Púc Fadó: Probably the most controversial ‘replay’ in the history of hurling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bURDpNjYCVc

The ending to Sunday’s All-Ireland Final was just a little bit controversial, but it had nothing on possibly the most infamous ‘drawn’ game in hurling back in 1998.

The debate about whether a free should or shouldn’t have been awarded in the dying stages on Sunday has raged since the final whistle, but both sides should be thankful that Barry Kelly at least played the entire 70 minutes and the allotted amount of injury time.

Praising the ref for a simple task like keeping the time seems a bit rich, but it’s something that referee Jimmy Cooney didn’t manage to do during the infamous All-Ireland Hurling semi-final between Offaly and Clare in 1998, which actually wasn’t a draw at all. Well the first game between the sides was a draw, but the replay wasn’t a draw and still required another replay or ‘refixture’ to settle it.

We’re aware that the last sentence makes no sense whatsoever, but allow us to explain ourselves.

With Clare three points up towards the end of the replayed game, referee Cooney, bafflingly, blew the final whistle with only 33 minutes gone in the second half.

He would later put it down to simple human error, but needless to say, Offaly fans were a mite upset and staged a sit-down protest in Croke Park afterwards, forcing an intermediate hurling match that had been scheduled to take place to be cancelled.

The powers that be – with a lot of co-operation from Clare it must be said – deemed that a replay was the fairest way to settle things and it was decided that the sides would do battle for a third time at Semple Stadium the week after the replay.

In the end, Offaly won it out and went on to win their second All-Ireland in five years, denying Clare the chance to win their third title in four years while they were at it. In the process, the Faithful County became the first county to technically lose an All-Ireland semi-final and still go onto win the final, something we’re sure will never happen again, even in an association as prone to drama and controversy as our own beloved GAA.

We’ve done our best to sum up the events of what really was a mad episode in hurling’s history, but the video above, featuring snippets of a programme on the subject from the excellent Laochra Gael series on TG4, pieces it all together rather nicely.