Review: The Clash of the Ash

The Clash of the Ash, by Raymond Smith.  Aherlow Publishers. A Popular History of the National Game 1884-1981.

Do we have consumer protection egislation in this State? If not, why not? If we do, how did The Clash of the Ash get into the bookshops?

About ten months ago Smith lost his title of Worst Journalist in the World. He must have set himself an unncommonly steely regime to win it back for since then he has ruthlessly shed his little stocks of cogency, syntax accuracy, grey matter and plain coppon. He has clawed his way back to the bottom.

For £4.90 Smith provides 223 pages of "text", that is to say, askein of unremitting hackery, sodden with suppurating bilge, and noisome with the smugness of an utter ass convinced of immunity from exposure.

The outer garment - coffin, if you will - of the thing is a 'new section' on Offaly's and Galway's triumphs. The thing has abundant nadirs of taste, style and fatuity to choose from, but the grudging treatment of Offaly's victory epitomises author and opus so well that it should be allowed to sink as their monument. The cadaver died of a surfeit served from Smith's preevious "full-length histories of hurling", each of which was an ill-conceived reehash ofa rehashed predecessor, having as much historicity as a cigarette ad. It is a confection of snivelling excuses for Tipperary's failures.

For the rest, there are nearly 200 photographs - 95 per cent of them familiar to the point of contempttibility .

Skimming through for the first time, this reviewer found inane blunnders and clumsy fabrications leaping in such gay profusion from the pages of this work of "History" that he went back and made a list. (Given hereeafter). Take this example. On page 123 Smith tells us that "Galway had their first - and so far lone - AlllIreland in in 1923." Now, on Septemmber 7th, 1980, Galway shed a deal of sweat over a second All-Ireland victory, the principal significance of which to judge from this "history" - was to provide a pretext for twenty-odd pages of Smith's simpering and preenning himself, and gibbering about art, culture and heritage. To read this chapter is akin to experiencing an attempt at strangulation by a more than usually repulsive and fouling yeti. To read it more than once would be to indulge in anew, esoteric, and unquestionably shameful perverrsion.

On pages 65/66 we find a team of Portugese villagers setting out from their homes to bring back the All-Ireland hurling crown, only to be "decimated by emigration" along the way. All very tragic, no doubt, but they'll have to learn to get to the pitch if they're ever to win anything.

On page 129 and again on page 151 Smith says that Tommy Doyle kept Christy R4J.g scoreless for 150 minuutes. In 1955 Smith ghosted a book which hinged upon this canard. For twenty-six years he repeated it - and coined. In May '81, while treating of an acolyte of Smith, one Dorgan, Magill nailed the lie. But Smith and Dorgan refuse to withdraw their disscredited vapourings, and the long-. suffering public still awaits its money back. The flower of all evil bestrews a potent curse.

On page 91 Smith recalls seeing "the versatile Jimmy Carroll in outtstanding form" for Limerick against Tipperary at Limerick on June 21st '81. Jimmy Carroll was suffering from a serious shoulder injury at the time and took no part whatever in that game.

There are two Chapters 8. There is a list of seven errata, three of which have no relevance to the passages they purport to amend. On page 62 Smith goes on about the "essential essence" of something or other. On page 97 he tells us that he's got mercury in his veins. It is that sort of book.

Few adult hurling followers will have been taken in. But those whose interest awakened over the past three vintage years, and the children, will not, perhaps, have been so lucky. These and the game itself deserve better publishers and sponsors.

Tom Brown, Brendan 0 hEithir and Micheal 0 Muircheartaigh are superb commentators, each having a passion and flair for hurling and language. If sponsors are serious about promoting hurling they will commission work from these people, thereby: providing to the follower something which he/she will read and preserve, and may give to nonfollowers or foreigners without a cold shiver; and - not unimportanttly - upstaging Smith, who threatens to strike again in '84. 0 Lord! deliverrus!

The following fabrications and blunders, together with those outtlined above, comprise the list garnered from two Clj,lick readings. There are, undoubtedly; many other instances of slovenliness and vapidity.

1. p36. Discussing Jim Power and the '77 Munster Final, Smith says "The offence of 'striking' was commmitted" etc., etc. It was not. The offfence of..butting was committed, and the rules deliberately distinguish beetween the two.

2. p39. Jimmy Barry-Murphy is credited with scoring three points in the '76 All-Ireland Final. IBM got four points that day.

