On Sunday, Cork meet Tipperary in the Munster Senior Hurling Championship as the Gaelic games season gets into full swing.
It is just three weeks since the sides met in the final of the Allianz Hurling League, with Cork winning in front of their home fans at SuperValu Páirc Uà Chaoimh, which also hosts the championship clash.
Two meetings in quick succession at the same venue is rare but not completely unique . Exactly 23 years ago, the same thing happened, albeit with two league fixtures – and, germane to this site is the fact that, despite there being just a fortnight between the two clashes, both counties changed kit in the interim.
Nowadays, kit launches tend to take place in late autumn so as to capitalise on the Christmas market, with the new jerseys worn from the commencement of the following year’s league campaign in late January, meaning they were well established come the serious business of the championship in the summer.
In those less commercially-savvy times though, things were a bit haphazard. For instance, in 2000 Cork had begun the defence of their All-Ireland title against Kerry wearing the same kit as in 1999 but a new jersey was revealed for their next match, the Munster semi-final against Limerick.
That was the outfit still in use towards the end of the 2002 hurling league, save for the addition of a scroll under crest the previous year.
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Meanwhile, when Tipp came to the Páirc for the last round of regular fixtures on April 7, their jerseys were almost the same as when they had won the 2001 All-Ireland: when a seven-year sponsorship deal with Finches Soft Drinks came to an end, unsponsored jerseys were briefly used early in 2002 before Enfer Scientific came on board.
With four wins from four, Cork’s place in the knockout stage was already secured and they finished top of the six-team Division 1B despite a 1-17 to 1-14 loss – Tipp’s win gave them a third-placed finish and a quarter-final with Galway, who had come second in Division 1A.
That game, a week later, saw Tipp launch a new jersey – featuring a blue collar for the first time in about six decades – and a 4-13 to 1-17 win put them into the semi-finals. With Limerick beating Clare, it meant three of the four semi-finalists were from Division 1B along with 1A table-toppers Kilkenny, necessitating a draw for the last four.
Cork and Tipp came out alongside each other and, as they had a home-and-away arrangement for knockout ties, it meant a return to Páirc Uà Chaoimh on April 21. With the game live on television, it was the ideal opportunity for Cork to showcase new jerseys – while the design itself was an evolution of what had gone before, the most notable change was the sponsor, with Esat Digifone having been taken over by O2.
The new look helped Cork to a 0-21 to 1-10 victory and a place in the final against Kilkenny, a game that would go down in lore as planting the first seeds for a controversy that would end in a players’ strike before the year was out.
That’s a whole other story, however.
