Just because something is not a surprise does not mean it cannot be a shame.
Thirty-four years of age and blighted by injuries, Jackie Tyrrell’s intercounty career was never likely to survive a second successive season spent riding the pine.
A stress fracture limited Tyrrell’s involvement in 2015 but, this year, with Seamus Callanan and the Tipperary attack running wild in the All-Ireland final, many were questioning the James Stephen’s man’s absence.
Kilkenny don’t need a half-time speech out of Jackie Tyrrell; they need to get him on the field. #KKvTIPP
— Philip Lanigan (@lanno10) September 4, 2016
Love to see Jackie Tyrrell come on & mark Callan!! #KKvTIPP
— Brian Hurley (@BrianHurley15) September 4, 2016
WHAT A GAME 🤗👍
Brian Cody under pressure and Jackie Tyrrell with 9 All-Ireland medals sitting on bench#KKvTIPP #GAA pic.twitter.com/T8cyAJOqx9— Pól ☘ (@poljoy32) September 4, 2016
This was not just loyalty to a fine servant of Kilkenny hurling or an acknowledgement of the Cats’ less than stellar bench – this was recognising what Brian Cody needed and what he had in reserve.
Callanan was damn near unmarkable that day, scoring nine from play. Joey Holden couldn’t hold him, even Paul Murphy could not impose the law – the Tipperary forward needed to be reined in. He needed the Jackie Tyrrell treatment.
“In corner-back you’re rigid and you know who you’re marking and you stick with him wherever he goes, more or less,” Tyrrell told me ahead of the 2014 All-Ireland final.
A dominant centre-back with the club, Tyrrell was more than willing to sacrifice large tracts of his own game to fulfil a role for Kilkenny.
He was the limpet. He was the stopper. He was the plague upon the houses of all nippy corner-forwards and ‘marquee forwards’ with the misfortune of being assigned to his neck of the woods.
You could try and escape, like Lar Corbett did back in 2012, but Tyrrell will just find you, follow you and kill you (metaphorically speaking). Imagine Liam Neeson in ‘Taken’ but with a quiff and a Kilkenny accent.
All those memes and gags relating to Corbett’s stalking of Tommy Walsh in that All-Ireland semi-final ignored the fact that Tyrrell never left Corbett’s side for a second. He was not distracted by Tipperary’s bizarre tactic, he had his job to do: the usual, pick up the opposition danger man and stop him from scoring.
He was brilliant at it too. Countless are the number of attackers who have listed Tyrrell as their toughest opponent. Strong as an ox, sticky in the extreme and uncompromising to the exact line that you cannot cross.
In other words: the perfect corner-back. Never the quickest, but dogged, alert, fearless and smart.
The man was a nightmare for opposing teams but the dream team-mate.
“He roared us on,” reaclled Colin Fennelly of Tyrrell’s famous oration at half-time of the 2015 All-Ireland final. “He has one, two years left maybe, but speeches like that and young lads hearing it, it’s amazing.
“The speech was absolutely unbelievable.
“He spoke to us all. He spoke for about a minute or two and every word he said, he had the hair standing on the back of my neck. It was unbelievable.”
Tyrrell’s take, of course, is different. He saw it as less Churchillian, more mundane. Just your average Kilkenny hurler with eight All-Irelands in his back pocket, reminding his team-mates what they were capable of.
“We were very relaxed and we were almost accepting what was going on. I just spoke from the heart. What an opportunity the lads had. We were two points down and we had not really hurled. I just started talking and luck enough the lads reacted. It is one thing talking. It’s another thing going out to do it. In fairness to the lads and the two Powers that came on, they all responded.”
Tyrrell got his ninth Celtic Cross and will retire with one fewer than Henry Shefflin. Like Sheff, the autumn of his career was spent watching on more than he would have liked, but he still contributed and he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the rest of an exceptional generation of Kilkenny hurlers.
@VillageGAA @KilkennyCLG pic.twitter.com/dTvy4aAcIt
— Jackie Tyrrell (@MrJackieTee) November 11, 2016
Today is the end of what he describes as “an unbelievable journey”. While Kilkenny hurling folk may be mourning the loss of another great, that sound you can hear around the country is corner-forwards popping champagne corks.
Tyrrell is gone, they can breathe again.
