So here's where the story ends. A great lurching twister of a season blew itself out at Croke Park yesterday. When it counted Tipperary were the only team still standing. Yes, Tipperary the old bluebloods of hurling. They took their 25th title with a margin of three points and none has been harder fought or better deserved.
They left behind them a bewildered Galway team. Last month, Galway - young, brash and very wound up - came to town and handed Kilkenny a lesson in hurling. It seemed like an arrival. Yesterday they showed the same fight but not the same finesse and while Tipperary picked points from long distance, Galway huffed and puffed. It looked like an eviction.
That Tipperary should be crowned champions at the end of a solid and sometimes spectacular summer of hurling is right and fitting. They have hurled hardest, they have hurled the most often and they have hurled best. No backdoors. No easy passage. No excuses necessary.
Furthermore they have the keenest moral claim to an All Ireland title. While other teams are coming slowly or have peaked or are rebuilding, Tipp are that ripe blend of experienced hands and young swashbucklers. They have served their time under a manager who has learned his trade quickly but sometimes painfully.
It's been 10 years! A decade during which five other hurling counties have divvied out the good times while Tipp took their beatings and learned their lessons. Yesterday at Croke Park they took the lead in the second minute and never let it go again. Heroes emerged all over the pitch, a pitch it should be said which disintegrated badly as the afternoon progressed. Croke Park will be blessed with a new surface next summer. Not before time.
Anyway the early business was brisk and uncompromising but if Kilkenny had been surprised by Galway's physical exuberance in last months semi-final, well Tipperary were well prepared for it. Matched physically, Galway didn't look so gifted or so lithe. The scores came dropping slowly.
"It was tough around midfield alright," said Tipp captain Tommy Dunne afterwards "There were a lot of hits going in but it was fair and sporting, that should be said after all the publicity there has been about sendings off."
It was rugged rather than beautiful but still there were moments of genius amid the granite shoulder challenges. Tommy Dunne scored some sublime points, young Mark O'Leary of Kilruane outside Nenagh popped up for two goals, one in each half. Even Declan Ryan, written off by many as being slow and needing more space than a cruise ship requires to turn in, found the time to revel. In the first half he caught Brendan Cummins puck-out and handpassed it Eoin Kelly to rifle home. In the second half Ryan plundered everything while younger players swang from him and bounced off him. Tipp's sole link with the good times enjoyed himself.
Tipperary led by two points at half-time but went to their teabreak with the sobering knowledge that Galway had scored the last four points of the half and would be playing with the wind after the intermission. They needed something by way of a statement of intent and three minutes into the half it came via mark O'Leary's second goal of the game.
After that Galway went hunting for goals and got a decent one. If Tipp lived dangerously at times towards the finish, that was because nobody expects to get through an All-Ireland final any other way.
"If you are going to win an All-Ireland," said Brendan Cummins, Tipp's goalkeeper, "you need a little luck. I remember in 1997 saving a ball and Jamesie O'Connor hit it over the bar. There's nothing you can do about luck."
Still Tipperary never looked threatened by anything which might prove fatal. Their defending was as it has been most of the year - hard, honest and smart. There were bone shaking challenges, last-second clearances and courageous blocks but nothing which smacked of despair or desperation. Theirs was a win founded on conviction.
That self belief flowed from the top downwards. Manager Nicky English, who was once merely a beloved son of the county, has evolved into the sort of man whose very heartbeat seems somehow linked to that of his county. He spoke afterwards of what this meant.
"I means I'm out of the hole. You take a job like this and you are in a hole from the beginning. People around me, people close to me, when this job came up they all said don't take it but I couldn't stop myself taking it. I love Tipperary and the Tipperary hurling jersey so much. I'm very good at digging holes for myself in life anyway. This feels like I've got out of one."
For Galway the end was disappointing but it has been a year of marked progress, culminating in a return to the big dance. Manager Noel Lane looked to his team and their shocking, indecent youth and said they would be back. "No complaints, we were beaten by a good team on the day. We have the young players and it will stand them. Galway will be back." That's the plan anyway.
Forty years ago a Tipperary team captained by a Toomevara man, Matt Hassett, won an All-Ireland to add to the league title, a feat they were to repeat twice more within four years. If Tipp, with Tommy Dunne in the vanguard, are on the cusp of another such era, Galway might have to wait and wait.
