Jackie Tyrrell wanted to be back out there in the middle of it.
He watched Galway and Kilkenny tear strips off each other for 73 minutes and the hair was standing on the back of his neck for hours after.
On a day when defenders lorded the skies and ruled the deck, the Kilkenny legend was taken back to the days when he minded the Kilkenny house like a pedigree guard dog.
It could be argued that neither team played into their own forward’s hands by pucking long, high and slightly aimless into them, but this is what Galway have been doing to explosive effect all year up to this point.
They should have known that a widely written off Kilkenny team would be a different animal on Leinster final day and as the teams prepare for a replay in the home of hurling next Sunday, Micheal Donoghue will have loads of food for thought.
Because where the Tribesmen took Wexford to the cleaners, the Cats didn’t just negate them but they gobbled them up. Galway thought they’d make hay with the high, hanging skyscrapers that had served them so well up to then, but instead Kilkenny again turned Croke Park into a defender’s paradise.
Padraig Walsh gobbled them up. Cillian Buckley gobbled them up and 60 yards down the other end of the field Daithà Burke was throwing Walter Walsh around the place like a man that eats kitchen sinks for breakfast.
It all took Jackie Tyrrell to a new world entirely.
“Des, to sit back and watch this Leinster final today, I was absolutely loving it! The defending, the standard of it was absolutely unbelievable,” said the James Stephen’s man giddily.
“Cillian Buckley and Padraig Walsh – catching high ball after high ball, the two of them; that three and six axis for Kilkenny was brilliant.”
On a day when many fawned over the Munster decider and bemoaned Leinster’s lack of hurling, Tyrrell and Dalo set it straight about the defensive masterclass we were after witnessing.
That’s exactly what it was. For nearly a year now the narrative surrounding Padraig Walsh has been that the Tullaroan steam-train is wasted at number three. The former All-Star half back proved it on Sunday, just like he’s been proving all year that he’s actually so good that even the confines of playing full back can’t knock him off his stride.
He leaps into the sky like a scalded cat and he doesn’t give a damn about tossing his body through a sea of swinging ash. He bursts out through the sliotar and charges out the field with his legs going as fast as a hamster on a wheel.
How is he being wasted when he can hurl the field from full back?
Out in front of him, captian fantastic Buckley leads from the front. Just like Walsh, he’s an immovable object under the dropping ball. When he gets into his stride there’s no stopping a bucking bronco and his distribution is like something out of a forward’s heaven.
Then alongside them you’d Paddy Deegan horsing into challenges like a man who didn’t give a damn about his own well-being and Joey Holden fetching balls like we’ve never seen the Ballyhale Shamrocks man do before.
The best thing of all about these Kilkenny defenders was summed up in the 71st minute of the game when trailling by two, half back Enda Morrissey showed the coolness of a cucumber when he did get the time and space to settle himself when there was no margin for error.
That man Daithà Burke shouldn’t come in under the radar either. The Turloughmore tank attacks the ball like a bullock just let out of the shed for the summer attacks a green field of grass.
On Sunday, the starving savage went shoulder to shoulder with Kilkenny’s biggest unit Walter Walsh, and the Galway man had the winning of that titanic battle.
The man who doesn’t even need a hurl to hurl had Walsh dizzy and facing the wrong way after one thunderous steel.
“Watch this fella here, I’m always on about him, I just think he’s the best defender in the country. That’s Walter Walsh, 100kg, he just throws him out of the way like a rag doll,” said Tyrrell of Burke.
“The catching, I was just sitting back and I was just loving it.”
Anthony Daly was similarly bowled over by the Croke Park showpiece.
Where the Munster final was open, was free-flowing and wide open, the Leinster was a day when guts went for garters.
“It was a battle of attrition now today. You’re looking at 2-24 to 3-19 in Munster to 0-18 each in this one. I love them ones now as well, the blocking and the belting and the hooking and the high balls. The fielding was incredible out there today.”
And luckily for hurling fans, we’ll get to see it all again next Saturday in Semple Stadium.
To think, some were saying it was a poor Leinster final…
