Tipperary and Kilkenny: curses, hurling and a bit of history

Sporting curses 

The notion of unsuccessful sporting teams being cursed (and not simply just being useless) is as old as organised sport itself. In 'The Curse of the Bambino', the Boston Redsox baseball team were allegedly punished by some supernatural agent for trading Babe Ruth, leading to their inability to win the World Series from 1918 until their final breakthrough in 2004. Closer to home, the Clare senior hurling team were believed by many of their supporters to have suffered under the curse of the herbalist and alleged witch Biddy Early, ensuring that their All-Ireland final win of 1914 was not repeated until 1995, when all the members of the 1914 team were dead and buried, as apparently stipulated by the aforementioned Biddy. Proponents of this curse chose to ignore the fact that Biddy Early had herself died in 1874, many years before there even existed a Clare hurling team.

Babe Ruth: 'The Great Bambino' 

                                       The Clare hurlers in 1995: victorious at last


Similarly, the long suffering Mayo football team were allegedly cursed by a priest as punishment for raucous behaviour and lack of due respect for a funeral cortège in the midst of their 1951 All-Ireland final celebrations: 69 years and 9 All-Ireland final defeats later, that particular curse continues. As with the Clare curse, the grim requirement for all members of the last winning team to be deceased before the curse is lifted is also sometimes mentioned in relation to the Mayo team, possibly giving rise to some nervousness (considering the famed passion and demonic levels of dedication of Mayo supporters) on the part of that (now sole) elderly gentlemen whenever Mayo get close to a final. 

1951: Mayo's last All-Ireland football title to date

Tipperary v Kilkenny: an ancient hurling rivalry 

Reviewing the statistics on the All-Ireland hurling roll of honour, one could be forgiven for thinking that my native Tipperary were labouring under some sort of curse themselves between their 22nd All-Ireland title win in 1971 and the 23rd, coming as it did a full 18 years later in 1989. The roll of honour for All-Ireland hurling titles in 1973, the year of my birth, had Tipperary leading the way on 22, followed closely by Cork on 21 with Kilkenny on 18. The chasing peloton were a good way back, led by Limerick with 7 titles. 

Since then, the hurling tables have turned considerably. Of the 46 titles contested during my lifetime, Tipperary have won 6, Cork have won 9 and all other teams combined have won 13 titles. However, streaking ahead of everyone else is Kilkenny, who have won 18 of those 46 titles and now sit perched comfortably on top of the roll of honour with an astounding 36 titles. This is not to mention their countless titles won in the National Hurling League, at club level in all grades and at underage level. The reign of their current manager Brian Cody has been particularly fruitful for Kilkenny. During his time in charge since 1998, Kilkenny have contested 17 of the 22 All-Ireland hurling finals, and won 11 of them. 

The ancient hurling rivalry of Tipperary and Kilkenny is nicely captured in this RTE All-Ireland final trailer piece and (despite the mawkish Lily Allen background music) became somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine in the build-up to last August's final: 

https://youtu.be/yUlfQKzj77M

However, despite the warm, fuzzy and fraternal mood of this clip, as a Tipperary fan I can testify that there is nothing as sweet as beating Kilkenny and nothing as bitter as losing to them. 

A hurling truism back in the 1950s and 1960s was 'Kilkenny for the hurlers and Tipp for the men', i.e. despite their possibly superior skill levels, Kilkenny were often outfought in key matches by tougher and more determined Tipperary teams. But that is now history. In recent years, the teams have generally been very closely matched in terms of skill levels, fitness and manliness. The past 11 years have seen Tipperary and Kilkenny contest 6 All-Ireland finals against each other, sharing three victories each.

Tipperary and Kilkenny: a 1960s contest

Tipperary and Kilkenny in more recent times

Despite the intense historical and recent rivalry of Tipperary and Kilkenny, I have to acknowledge and respect the eye watering success of Kilkenny hurling in my lifetime in particular. Therefore, I only slightly winced when they unveiled their landmark hurling statue in the summer of 2016. After all, they were All-Ireland champions at the time (having won 8 of the previous 10 finals) and what better time to acknowledge their historic achievements and, in particular, their achievements during the Brian Cody years. And after all, the statue was designed (officially at least) as a tribute to hurling and not just to Kilkenny. This was in keeping with the Brian Cody ethos, which has always been one of humility and sportsmanship. 

A pre-storm run 

And so on a recent overnight trip to Kilkenny, I decided to swallow my Tipperary pride and pay a visit to this statue. I had seen photos and read about its unveiling. Brian Cody himself had referred to it as 'a testament to both hurling and its sculptor'. I took off from my lodgings at the Newpark Hotel on a bracingly cold early morning run, in the calm before the arrival of Storm Jorge, and ran from the city outskirts along the Castlecomer Road towards the centre. Running through quiet and unfamiliar city streets early in the morning sometimes unleashes in me a childish fantasy that I am on a secret spying mission. Of course the mission on this occasion was on behalf of Tipperary hurling, in our quest to catch and overtake Kilkenny on the roll of honour. And, in view of the impending storm sweeping in from the west, the mission would have to be called Operation Jorge. But what clues could I uncover on the streets of this quaint mediaeval city that would explain Kilkenny's rampant hurling success? 

