On this day in 1917, Tipperary won the 1916 All Ireland hurling final (no that’s not a typo).
Tipperary (represented by Boherlahan) beat Kilkenny (Tullaroan) at Croke Park on a scoreline of 5-4 to 3-2. It was Tipperary’s ninth All-Ireland title.
The game was due to be played in early December 1916 but had to be postponed. Eventually, it was decided to play the final on 21 January 1917.
According to Paul Rouse, Professor of History at UCD, the Tipperary team arrived in Dublin by train on the morning of the match. They walked down the quays until they got to Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street). All around them was the wreckage of the Rising that had taken place the previous Easter. Whole stretches of buildings along the street — and along the other streets leading off it — were missing.
The players moved down Sackville Street to the GPO. They gathered silently in front of its ruins and recited a decade of the Rosary in honour of the rebels who had fought there nine months previously. They then headed north towards Croke Park where they were due to meet Kilkenny, the dominant power in hurling at the time and expected to win again that day.
The Tipperary hurlers were almost all from the club of Boherlahan. At that juncture, counties were represented by the club who had won the local senior club championship. That club could then choose to augment its ranks by pulling in some of the best players they had played against.
Boherlahan won the Tipperary county final in front of 7,000 people at the end of August but it was never going to be enough for the men from Boherlahan to merely win a county championship. The All-Ireland was their ultimate aim.
The first game against Kerry was easily won. Limerick were dispatched in the semi-final and in the Munster final Tipperary hammered Cork by five goals to one goal and two points. And, with Galway annihilated in the semi-final, they were now in an All-Ireland final where they were to meet Kilkenny.
Kilkenny had built a hurling dynasty in the years between 1904 and 1913 when they won seven All-Ireland championships. Led by the legendary Sim Walton, the hurlers were predominantly from the Tullaroan club. In the build up to the game, the newspapers were filled with comment on what promised to be an epic final.
The Tipperary team was led out onto the field by their captain, Johnny Leahy. He was the best-known member of an extraordinary family whose entanglement in hurling and in politics was legion. The game itself ebbed and flowed but with just ten minutes remaining, Kilkenny led by five points.
Led by Johnny Leahy, a Tipperary resurgence turned the game around. One report noted how “the representatives of the old scientific school of hurling were hustled and bustled and dazzled out of its form by the rush and flash of what can only be described as the personification of Kickham’s ‘Magnificent Tipperary’.” They powered through the Kilkenny defence and rattled in goals. It was enough for them to claim victory by 5-4 to 4-2.
The newspapers after the game were filled with admiration for the power and determination and sheer drive of the Tipperary players. There was no doubting that their physical approach to the contest had won the day. The team arrived home the following day and were met by a huge crowd, and music. The players were carried shoulder-high to a reception. They had broken the Kilkenny stranglehold on the All-Ireland hurling championship.
Sources:
Paul Rouse, ‘Tipperary and Kilkenny’s great rivalry a century in the making’, Article appeared in the Irish Examiner on 4 September 2016. Accessed at https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/arid-20419254.html
https://www.offtheball.com/hurling/tipp-1916-all-ireland-264620
