BOYLAN TALKS SPORT: You’re only as good as your last outing

There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa has entered a talent contest and, aiming to be helpful, Homer offers to be his daughter’s manager. But when he predictably ends up making a hash of his job and she fires him, he gets his own back by going to work with her main rival, Cameron.

Except, what he actually did was re-write the song his new act was to perform, turning it into a self-gloating anthem, turning the judges against him, thus handing Lisa victory on a plate. The second part of that is irrelevant to what you will read hereafter. The nugget worth noting being the speed with which the coach got defenestrated when the performance went off the rails.

Swap the word ‘manager’ for ‘fly half’ and you might have some idea how Jack Crowley felt after the weekend. Throughout the month of November and into the early part of this month, the Munster and Ireland fly half had to be fairly content with his lot having grasped the opportunities passed his way during the recent series of international matches.

Looking particularly lively when combining with his half back partner at ‘club’ level, Craig Casey. The two had been pivotal to operations as Munster got their latest Champions Cup odyssey off to a flying start in front of the Thomond Park faithful.

However, a week can be a very long time when others are depending on your performance. Just ask currently suspended Social Democrats TD Eoin Hayes. Or Crowley.

After all the illuminating brilliance of the past, the Munster No 10 was brought back to earth with a shuddering bang on Friday evening.

The floodlit fixture in France was the 19th meeting of Munster and Castres Olympique in European competition. It’s a fixture, if my memory serves me correctly, the southern province have had the upper hand in over the years.

So perhaps it was to be expected that, eventually, those who were the home side on the most recent occasion would one day get their turn. Mind you, what will grate with Munster - and Crowley in particular - is that the hosts should never have got away with the win.

As they had done on so many occasions over the years, it appeared the two time winners had engineered an opportunity to extricate themselves from the mire when forcing a penalty on the halfway line.

Now, unhelpfully but probably inevitably, the place kicking experts in the stands, the Press Box and online were torn between Crowley should have 'had a crack at it off the ground', 'tapped and gone with it' or, the option he did go for, aim for touch.

Of course, as we now know, the ball slipped off the side of the Corkman’s boot, didn’t make the sideline and thus his team’s chances of victory went down the Seine.

I felt sorry for Crowley in the aftermath. Look at it this way, if he kicked for goal and missed, he’d have been wrong, if he’d tapped and gone but the move broke down, he’d have been wrong. To my mind, he made the right call, backed himself but his endeavour didn’t come off. Put it down to experience and move on. He’s not the first, nor will he be the last to try something that didn’t work.

But here’s the thing, even at the most basic level of sport, you’re only as good as your last outing. Grab your chance when you get it or it may not come around again. In Crowley’s case, he will no doubt feel his misfortune magnified by the fact that Sam Prendergast put in another eye-catching shift as Leinster recorded their second win from as many outings.

However, rugby - the Union incarnation at least - is a winter game. Thus, players are used to honing their skills to be seen to best effect in difficult conditions. GAA players, on the other hand, and particularly younger ones, are not.

Which is why, you wonder, amidst all the trifling with playing rules, competition structures and split seasons etc, was there any consideration given to the timing of u-19/21 competitions at club level.

There is the chance, of course, that such competitions being ran off at the rear of the year may just be a Meath thing. And if such is the case, I would implore those in a position to do so to at least consider rescheduling the championships to a time of year which allows the best young talent in the county be seen in the best light possible. Literally.

Particularly so in the case of underage hurling. Neither weather nor ground conditions would be considered to be conducive to hurling or hurlers being seen at their best.

There were a couple of recent examples, one of which there was admittedly a vested interest in, which got me thinking about the whole subject area.

Firstly, an u-19 final between Seneschalstown and St Patrick’s. Between them, the two sides fielded some of the best young talent in the county. But a climate curtailed full time score of 0-8 to 1-4 - custodian Jamie Norris being the hero for the Yellow Furze team, driving over a long range winner.

Whatever about football, as stated earlier, it appears wholly unjust to expect young, talented hurlers to deliver peak performances less than two weeks before Christmas.

Yet to the immense credit of Kilmessan and Trim’s u-21s, they produced a fine encounter in which Declan Murray’s reds - including my nephew Ian Byrne at corner forward - appeared to be well on their way to dethroning the white and blue when leading by 0-9 to 0-6 at the turnaround.

That said, inspired by Mark Horan and Lorcan Byrne, both no doubt driven by the hurt of last weekend’s Leinster Club JFC defeat with Dunsany, Byrne, in particular, set about hauling the holders back from the precipice and taking another step towards getting the Donnelly/Loughran Park residents moving back up the ladder in Meath hurling.

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Keeping with the theme of only being as good as your last outing, just as this piece was nearing completion, Duleek’s Keane Barry produced the greatest display of his career to date when ousting the obstinate Belgian Kim Huybrechts in the first round of the World Darts Championship in the Alexandra Palace in London.

The local lad dropping the first set, before producing a barn storming turnaround, outscoring and out finishing his tempestuous opponent to progress to a meeting with that other serene sharpshooter Gerwyn Price.