Modern hurler is fitter, faster, stronger, more skilful

I’VE been hearing and reading a lot of it in the last week especially and I’ve had enough.

You know the drill. “The championship isn’t the same since it went back-door, since they took away the knockout element.

The games aren’t as exciting in Munster, the teams aren’t as good as they used to be, the players aren’t as skilled in the modern game, the hunger is gone, and the physicality is gone,” rattle the doom and gloom merchants.

Well, damn right it isn’t the same. It’s a hell of a lot better.

“Cork won an All-Ireland last year with a very average team,” I’m told, by a guy who’s been following hurling for decades.

Listen, the Cork team that won last year’s All-Ireland would have blown the four-in-a-row side of the 40’s, Christy Ring and all, out the gate of Croke Park and all the way back to the old Athletic Grounds, without even breaking sweat.

We’re in the midst of a feast, and we can’t even smell the coffee. The hurlers of today, individually, are fitter, faster, stronger, more skilful than ever.

You don’t agree? Let’s take those elements individually.

Fitter: the modern inter-county hurler trains to a scientifically-prepared programme purpose-built for hurlers, but based on decades of proven research. He trains year-round, several days a week, sometimes twice a day. Included in that programme is

diet, rest, recovery, other lifestyle constituents, all of which add up to ensure the modern hurler is in top shape.

Faster: in athletics generally, every record in the book is a modern record, and constantly improved on. Hurlers are not an exception to this rule; like their counterparts in all other sports, they too are getting faster, generally.

Stronger: there was a time when most hurlers were engaged in physical work of one sort or another, which made them naturally strong (or in the case of a modern manifestation of those old giants, Diarmuid O’Sullivan, unnaturally strong!).

But a well-conceived weights programme will beat nature any day of the week.

More skilful: Here, we’ll get that old line about how ‘in my day’, balls were whipped from one end of the park to the other ‘without ever touching the ground’, as if somehow, that was the be-all, the end-all, of hurling skills.

It isn’t, and the modern player is doing things with the ball his forefathers couldn’t even dream about.

The top modern inter-county player could double on the ball with his eyes shut, which, when you think about it, he might as well do, for all the positive effect it has in too many instances. There are times when he should, but there are also times when he should not, and he doesn’t, because he prefers to take ball in hand and place it to a position of real advantage.

Skills: Last Sunday, after the Limerick/Tipperary game in Thurles, we remained in our positions in the press-box, high over the stand, doing our work (and by the way, an apology here to Stephen Lucey, whom I wronged in my report on Monday. Stephen SHOULD have been the man designated to mark Redser O’Grady on Sunday, when the big Tipp-man was moved to full-forward, caught that high ball, scored the goal that revived the Tipp challenge, but he wasn’t).

Below us, the Tipperary senior football team were going through their paces. At the other end, three youngsters, no more than eight or nine years of age. One of them had a hurley and a ball; after his two buddies had left, he started to hit that ball in the air. Straight up in the air, directly over his head; waited underneath, met it on the volley, straight back up again. And again, and again, and again, a keepy-uppy exhibition. At half-time in the senior match, the youngsters took the field for the Primary game, between the same two counties. Again, the skill levels were top-class.

Sure, in the old days you had the odd individual who tried to follow a home-made physical exercise routine that would be a rude precursor to the modern regime, but he would have been as just that, odd.

On the whole, the modern hurler is better than ever, and improving all the time.

The Cork team that won last year’s All-Ireland was exceptional, front to back, and on the sideline. It needed to be, to overcome a Kilkenny team that is absolutely one for the ages, that features not one, but at least two players for the ages, in DJ and Henry.

In Munster, we have a Waterford side capable of playing hurling that doesn’t verge on the sublime, but envelopes it, we have a torch being passed in Tipperary from Tommy Dunne to Eoin Kelly, genius to genius.

These are great times for hurling.