Hurling is in danger of losing its magic due to overuse of the hand

The future of the unique art of hurling is at risk. As supporters of our sport, we urgently need to ignite the debate.

In 1996, as a member of the Cork County Coaching & Development Committee, I presented a paper, ‘Cork Underage Structures’, with a brief history of the previous 50 years, to a seminar on the future of Cork hurling in UCC. While researching the evolution of games over 2,000 to 4,000 years I came to the conclusion that we started with two field games known as ‘footies’ and ‘stickaball’.

Once again, hurling lovers are concerned about the state of hurling. We come to the inescapable conclusion that in the context of GAA games we also have two games, whereby the hand is the dominant instrument of play rather than the hurley in the case of hurling: