Ciarán Murphy: Breath of fresh air as Thomastown lead charge of underdogs

Of the eight provincial champions from last year’s club championships, only three have emerged from their own county this time around … and unless you’re from one of those five disappointed clubs, that’s a breath of fresh air.
The weekend just gone saw the reigning All-Ireland club champions in hurling and football – St Thomas’ of Galway and Watty Grahams Glen of Derry – both beaten inside their county boundaries.
Glen were going for a fourth title in a row in Derry, St Thomas were looking for a seventh in a row in Galway, and it’s no exaggeration to say that, although their winning records in their own county were modest until their current period of dominance, there’s a sigh of relief generally that they’ve been beaten.
Great clubs in counties raise the standard of the competition, without doubt, but you’re not going to get a lot of thanks for it. It’s the exact same as it is at intercounty level – whether you’re Kilkenny, Dublin, Kerry or Limerick, no one likes to see repeat winners.
In many ways dominance is inevitable at intercounty level. The standard of training, and the equalisation of strength and conditioning, means there aren’t really any marginal gains for players with smaller playing pools or gaps in personnel to make up.
All things being equal, the best teams last year will be back the following year. There’s no such thing as taking your eye off the ball any more, certainly not after just a year or two of success.
Players are better able physically and mentally to prepare themselves for long stretches of winning. They spend time finding the ‘why’, and then tending to that need.
That level of preparation is now filtering down to club level. In the club hurling championship in particular, things had started to look very same-y. The last five iterations of the competition had seen Thomas’ qualify for the semi-final on all five occasions, with Ballyhale and Ballygunner both getting there four times.
As a spectator, this allowed rivalries to develop and personal enmities to develop – all good stuff as far as a fan goes, in the usual run of things.
But it’s not really why we watch the club game. We watch it for the new teams, for the teams on a roll after a long wait inside their own county, a team pushing on into Christmas with no idea what they’re doing, beyond having a bloody great time and making it up as they go along.
It’s obviously not dominant clubs’ fault, but a constantly rotating new cast of characters is what makes the provincial and All-Ireland club championships tick. This is not easy to manufacture though, as was evidenced by Darragh O’Donovan and Doon this Sunday.
After taking down Na Piarsaigh in the Limerick final for their first Limerick senior title in 130 years, he struck the perfect note looking ahead to the Munster championship. Ballygunner won’t have to worry about us next weekend, he told Tommy Rooney of Off The Ball, he wasn’t going to be sober until Friday. And proper order, quite frankly. When you’ve waited 130 years for your first county title, Munster can wait a while longer.
Ballygunner meanwhile have been plotting for their provincial quarter-final for the last nine weeks, fine-tuning the build-up to their quest for a fourth Munster title in a row in their well-established way.
The Waterford county title is just a means to an end for them – for Doon, a county title is the culmination of everything they’ve been building towards as a club for the last century. Their motivations going into this Sunday’s game couldn’t be more different. And yet, still . . . after this weekend, it’s probably best not to rule any result in or out.
If Doon ended the longest famine of the weekend, they had at least been knocking on the door for the last few years.
Thomastown just blew the bloody door off the Kilkenny championship this year, in their first year up after winning the intermediate championship in 2023, for their first senior title win in 78 years.
Beating famed Ballyhale Shamrocks and then absolutely dismantling last year’s All-Ireland finalists O’Loughlin Gaels in the final brooks no argument.
Feakle ended a barren run stretching nearly four decades in the home of the All-Ireland champions, and Newbridge in Derry ended a long winless spell of their own. But there isn’t a better story than Thomastown in the GAA this year.
Given the wider spread of counties, it’s always less likely to have recurring teams in the football – but the sight of Corofin confidently swatting aside a team of Moycullen’s quality in the Galway final on Sunday will have looked very familiar to football watchers over the last 10 years.
Teams like Crossmaglen and Kilmacud Crokes aren’t going to feature this year, and neither will Glen or Nemo Rangers.
But there are still plenty of familiar names around. Cork’s Castlehaven are the only provincial champions in football still alive a year later. But Scotstown, who are repeat champions in Monaghan without winning an Ulster title in 35 years, or Kilcoo, who were All-Ireland champions in 2022, will be eyeing a route back to the top.
Having been there before increases the likelihood of getting further next time around. And when the rubber meets the road, teams like Ballina, Corofin, Ballygunner and Kilcoo will have past experience to fall back on. In worsening weather and tough playing conditions, that nous counts for a lot.