Henry Shefflin, JJ, Cody, Tommy and the greatest team of all time

We shouldn’t have been surprised but 12 short months ago the obituary writers were out in force. A championship year in 2013 that saw Kilkenny beaten not once, but twice, that saw them play no game in Croke Park? Surely the end was in sight. Well, they gave some answer to that. It might have been their greatest of all triumphs because Tipperary couldn’t have been any better on that first Sunday in September. That drawn All-Ireland is the best I’ve seen, 3-22 to 1-28 – it was spellbinding. The relay was typical Kilkenny under Brian Cody. Imposing their game on Tipp, they turned it into a contest that only they would win. Earlier in the summer, they had surrendered a 10-point lead to Galway in eight minutes of madness. They won that replay too and despite terrific challenges from Limerick and Tipp, they refused to lose. A couple of notables have said goodbye, Tommy my favourite, JJ the most effective. One more is sure to follow. Their likes won’t be seen again. But you know who is sticking around. He hasn’t gone away, you know.

Where there’s the GAA, there are shocks

Dublin went into the championship as the team that couldn’t be beaten. Most opposing teams believed it – all of Leinster anyway, for they simply rolled aside when the Dubs machine showed any sign of life. But Jimmy was watching and hatching. Donegal’s All-Ireland semi-final victory was the football highlight of the year for many – myself included. It was a triumph of everything that is good about our games. It was done with efficiency, with trust, with confidence and with a clinical touch at the absolute right time. Many expected Donegal to park the bus in front of Hill 16 but the Ulster champions merely took Dublin’s sting and hit them on the break with three classic counter-attack goals. The Dubs are a brilliant footballing side but the pressure on them to march to this All-Ireland belies the fact that no football team has won two in a row since Kerry in 2006 and 2007 and the Dubs themselves do not have a back-to-back winning tradition. Probably favourites again for 2015, the Leinster champions will continue to be vulnerable if they don’t get some proper matches before August (through no fault of their own, we add).

We can change the rules when we want, you know

For years we’ve all been under the misconception that you needed a motion through your club, county convention and then the monster that is congress to get a playing rule changed. And even then the rules could only be changed every couple of years. Apparently not. Anthony Nash lifted a penalty against Waterford in the Munster championship that had snow on it when it came down, allowing Waterford goalkeeper Stephen O’Keeffe to be beside Nash as he attempted to strike. Fair play to O’Keeffe’s bravery, by the way. If Nash had hit it quicker we wouldn’t be talking about it now. What followed, predictably, was The Sunday Game, social media, print media and pub talk mayhem. And what happened next was as bizarre as it gets in GAA terms. Officialdom made a change to the rules, literally overnight. The penalty was changed. In fact, all frees on the 21-yard line had to be moved back. It seems that rule change has ended the penalty as a goal-scoring threat (it didn’t bother Joe Canning, who stuck two against Kilkenny, mind you). The GAA have set a marvellous precedent here and one they should now follow. If something is wrong, fix it and quickly.

We have a problem with referees and it’s not them

The scenes in Limerick when a man tried to attack the referee during the tempestuous All-Ireland football semi-final replay between Mayo and Kerry merely highlights the pressure referees are under and the abuse they are taking verbally from supporters, not to mention players and sideline officials. There is now a very unhealthy obsession at play around our referees and the decisions they make. Every single one is parsed by analysts and it won’t take us too long to run out of decent referees if they continue to be treated like this. They’re human and they’re entitled to make mistakes in games that are now played at a ferocious pace by incredibly fit young men. The founding fathers decided on one referee when the sliotar rarely travelled more than 40 yards at a time and the football even less. That was then, this is now. Until we have two referees in hurling we cannot expect them to keep up with play. It simply isn’t humanly possible. So we should stop expecting too much of them and criticising them until then. Is there any way, I wonder, we could change that rule overnight? If only there was a precedent.

No one has a divine right to play in Croke Park

Mayo’s carping about being forced to play Kerry in the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick in the All-Ireland semi-final most definitely played a part in their defeat. Indeed, James Horan still complained about it after resigning as Mayo manager. What a pity such a proud footballing county was reduced to this. The Connacht champions have played a number of games in Croke Park over the past decade – all of their team are familiar with the ground and if they had beaten Kerry the first day they could have saved themselves the hassle. As it was, it was a unique venue with a set of posts that still required a ball to be hit over and under them. Between them, the counties still couldn’t fill it, by the way. It was the wrong argument to be having in the immediate aftermath of the drawn game. It was the wrong topic to dominate the build-up. It was also a mite insulting to Limerick GAA. Once the stadium could take the crowd, Mayo should have just gotten on with it, said nothing and used it as motivation among themselves. Instead, the wait goes on and the Mayo psyche gets a little more brittle year by year.

Another year of lip service to our club championships

We know that the GAA usually moves with glacier-like speed when it comes to fiddling with matters as sacred as the GAA calendar. Back in 1979, the Pope’s visit saw the All-Ireland football final moved forward a week and it cost Jimmy Keaveney a chance to play in that game, as his suspension would have ended had the game gone ahead at the proper time. Tough luck on Jimmy. In 2006, the Ryder Cup meant the finals were again altered. No one complained too much as it made sense. This year, however, the idea of completing all club games within the calendar year was mooted without a hint of playing the All-Ireland finals earlier. The clubs are being asked to get their house in order with nothing being left on the table for them. This might actually be the spark that unites club players nationwide. Without a radical attempt to separate the club and inter-county schedules, the only logical result will be all-out war between the clubs and county managers, with players caught in the middle. This is already happening in certain counties. Will someone please give the glacier a nudge?

It is next to impossible to defend an All-Ireland senior crown

We can’t include Kilkenny in this because they compare to the Kerry footballers of the late ’70s and ’80s. They are a freak of GAA nature. The Dubs implosion was predictable enough because they were being set up for a fall. The first time to be really tested is early in the summer. Then you still have time to experiment and learn your lessons. The Dubs hit the first wall in August and it was too late. Clare hit the wall well before their losses to Cork and Wexford, heroic as the latter one was. Counties like Clare and Donegal (Tyrone, Armagh, Wexford, etc) – the smaller ones, for want of a better phrase – are not used to winning All-Irelands. In the Banner county last year, we visited every single club and school with the Liam McCarthy Cup, not to mention a couple of foreign outposts. Every training session last year started and ended with an autograph session. We’re not complaining; we enjoyed every minute of it. But it took something out of us. Dublin mightn’t admit it but they went through the same processes. Twelve months is long enough to lick your wounds. Watch both in 2015.

Sky came and the world didn’t end

As a supporter of Sky Sports’ arrival into all things GAA, I think the first year was a decent start. They dipped their toes in the water and liked what they saw. The real effects of their investment in our games won’t be felt for a few years yet and this won’t mean the end of all things GAA. We have an incredible sporting product and the more people that are exposed to it, the better. The 2014 championship was watched by more people all over the world, thanks to GAA Go Games, Channel 7 in Australia and Sky Sports. All exiles could watch in the comfort of their own homes and that can’t be a bad thing. RTÉ too pulled up their socks and that certainly was a plus. There’s more to be done, mind you. I’m looking forward to a general improvement in camera work from all concerned. Far too often we still can’t tell properly if a ball has gone over the bar, before we reach for Hawk-Eye, that is. And we need a ref cam to let everyone see what a referee sees.