As I ran towards the city centre, my body warmed up nicely and my mind went into Tipperary spy mode. I started to note the occasional Kilkenny black and amber flags and started to look out for signs directing me towards the statue, this bold symbol of Kilkenny hurling dominance, in my mind at least. As the kilometres clicked by, my mind began to wander in the way it often does when running, and I started to think of when the statue had been unveiled. I had looked it up the night before: it was unveiled in the first half of 2016. Kilkenny were All-Ireland champions since the previous September. But what had happened in the hurling world since then? Tipperary had won the All-Ireland finals of 2016 and last year's final of 2019 (giving Kilkenny a very comprehensive and unprecedented 14 point clipping). 2017 had seen Galway take the title after a 29 year gap, and Limerick had bridged a gap of 45 years to win the 2018 final. 

  Seamus Callinan with the Liam McCarthy Cup 

  Tipperary: All-Ireland champions for 2019

So I was starting to put these hurling facts together as my running pace and heart rate built up steadily. Statue erected in 2016. Tick. Four finals since. Tick. No Kilkenny wins. Tick. Four years the longest stretch in Brian Cody's managerial tenure without an All-Ireland final win. Tick. A warm glow then started to come over me, due to a combination of the running and a dawning realisation. Could the statue, this proud symbol of Kilkenny hurling dominance, be exerting some sort of covert negative influence on them? Had Kilkenny tempted fate and erected a sporting curse of their own making? 

I ran downhill into John Street, aiming to cross John's Bridge and head towards Kilkenny Castle, where I would find the famed statue and pay my respects. And then as I got to the bottom of John Street and my thoughts on the potentially cursing nature of the statue started to take shape, I suddenly noticed coming up on my right a cocktail bar called 'Biddy Early's'. Seeing the name of this famous alleged sporting curser immediately gave me the completely illogical but strangely reassuring final confirmation that the Kilkenny hurling statue was in fact a curse for them.

Finally, the statue (and a bit about the Butlers of Ormond, including Statutes)

I quickly ran across John's Bridge, excited by my dawning realisation, and looked up to the hulking castle looming ominously through the glare of the sunrise to my left.

I gathered my thoughts and caught my breath. I thought of the many generations of the Butler clan who had resided at this castle from the 13th Century onwards and how their sphere of influence had once straddled both Tipperary and Kilkenny, not knowing in their time anything of the hurling rivalry that would one day split their ancient Earldom of Ormond down the middle. But even before hurling (and Cricket dominated as the primary organised sport in many parts of Tipperary and Kilkenny until the end of the 19th Century) the eastern, Kilkenny part of the Butler Earldom probably always looked and felt different to the western Tipperary part. 

The Earldom of Ormond covered most of modern Tipperary and Kilkenny

                                                              Butler heraldry

                         Modern Tipperary coat of arms, with clear echoes of the Butlers

This eastern, Kilkenny part contained the neat and carefully planned city, quaint villages and patchwork quilt countryside, all very reminiscent of the English homeland of the Butler ancestors. In contrast, the western, Tipperary part was wilder and much more Irish in character, with its mountains, bogs and mucky market towns that had never been planned but had instead developed purely organically (really organically and not organically in the modern hipster sense of the word). And then there were the 14th Century Statutes of Kilkenny, drafted up to reestablish the waning power, influence and order imposed by the Anglo-Normans over those wild Irish. 

So perhaps this early pre-hurling divide in Ormond had coloured the later contrasts between the two counties, with the apparently more civilised Kilkenny hurling fans famously referring to their western rivals as 'stone throwers' from the 19th Century onwards. And maybe that divide explained the 'Kilkenny for the hurlers, Tipp for the men' comment from the middle of the 20th Century. 

I knew the statue was near here. And when I shielded my eyes from the glaring sun, I suddenly caught sight of it and walked up to it. It is as huge and imposing as a Kilkenny hurling team on All-Ireland final day. It features three giant hurlers jumping fourteen feet into the sky together to get control of the sliotar. One of them has half a grasp on the sliotar but it looks tenuous. He and his teammate are wearing the famed black and amber striped jerseys of Kilkenny and the third player is wearing an indeterminate jersey. The perpetual look that the sculptor has left on their faces is that of grim determination. 

That statue

But the running-induced mild euphoria made me think I should not be intimidated by this statue or even churlishly negative in my attitude towards it. After all, even though that warm August All-Ireland hurling final day last year seems a world away from this freezing pre-storm February morning, Tipperary are still the current All-Ireland champions. And maybe I should actually be thankful for the statue's presence, seeing as it is overseeing and maybe even causing the current four year curse in Kilkenny's All-Ireland successes. 

I had given some thought in the previous few days as to how I might mark my visit to the statue. Would I wrap a Tipperary blue and gold ribbon on it and take a quick, cheeky photo? And spray-painting it in blue and gold seemed a bit excessive, and probably illegal. So instead, I chose to do something more subtle. 

Looking around for signs of any early morning walkers or delivery men who might think I was a bit strange, I placed my right hand on the statue. 

Then I quickly whispered a brief but heartfelt two-word prayer: 'Up Tipp'. 

                                                               Kilkenny Castle