WE IN THE sporting press like to preview a game by looking back at previous matches between the teams. Cork-Offaly offers the chance to revisit the classic encounter between the pair in 1999, and Offaly’s unforeseen revenge the next year; the sting in the tail of a brilliant, ageing group. It doesn’t matter that these games have nothing to do with what will happen at Tullamore today – it’s fun, and that if that is not reason enough then we may as well kill off the back pages now; print, digital, virtual hologram and whatever comes next.
Yet why go back to ’99 and 2000, when you cast the eye to 1984? A time when none of the current players were born; a time of small backroom teams, big hurleys, few helmets and far more people watching on from atop the wall at the back of the terrace. There were less thrown hand passes also, because to get the ball in your hand you’d have to risk the wrath of your manager and the intactness of your fingers by catching the ball in the first place. Pull first and deal with every subsequent problem thereafter – that’s how it seemed.
Some might call it a different sport entirely to the one we enjoy so much today. Some might well be correct. Either way, I find myself drawn to these games from different times.
Match of the 70s, The Big Match Revisited, GAA Gold – all set to record. The Cork-Offaly 1984 final on YouTube . .
. I’m watching that, probably twice. Such practices didn’t start with Covid and end with a jab or three for.
