Grieving Cats Deserve Everything

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Irish Voice Sport

Grieving Cats Deserve Everything

September 6, 2007

By Cathal Dervan

THE sporting members of the national media and those of a sporting persuasion in particular are well used to standing outside the closed doors of a celebrating Kilkenny dressingroom on the day of an All-Ireland hurling final. After all, five times now in the last seven years a Kilkenny player has lifted the McCarthy Cup way above his head at the end of the greatest day of all in the hurling calendar.

Their status as the greatest team in modern times has been long assured but so has their modest and quiet reputation. They have never flaunted their greatness, they have never boasted of their achievements, they have never made noise. Until now that is.

Huddled in the narrow corridor that separates the Croke Park dressingrooms from the tunnel out to the hallowed surface, the journalists got a shock last Sunday afternoon as the celebrating Cats burst into song.

First to fill the victory after their wholly deserved win over Limerick was that old Kilkenny favorite “The Rose of Mooncoin.”

Next up was a rousing rendition of Beatles oldie “Yellow Submarine.” Hacks old enough to know better shook their heads in amazement. They had never heard anything like it.

“We always sing, it’s just that up to now we used to mime,” laughed manager Brian Cody when the press corps quizzed him about the sing-a-long afterwards.

What Cody didn’t say was how much that win over Limerick meant to a Kilkenny camp that has spent much of the summer in mourning, a Kilkenny camp that finally found release on the pitch against Limerick and off it in song after one of their sweetest victories yet.

When young mother Vanessa McGarry, wife of the Kilkenny sub keeper James, died in a car crash last July part of this Kilkenny squad died with her.

Her husband James was a hero in more than one previous All-Ireland final when his place on the team was assured so they felt his loss almost as much as he did.

That’s why, late into Sunday’s game, the Kilkenny mentors urged James to go on for the last few minutes of an All-Ireland decider when the outcome was never in doubt. He refused simply because he didn’t want to take from regular keeper P.J. Ryan in his moment of glory.

McGarry’s main action of the day was to accompany his young son Darragh onto the winner’s rostrum as the 12-year-old was asked to lift the McCarthy Cup by captain Henry Shefflin and show it off to the world.

There was hardly a dry eye in the house when young McGarry threw the cup to the air. We can only hope it is a cup that cheers at the end of a long dark summer for father and son and a hard summer for those closest to the heart of Kilkenny hurling.

On Sunday, amidst all the tears, there was some joy at last for James and Darragh McGarry. Little wonder they sang in that Kilkenny dressingroom.

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