In another extract from the forthcoming book “My Father: the Hurling Revolutionary” (a very personal biography of the life of GAA star Ned Power), Conor Power talks about the build-up to the All-Ireland hurling final of 1959…
Almost a score
The Waterford News & Star’s report on July 31st looked forward with some relish to the September All-Ireland final and reflected the confident mood in Waterford as well as the choice of opponents:
“Equally certain is the fact that, given the choice of opponents for this years final, Waterford, to a man, would plump for Kilkenny. The disappointment of ’57 is still fresh in the memory of Waterford, and now they have a golden opportunity of reversing the decision of that fateful year. Defeating Kilkenny in the final would add extra lustre to the big gold medal with the harp in the centre.” The front page carries a great photo of my dad – looking his most handsome, I think – shaking the hand of the Mayor of Waterford just after the Munster final against Cork. The mayor is looking very smooth in a fine suit and hat. My dad is obviously saying something to him; it looks like his thanking him for his kind wishes, but the mayor’s eyes are wide and looking straight into the camera lens. I don’t know what kind of person the mayor was, but in this shot he looks the epitome of the opportunist politician that just found a great photo-opportunity.
Meanwhile, the Waterford team continued their preparations for the big final. Training in those days was a very different approach to the semi-professional style of preparation that teams engage in nowadays. Training at an official level consisted of preparing players physically for the match, but had nothing to do with honing their skills. For that, some of the players who were perfectionist in nature took it upon themselves to literally train themselves. Midfielder Philly Grimes was one of them and so was my father and the two would often engage in setting up end-of-match do-or-die scenarios, testing one another on their respective skills…
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One of the team’s strengths that was widely recognised at the time was its speed. The official team trainer John Keane would have the players playing “chase the ball”, flicking the ball along the ground just out of a player’s reach so that he’d have to move fast to get the ball. He was also careful to overdo the physical training – again something relatively experimental at the time. But John was an experienced All-Ireland medal winner who knew the importance of not overdoing physical exertion and of keeping one skills sharp.
September 6th came. The day of the final. Most newspapers were predicting a Waterford victory. This was, after all, the team that had so mercilessly despatched the Tipperary team and had overcome Cork. In the Sunday Review that day, the prediction from its hurling correspondent and former Waterford trainer Paul Russel was that the “Powerful Decies Selection Should Take the Cup”. He attended a training session of the team and wrote of his impressions which echo those of Austin Flynn and other members of the team:
“I found them the most relaxed, joyful bunch of lads you could find in any training camp. They were unworried… unruffled… and in the peak of condition. Their sprinting, walking, jogging, trotting, and hurling was a joy to watch – training methods that only the perfect athlete could perform. I pointed all this out to John Keane and he said: ‘Yes, Paul, they are a fine bunch of lads. Believe me, this is our year. We know the Kilkenny lads; we are not underestimating them, but we will play for the full hour – and win.’”
“I agree with him,” adds Pat Fanning in the same report. “Never have I heard a hurling final discussed so much by the players, mentors and trainer. They are just eating, drinking, sleeping this hurling final today.”
In the Sunday Press that day, Éamonn Mongey presciently asks if the match, like the two sides’ first meeting 73 years previously will end in a draw. In what was the first “final” day for what was then the new Hogan Stand, the game did end in a draw. Although Waterford (1-17) scored almost twice as many times as Kilkenny (5-5) did, this time it was Kilkenny who got the vital goals in a year where Waterford were the ones who clocked up a high goal tally. That fact must have been a disappointment and a worry for the Waterford team going into the replay, as well as the fact that the match was only saved by Waterford’s only goal, which was scored in the dying minutes of the game by Séamus Power.
The last moments were so frenetic that there was confusion amongst many players on the team as to who was winning. The scoreboard didn’t show the aggregate score – only the score in goals and points – so the players and spectators had to perform their own mathematics to work out who was winning.
That’s not an easy task when you’re also preoccupied with trying to play in an All-Ireland final. Captain Frankie Walsh went into the dressing room in a dejected mood, thinking that they had lost while his county and club team-mate Séamus Power was convinced that they were All-Ireland champions : “Séamus thought we were a point ahead and I thought we were a point behind. Sure I was going off the field thinking we were beaten by a point again!”
The national dailies were fulsome in their praise of the match the following day. “Thank heavens it was a draw,” wrote John D Hickey in the Irish Independent. “That was my predominant thought at the end of an epic combat at Croke Park yesterday, when, in an All-Ireland senior hurling final that simply beggars description, a game that seems to make all words inadequate, Waterford and Kilkenny ended on level terms in a contest that must rank as a landmark in the history of the G.A.A.”
In the Cork Examiner, an equally breathless report speaks of a “Thrilling Climax to a Rousing Final”. In his “In the Soup” column in the Evening Press, Joe Sherwood waxed lyrical about the drawn final:
“What a rousing grand stand finish there was in the All-Ireland hurling final at Croke Park yesterday…
“The opening half, even though Waterford had asserted their superiority to win a 0-9 to 1-1 interval lead, was waged at top speed with neither side sparing itself. But this was made to look like a jog trot compared with what was to come after the change of ends.
“Then for thirty minutes, fury was let loose. What heart-palpitating stuff it was. Never a moment’s respite for either players or onlookers. It seemed unbelievable that humans could keep going at such a pace. The harder Kilkenny hit to win their way back into the game (which they succeeded in doing), the harder Waterford hit back.” Sherwood surmises that the “aerial game paid off” for Kilkenny in the second half: “One imagines that at half-time they must have had a parley among themselves, and then returned to the fray to play Waterford, not at their own game which was ground hurling, but to swing the ball through the air with mighty goal-mouth pucks. And they soon discovered Waterford’s Achilles heel. So they played on it… They (Waterford defenders) must now know what to expect in the replay on October 4. Whether they have learned their lesson remains to be seen… Wasn’t it a game to last in memory with the greatest ever played in Croke Park? How the boys lasted out the hour at such a pace is indeed a rare and lasting tribute to our young manhood.”
Possibly one of the most impressed neutral observers at the game was one Kenneth Wolstenholme – a BBC commentator who had come over with a camera unit to make a brief documentary on the sport for a British sports programme. “If you took those teams on a world tour to play a game like that you would have hurling played everywhere,” he enthused in the Evening Herald the day after the game. “The amazing speed of the game simply thrilled me… I could not understand how they could control the ball with those pieces of wood. And the wholehearted body contact just had to be seen to be believed. I had expected to be interested in the match, but it was not long in progress before I was a real fan. Most games have their dull moments, but this hurling is ‘go’ all the time!” He singled out Tom Cheasty as the star of the game and went to the dressing room afterwards, where John Keane presented him with a souvenir hurley
Wolstenholme’s prediction of world domination for the Irish national game is an interesting one when, half a century later, the game is shown live around the world. The Herald’s hurling correspondent echoed the hope of growth in popularity that the game elicited in his report: “Hurling may not be making headway in many counties, but a few more epic hours like yesterday’s All-Ireland final… could well make the caman game even more popular than Gaelic football.”
“My Father: A Hurling Revolutionary, the life and times of Ned Power” is out on paperback at the end of November 2009. Click here for further information, pre-order and excerpt.