In the beginning as it is in the end. Galway and Tipperary contested the first All-Ireland hurling final 114 years ago. Well, actually it was 113 years ago, as even the first championship encountered difficulties in finishing on time. Despite an entry of only 12 teams, it wasn't until April 1888 that the first All-Ireland winners were crowned.
Galway date modern hurling. This is more than a thematic convenience. They were the first county to have a high-profile, omnipotent manager. Cyril Farrell may have come after Heffernan and O'Dwyer, but he combined the power and messianic aura of the duo that dominated football at the same time. Like Brian McEniff in Donegal, Farrell was the only begetter of championship success for his county.
His approach was the precursor of Clare's flinty ferocity that was to follow a decade later. Galway hurlers were the fittest in the history of the world. Purists might say that you can strike a ball 60 yards quicker than you can carry it, but with Galway it was a close-run thing. Their modus operandi was to explode out of the traps in semi-finals and flatten whichever opponents, fresh from provincial success, stood in their way.
The trouble was that the final opponents had a further four weeks to think about it all and were rarely caught as comprehensively on the hop. This meant that Galway probably won fewer All-Irelands than they should. It used be said that had they a normal season, without direct access to the semi-finals, Galway probably would have qualified for fewer finals but won more of those they did reach.
For instance, when Kilkenny were walloped by 11 points in Thurles in 1986, part of their bafflement derived from Galway's famous three-man centrefield. Horses for courses? Perhaps, except that proponents of the theory can rarely resist the temptation to give the nag one more spin around the track.
Cork manager Johnny Clifford experimented with the idea at training but admitted that his players couldn't get the hang of it. Accordingly, they decided to persevere with their conventional centrefield arrangements. And never looked back.
What Galway lacked at this stage and what they were to acquire were great rivals. Tipperary finally emerged from Munster to take on the mantle. Ironically, they were managed by Babs Keating who had taken charge of Galway in the 1979 All-Ireland final. Farrell had been his assistant and they used to travel to training together from Dublin.
When these particular sides first met in the '87 semi-final, an entertaining, high-scoring match resulted with Galway winning and going on to lift the All-Ireland - third time lucky after two successive defeats. A year later the counties met in the most eagerly awaited final for years.
The pair hadn't contested a final for 30 years but, more significantly, Tipp hadn't reached one since 1971. The crowd was big enough for there to be no tickets anywhere half an hour before throw-in. Many supporters with tickets were unable to get into the ground because of the crowding. The sarcastic view was that Tipperary supporters just weren't used to big matches in Dublin.
There was an edge to the match, but Galway won out, sealing the victory with a late goal from current manager Noel Lane. Great was the deflation in Tipp. Bit by bit relations soured. At a Tipperary Supporters' Club function, Keating made some remarks about Galway's tactics being "questionable". Farrell, in a column in the Sunday Press, replied in kind. As Keating recalled: "The gloves were off".
For all that, the teams played a fabulous League final in April 1989 with Galway again winning. The stage was set for an attempt at three-in-a-row in that championship.
But the one issue which defined the deepening bitterness arose that summer when Tony Keady - Galway's gifted centre back and then Hurler of the Year - was rumbled for playing without authorisation in New York. Galway blamed Tipperary connections for raising the matter. The charge was denied, but Keady picked up a 12-month suspension.
What happened next again prefigured the future. Instead of accepting the suspension, Galway and Farrell in particular concentrated on trying to appeal or mitigate the punishment. Bulletins on the campaign intruded into training sessions, and when the All-Ireland semi-final should have been the focus, other matters were disrupting preparations. At one stage Farrell even threatened to withdraw his team from the championship.
Like Clare and Colin Lynch nine years later - and in stark contrast to Tipperary's handling of the recent Brian O'Meara case - the match slipped down the agenda, as grievance built up a siege mentality.
The irony was that Keady's replacement, Sean Treacy, played really well, and had Galway not lost their heads - and two players - they might have won the match rather than losing it by three points. And those three points cost the county its three-in-a-row, as Antrim had excelled themselves to overcome Offaly in the other semi-final but were unlikely to be competitive finalists.
Maybe the scars of '89 didn't help, but Galway were not to regain the high ground again. A disastrous second half against Cork turned likely success into calamitous defeat, and thereafter there was to be only one more final until this year.
Naturally the heat went out of the Galway-Tipp rivalry despite semi-finals in '91 and '93. A series of National League finals and last year's All-Ireland quarter-final didn't revive the edginess between the counties, but if they establish themselves as frontrunners in the next couple of years, something will re-enter the atmosphere.
Whatever happens next Sunday, it will differ greatly from that first final in Birr in 1888. Having arrived at the venue, Galway's Meelick got wind of a rumour that the Thurles team representing Tipperary wasn't going to travel. This was said to be a ruse to put the Galwaymen off their guard. If so, it worked. The westerners went off for a few pints and, mid-sup, heard the news that their opponents had arrived.
Not too surprisingly Tipperary won, but the same trick hardly explains their other 23 All-Irelands.
