Another sunday of great Hurling was the prospect, and indeed it did not
fail to deliver. Tipperary faced up to a highly motivated Galway team to
start off the proceedings. This tured out to be a very entertaining
match indeed, the first half was poor in general, but the second half
was really entertaining.
Tipp had the game really and will be kicking themselves for letting it
slip away, they controlled the game from the beginning, and never really
let Galway get into it, yet Galway just about hung in there, nipping a
few pints here a there, towards the end they were attempting to go for
goals in a panic, a miss hit poped the ball over the bar and this was
followed by a stream of pints, and a cracking goal near the end which
sealed Tipp's fate.
The second game Kilkenny faced Limerick. The cats were the out-and-out
favourites to take this tie, most people giving the shannon siders no
chance at all, and early in the game when Kilkenny scored 7 unanswered
pints it looked like a thrashing was on the cards not too disimmilar to
the one the cats gave to Offaly. But Limerick dug deep and managed to
score 7 unanswered pints of their own and mid way through the second
have there was only a solitary pint between them. But the class of
Kilkenny showed in the end when they just upped it another gear and
finished the easy winners in the end.
All in all the 4 games from the last two weekends showed that Cork and
Kilkenny are still the dominant teams in the country, but there is a
light there as they did not seem as invincable as other years. Which
gives some hope to the likes of Limerick to fight back next year.
On a closer to home note, Laois managed to stay afloat in the top tier
of hurling by defeating Antrim on Saturday evening last. Now if they
could only really contest ..... Laois in an All-Ireland Hurling Final,
that is one dream that will take a lot to come true... but I live on in
hope
