of the pack for comfort, especially during the latter half of that time-frame, after Cork’s mid-Noughties vintage had faded. Obviously the blame for this state of affairs lies with the teams who failed to mount a challenge rather than with Cody and co, but the simple truth is that it’s been obvious for some time that in order for the Championship to prosper, it needs Kilkenny to falter.
This year’s Final Four has a pleasingly unfamiliar look to it: Clare, Cork, Dublin, Limerick. The bookies, who quite understandably had Kilkenny as rampant favourites in May, with only Galway and Tipp considered serious challengers, have certainly had to put a bit more thought into laying the line, with all four semi-finalists rated as basically of equivalent strength. Professional objectivity has been suspended in the Foul Play household for some weeks now, with excitement mounting by the day as my native county (Dublin) prepares to enter uncharted waters, a first Championship semi-final since...well, since 2011, when nobody in their right minds gave us a prayer against Tipp and a four-point defeat was generally seen as a moral triumph of sorts.
This time around, any inferiority complex has long since been laid to rest. The semi happens to be against Cork, who tend to regard such August and September showdowns as basically their birthright, but the jury is split down the middle on who should be favourites for this one.
Rebels fans, not renowned for their humility at the best of times, have hailed their slaying of Kilkenny as the dawning of a heroic new era, and certainly there was more than ample cause for them to rejoice. The goalkeeper, Anthony Nash, looks like a gem and the full-back line looks rock-solid. They were, however, humbled fairly soundly by Limerick in the Munster final, and have scored precisely no goals in their three matches thus far. There is no reason at all why they can’t be taken. In the other one, Limerick would appear to have a slight edge over Clare on the evidence of their displays to date, but it’s the sort of local rivalry where anything can happen and the form-book may not be of any great relevance. Both semi-finals are mouth-watering prospects, in what is easily the finest hurling Championship in years.
I promise it is the last time I’ll mention it, but you may recall Foul Play engaging in some soul-searching a few weeks ago over my failure to pounce quickly enough on a once-in-a-lifetime price of 66/1 for Dublin to win the whole thing. Since then, I have had ample cause to repent at leisure. Nonetheless, this has been something of an annus mirabilis for your correspondent in the betting ring, relentless profit apparently accruing week after week, each and every little setback seeming to be followed by a triumph of much greater magnitude, to the point where I’m starting to seriously wonder if I could do this for a living without having to, y’know, work.
The crowning glory arrived at last week’s British Open, where the official record would appear to show that at 01:20 am on the opening Thursday, possibly assisted by a glass or two of Rioja and a nice bit of weed, I parted with 50 squid (25 each-way) at a forbidding 175/1 on Hideki Matsuyama, a 21-year-old Japanese of little renown who had strung together some excellent performances while managing to remain resolutely unnoticed.
The bould Hideki promptly delivered, storming to a sixth-placed finish, overcoming the evil wiles of the Royal & Ancient upper-class twits who govern the Beautiful Game and saw fit to slap him with a one-stroke penalty for ‘slow play’, which they’d never dare to do with anyone British, American or European (the last player similarly penalized at a Major, back in April at the Masters, was a Chinese teenager named Guan: you can see a pattern beginning to emerge here). It should be quite understandable that Mr. Matsuyama has instantly become my favourite sportsperson in the whole world and I can’t thank him enough.
The Majors are becoming increasingly enjoyable for Foul Play these days, largely as a result of the colossal prices on offer (Jason Day, 80/1, last month’s US Open) and it would be fair to say that I’m limbering up for a real go at the PGA next weekend, now entering the zone where every sporting event is relished as a golden opportunity, where defeat is almost unthinkable, where the possibilities seem endless and the scent of victory is ever-present. I think I’m starting to realise how Brian Cody and Henry Shefflin have felt for the last decade.
In the interim, a fraction of the Matsuyama loot has already been invested on a trek to London in September where I will have the pleasure, for the first time, of witnessing a live regular-season NFL match in person, as the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings gatecrash Wembley for a battle to savour. The beauty of this thing is that, unlike last summer’s Gdansk and Poznan excursions where the heartache of Ireland’s abject humiliation went a long way towards wrecking the entire experience, there is no great emotional risk involved.
I shall root for the Vikings out of respect for the almighty Adrian Peterson, but whoever loses, it won’t exactly spoil my weekend. I’m off to London to see the King. See y’all next fortnight.