3. p40. Cork's great half-back is callled Dermot McCurtain. Not "Denis".

4. p40. Discussing Cork '76-'78 Smith says "Gerald McCarthy was equally good at wing back etc." McCarthy never played at wing back in '76-'78. His last championship game in the position was in September '69. 5. p49. Smith says Waterford "crushhed Tipperary to a nine goals defeat in 1959". Waterford beat Tipp by five goals and two points in '59.

6. p67-p7l. On p67 Johnny Flaherty is 35 years old. By p7l he is 33. Read on, Johnny! -

7. p86. "This Limerick side of '81 gave a pride to the Green and Gold jerrsey". Sure somebody had to help poor Kerry!

8. p89. "Limerick failed to capitalise on penalty situations ... and we saw Leonard Enright coming down to take over from Eamonn Cregan". Limerick were given only one 'penalty situation',

and consequently, the striker, Leonard Enright, did not 'take over' from anyybody, on the day.

9. p92/93. Smith can now exclusiveely reveal that only thirteen days (4417) separated the first and third Sunndays of May 1980.

10. p93. Smith says that four of the Limerick '73 team were still playing in '81, Eamonn Cregan, Liam O'Donogghue, Sean Foley and Frankie Nolan. Joe McKenna played a bit for Limeerick in '81 - and Smith lists his conntribution to the '73 Final on.p98.

11. p.93. Nobody called "Richie Dennis' ever played for Limerick. Bennbis, perhaps.

12. p 107/9. Smith has Cork and Tippperary playing and replaying the Munnster Final of 1972. Cork and Clare contested the '72 Munster Final.

13. pl13. Smith saw Eddie O'Brien playing right half-back for Cork in the '72 All-Ireland Final and thought he should have been moved to attack. Eddie O'Brien's last big game was the All-Ireland Final of 1970. The man who played in '72 was Ted "Starry" O'Brien, a natural defender, and about as different from Eddie O'Brien in looks, appraoch and style (including having the opposite grip) as it is posssible for two hurlers to be. Yet, the "afficionado" thought these two were the same person.

14. p 120. Smith says "Tony Reddan's brilliance prevented John O'Grady gettting a chance on the Tipperary team until 1958". John O'Grady was not Reddan's understudy - Blackie Keane was, and he (Keane) kept goal for Tipp from after the '56 League Final until half time of the '57 Munster semi-final, when he was replaced by Moloughney. 15. p122. Smith says "Christy Ring played his first senior game for Cork in a League tie against Kilkenny on October 22, 1939, in Cork." Christy Ring made his senior debut for Cork in a League game against Waterford at Cork on March 5th 1939.

16. p150. Smith has Christy Ring savving a 2 l-yard free in the second half of the 1953 Munster Final. It happened in the first half.

17. p 152. Smith says Mick Seymour got Tipp's goal in the 1954 Munster Final. Billy Quinn got it.

18. p180. Smith says of Clare's late equaliser in their 1955 first round match against Cork "Jimmy Smith let fly first time and the ball skied 'off his stick over the bar". J. Greene got the score.

19. Same page, same game - Clare's winner. Smith gives us "Jimmy Smith, now playing like a man inspired, got the ball again from the puck-out and brushing aside the despairing tackles of the Cork defenders swept in to shoot the winning point". Jimmy Smith got the winning point from a fairly easy free.

20. p2l8. Smith tells of "hard-hitting duels in the sun" during the Munster Final of 1966. It rained throughout the game.

21. On page 62 Smith states as a fact that M. Keating and D. Nealon of Tippperary switched sliotars during the Munster Final of 1971, thereby hooddwinking referee Frank Murphy. On page 103 Smith implies that he beelieves Frank Murphy's assertion that they did no such thing. He should make his mind up, but, not, please, write about it.

* Pat Fitzelle played a sterling second half for Tipperary that day, at rightthalf-back, directly-in front of the Press seats. Fitzelle is, and looks, the most distinguished of Tipperary's current team. Sean Kilfeather of The Irish Times reported that Fitzelle had been taken off at hali time.

In the same report, Kilfeather annnounced that the distance from Limeerick city centre to the Gaelic Grounds is five miles. It is 1 1/4 miles. He would appear to be as knowledgeable about walking as he is about hurling. He proobably sits beside Smith. •