Irish Mirror Sport's Gaelic Games Correspondent Pat Nolan looks back on the best and worst of the 2022 sporting year.
What was your standout moment of 2022?
It came way back at the start of the year - TJ Reid’s winning goal for Ballyhale Shamrocks in the All-Ireland semi-final against St Thomas’s.
Granted, it was eclipsed in terms of drama and importance by Harry Ruddle’s winner for Ballygunner in the final, but to be sitting directly in line with Reid’s shot from the press area at the back of the Ryan Stand in Thurles and observe the sweetness of the strike from some 25 metres through a thicket of bodies and hurleys was breathtaking.
Game of the year?
The Kerry-Dublin All-Ireland football semi-final.
Not quite at the level of their classic 2013 semi-final, but it had many of the same trappings given that it was a tight game played in a feverish atmosphere, with the outcome only decided in a dramatic finish.
For Sean O’Shea to judge the elements so brilliantly and clear the crossbar by some distance with a 55-metre free into the wind was a phenomenal effort. It was crucial to Kerry’s season - and possibly seasons to come too.
Sporting hero of 2022?
Lionel Messi. While Argentina’s World Cup win gave rise to numerous “that settles it” declarations around Messi’s merits ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and greats of the past like Diego Maradona and Pele, surely the outcome of a penalty shootout, where he was one of many protagonists, at the end of a just month’s worth of games shouldn’t be the ultimate arbiter?
His enormous body of work prior to that carries far greater weight, but for the game’s greatest player to be so central to his country winning the biggest prize was still quite something.
The ‘I can’t believe he said that’ quote of 2022?
“The new funding model - and the surreptitious shift in association policy - will result in an annual reduction of €447,978 in coaching funding to Dublin. The consequences of this rationalisation will result in the dismantling of the integrated coaching scheme in Dublin, with resulting job losses and redundancies and the sale of assets.”
Dublin secretary John Costello, writing in his annual report. It’ll be interesting to see how many of these job cuts ultimately come to pass given that he signed off his report thanking a string of commercial partners that others can only dream of attracting.
Worst moment of the year?
Sitting the press room in Croke Park watching the All-Ireland minor hurling final, ahead of the Limerick-Galway senior semi-final, when Tipperary’s Paddy McCormack scored a late winning goal to deny Offaly.
The goal was brilliantly executed and Tipperary deserve credit for playing right to the end, but there was an acute sense of injustice from an Offaly point of view due to a controversial refereeing decision moments earlier. They’d be better served to reflect on their own failures in those closing 10 minutes, however.
Single biggest hope for 2023?
The Tailteann Cup was well received on its belated first staging in 2022 and counties embraced it more enthusiastically than they did the ill-fated Tommy Murphy Cup some years ago. But how long will it last?
Devising a mechanism whereby the winners of the competition enter the All-Ireland race at a later stage in the same year will give the competition more long-term sustainability. But don’t hold your breath.
And your greatest fear?
That Liverpool’s apparent decline pre-World Cup continues into the new year. The brilliant team that Jurgen Klopp built ought to have won more major honours than a single Premier League and Champions League title each, but to think that they would fall from a near quadruple last season back to anything like the sort of rabble that he inherited in 2015 is a dismal prospect for Kopites. Here’s hoping for a post-Christmas surge similar to last season.
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