Sport: Thrills, triumphs and tears – a look back at the year

With a sport as wondrous as hurling, it is often easy to get carried away.

However, it’s always worth being cognisant of the law of diminishing returns – basically, if we’re constantly hailing each major game as being epic, then tag loses its special effect.

In an ideal world, the final of a competition would be the best game but it’s often the case that the opposite happens; with so much at stake and players and management feeling pressure, we’re left with inhibited affairs.

Thankfully, in 2024, the All-Ireland senior hurling final was certainly able to live up to, and exceed, expectations. Limerick had redefined the game since they ended a 45-year drought in 2018 but their absence from the decider gave freshness to it. In addition, both Clare (11 years) and Cork (19 years) had gaps of their own to bridge.

Though Cork began brilliantly, moving 1-7 to 0-3 ahead after a blistering start, Clare came back well and even led before half-time. From there, it was a case of matching each other, blow for blow.

As well as wanting the biggest games to be the best ones, we want the best players to be the ones having the biggest impact – well, in scoring one of the best goals ever seen at Croke Park (albeit with a question-mark over how many steps he took), Clare captain Tony Kelly ticked that box.

By the end of it all – 70 minutes that finished level and then 20 more of extra time – Clare were ahead, by 3-29 to 1-34, and few would have argued if a replay had been required.

Cork’s win over Limerick in the Munster SHC, when only a victory would suffice to keep them in the championship, also came under the ‘epic’ heading but, even if there were not many others of that quality, the game is in rude health overall.

Bar maybe extending the scope of the black card – sadly, cynicism is more prevalent than the romantics would have you believe – there are few changes that are necessary.

That is a contrast to football, which experienced the end of an era, with Armagh winning the last All-Ireland played under the ‘old’ rules. There’s nobody doubting the legitimacy of their triumph – everybody else was playing by those rules too – but far too many of the games were laborious, overly defensive affairs.

Knockout

One positive was that it meant most of the knockout fixtures were close and so stayed into the balance until the end, while Dublin’s quarter-final exit to Galway and Kerry losing to Armagh in the semi-finals, did give things a fresher look.

We’re unlikely to ever get to the stage where Kerry winning an All-Ireland would be regarded as a novelty but that’s what we had in ladies’ football, the Kingdom lifting the Brendan Martin Cup for the first time since 1993. Sadly, Brendan Martin himself died late in the year.

Having lost the last two deciders to Meath, Kerry were no doubt feeling nervous before they met Galway in the All-Ireland final but thankfully for them it proved to be third time lucky. In camogie, Cork backed up their 2023 All-Ireland to go back-to-back – the county’s last eight titles have now come in four pairs but the Rebels look well set to make it three on the trot.

Six Nations

Such a ‘threepeat’ is something that is also a possibility for the Ireland men’s rugby team after the Guinness Six Nations Championship was retained. While it did not have the same levels – of quality or excitement – as the grand slam of a year previously, there was still huge satisfaction in managing to back up such a successful year rather than there being a fall-off.

The loss to New Zealand in November did suggest that there is an element of transition at play – but, then again, it would be more of an issue if that was not the case at the beginning of another World Cup cycle.

While the women’s team were not challenging for silverware – it’s coming up on a decade since the last Six Nations win – a third-placed finish, with wins over Wales and Scotland, marked a big improvement over 2023.

Unfortunately for their soccer counterparts, the excellent achievement in qualifying for the 2023 World Cup could not be matched by earning a place in Euro 2025.

The play-off defeat at home to Wales at the beginning of December was disappointing in that it denied this group another opportunity to play on a major stage – and for some it may have represented a last chance to do so – but also in terms of the bigger picture.

Making a second straight finals tournament would frank Ireland’s status as one of the top teams in the world.

With or without that, plenty of hard work, infrastructure and resources are required to foster the next generation but the benefits of being front and centre in the public consciousness cannot be over-estimated.

The men’s team may wish that there was less attention on them, given how mediocre performances and results seem to have become the norm.

Nations League

While UEFA Nations League games against England and Greece always represented a tall order, there was at least the consolation of beating Finland twice to avoid automatic relegation.

We certainly may not like it, but that’s the space Irish football occupies right now.

Domestically, there was the excitement of a title race with many contenders, eventually ending with Damien Duff’s Shelbourne rallying after it looked like they had thrown success away.

Few would have predicted them as champions at the start of the season, but their upward graph, and Dundalk’s decline, show how the boom-and-bust cycles remain as prevalent as ever.

Shortly before the Olympic Games in Paris, an article appeared in a national newspaper suggesting that a record medals-haul for Ireland was not just possible or likely but probable.

It would have been easy to dismiss it – at times of major sporting events, it’s possible to get caught up in the communal hype and allow the enthusiasm of green-tinted glasses to over-ride the logical part of the brain.

However, the author of the piece was Cathal Dennehy, who has established a reputation as the foremost athletics journalist in the country, across a variety of media.

When he said that there were potential medals for Ireland, it was a view worth consuming. It proved to be a valid one as seven pieces of metal came home from France.

Prior to 2024, Ireland had never had more than two gold medals in different disciplines at a single Olympiad; this time, we had four – Daniel Wiffen in swimming, Rhys McClenaghan in gymnastics, Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy in rowing and Kellie Harrington in boxing.

The latter two victories backed up golds in Tokyo in 2021. It was surely more enjoyable to win in front of cheering Irish supporters but, equally, such feats displayed immense levels of consistent excellence. To get to the very pinnacle of your chosen sport once is quite an achievement but to do so again, four years later, takes no little skill and quality but – knowing that you’re the one everyone else is trying to beat – huge reservoirs of resolve, too.

Had you been asked beforehand to predict which sports Ireland might win medals, boxing and rowing (Daire Lynch and Philip Doyle won bronze) would surely have been among the top answers.

The hope now is that swimming, in which Ireland medalled for the first time since 1996, can make similar progress.

Wiffen claimed gold in the men’s 800m freestyle and bronze in the 1500m equivalent while Mona McSharry took bronze in the women’s 1500m breaststroke. It should be noted that both developed hugely as swimmers away from Ireland but their achievements can only give Swim Ireland a boost and they can inspire those behind them.

Of course, it’s the human condition to fixate on what was missed rather than won and the fourth place for the women’s 4x400m relay team, and that of Rhasidat Adeleke in the individual 400m, were bittersweet.

The manner in which they carried themselves showed that success is not only measured by medals.