Kilkenny kiddies' banker hits the deck

TV VIEW:WHEN YOU think about it, those little Kilkenny kiddies who appeared on Up for the Matchon Saturday night are as familiar with the concept of All-Ireland defeat as they are with a stable banking system. A five-in-a-row, for them, is just how many years most of them have lived on earth – it's grand, but you kind of take it for granted.

Come Sunday, at the end of the final, the camera picked out a smiling girl with black and amber painted on her cheeks, she can’t have been born more than five-in-a-row years ago. Why was she smiling? Maybe she just assumed the scoreboard had it wrong.

Her parents, then, had the uncomfortable task of explaining to her what "lost" means. "It's when the other team scores more than Kilkenny," they might have said. "Ha," she'd have laughed, "good one." At the other end of the age scale is the Tipperary legend that is Mickey "The Rattler" Byrne, if his five-minute cameo on Up for the Matchhad been extended to 55 it wouldn't have been enough. "What age are you, if you don't mind me asking," said Des Cahill. "Eighty-seven next week – and that's not counting the years I was in my bare feet," he replied.

Mickey denied he ever truly rattled anyone during his illustrious playing career, the highlight the 1949-51 three-in-a-row, but the subsequent chuckle half hinted that if he was telling the truth it wasn’t quite the whole of it.

“When the ball used to be dropping in to the square I’d say ‘come on now lads, rattle them, rattle them’, it started from there,” he said, explaining how he got his name.

“Where did it finish?” asked Des.

“I wouldn’t like to tell you,” he giggled.

He was due in Croke Park yesterday, of all days, his first visit since the mid ’70s, arthritis restricting his movement. “I’d say you’d love to be playing, would you?”

“You said a mouthful,” he smiled.

On to Sunday and Tomás Mulcahy was forecasting there’d be a fair bit of rattling going on in the early stages of the final, “you’re going to have a few gumshields loosened inside those helmets”.

You’d almost think there was a history between Tipp and Kilkenny.

He and Cyril Farrell predicted Tipp would finish the day the more rattled, Kilkenny completing the five-in-a-row, but Ger Loughnane had a notion that this Tipp team’s drive for one would end in success.

Lar Corbett’s goal and Henry Shefflin’s departure, in the space of four minutes, made Ger’s forecast look a half decent one, but you know yourself, back came Kilkenny.

But then back came Tipp, the moment that should take up an entire episode of Reeling in the Years(just replay it for 30 minutes) Noel McGrath's pass to Corbett for his second goal. A drop-dead gorgeous thing of beauty.

When you’re five, six points up with a couple of minutes to go things, you have to say, are looking good, but you’d also have to assume there was a valley-full of tears near Slievenamon when Ger Canning declared “it’s just not Kilkenny’s day . . . it looks like the five-in-a-row is gone”.

Even with one second to go you half expected Kilkenny to bridge the eight-point gap, but Tipp survived Ger’s fate-tempting. “Lovely sound men,” said a cap-doffing Michael Duignan.

A nine-year drought over. Victory? “It’s when Tipp score more than Kilkenny in an All-Ireland final,” explained parents from Nenagh to Clonmel. “Yeah, and there are no bad banks, only good,” the sighing Tipp kiddie might have replied.

Croke Park, then, was the only sporting place to be, but what you wouldn't have given to have been a fly on the wall of The Late Late Showgreen room on Friday night, just to listen in on the chat between Donncha O'Callaghan, Jedward and Tony Blair.

Donncha, predictably enough, was the star of the show, confirming, as alleged by Paul O’Connell when he appeared a few months back, that he is, indeed, a messer. Marriage and fatherhood, though, he insisted, have made him determined to become a bit more sensible.

The baby boom in the Irish squad – eight born, two on the way – had only upped the competitive streak among certain members of the squad, he said, the O’Connell man the guiltiest party. “His fella can drink more milk than any baby in the world, he’s very advanced, all that,” he sighed.

“There’s a few of you now in the squad now having babies,” said Ryan Tubridy, “it’s quite a fertile time for the team.” “Ah yeah, it’s like everything,” said Donncha, “it kind of goes in cycles. When the iPhone came out first everyone wanted one.”

Sublime. Donncha O’Callaghan? You’re the Apple of our eye.