John Horgan: Munster hurling won't be the same without fans

TOM Semple’s field in Thurles on a summer Sunday for a Munster SHC showdown has to be among the great sporting occasions in this country and has very few comparisons.

One could utter similar sentiments when those games take place in the Gaelic Grounds on the Ennis Road or down the Marina in Páirc Uí Chaoimh while you could throw Killarney into the mix too on the rare occasions that hurling games are played there.

For a long time and for a lot of people the rivalry of Cork and Tipperary was the definitive one in the province and their clashes through the ages were the stuff of legend and if Cork were the visitors to the great home of hurling, you had anything up to 60,000 fans crammed in.

Thurles on a Munster hurling championship Sunday is a day like no other and in the old days, it was common practise to be leaving Leeside at 8am for a journey that could take a couple of hours with the traffic backed up to Fermoy.

As a youngster in the far distant past, I can remember being in the ground at noon for a 3.30pm start and devouring six or seven very watery ice cream tubs and a few very soft bars of chocolate.

The square in the town was a heaving mass of people in the hours leading up to the game and for the bartenders, in the various hostelries it was full-on from early morning with the pulling of creamy pints.

The Cork-Tipp rivalry is as intense as ever but their dominance of the Munster championship is far from being what it used to be.

Now the five participating counties, it used to be six when Galway competed in the province between 1959 and 1969 and were often on the wrong end of severe losses, play on a much more level playing field with all five believing that they can end up with the Mick Mackey trophy.

In fact, the Munster championship is more often than not now described as a minefield and selecting a winner is a hugely difficult task.

For the two counties who pull the short straw in the draw and have a quarter-final to contend with, it becomes all the more difficult to lift the title.

Those two counties have three games to play before outright victory can be theirs while it’s just the two games for those who avoid that scenario.

Clare and Waterford pulled the short straw this time and whoever emerges from that encounter next Sunday must face Tipperary in a semi-final and Cork or Limerick in the final.

If either of them take the crown they will certainly have earned it.

There are two ways of looking at a quarter-final game, number one it gives you a potentially fiercely competitive game before your semi-final opponents get to play and that can give a team a crucial edge.

On the other side of things, your semi-final opponents, in this case, it’s Tipperary, will get to have a good look at you and assess your strengths and weaknesses.

One or the other, it’s the Banner County and the men from the Déise who set the ball rolling in Semple’s field of dreams. Of course, similar to last season it will be so much different again with the sides playing in a near-empty stadium.

OUTSIDE SHOT

The big buzz will be absent in the town square but the game is loaded with potential between two sides who see themselves as viable title contenders.

Some might argue on that point, believing that Limerick, Tipperary and Cork are ahead of them in the pecking order but surely there is not a whole pile separating any of the five now.

In the past, many believed that winning Munster can be detrimental to your All-Ireland hopes as there was a four- or five-week gap between the Munster final and an All-Ireland semi-final and the momentum built up in the province can be removed in that time.

However, given the choice, one is sure that taking the direct route to an All-Ireland semi-final is the better option rather than having to take the potentially hazardous back-door route.

For Munster hurling followers, the action over the coming weekends is going to be helter-skelter with Cork and Limerick colliding on the following Saturday night after Clare and Waterford and Tipperary waiting on the Sunday for the winners of the latter.

The game of hurling has changed much, of course, from those days in the swinging ‘60s further on.

It continues to evolve and is, in fact, unrecognisable from those times with its pace and intensity.

That’s not saying it wasn’t intense back then and it was but look at games from those bygone eras and it all becomes much clearer.

However, one thing that has not changed and that’s the potential, excitement and drama of a Munster championship hurling day.

And you know what, this season’s campaign has that potential to be one of the best of the lot and though the huge crowds won’t be present on the days, the anticipation levels will be as high as they have ever been. And Clare and Waterford can set the tongues wagging when they set foot on the pristine condition that the Thurles pitch will be in next Sunday.