Letters to the Editor: Hurling refs need to enforce the rules
Limerick's Aaron Gillane and Cillian Trayers of Galway during the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final at Croke Park on July 19. File picture: Bryan Keane/Inpho
My compliments to Joseph Mackey on his letter last Thursday ('Hurling final failed to deliver', , July 23) in which he highlighted the fact that there were 58 illegitimate throw-ball passes in the All-Ireland hurling final between Limerick and Galway, not one of which was penalised by the referee.
Having looked back over the game myself, this number is indisputable.
Regrettably, referees failing to penalise foul hand passes has become an all too common occurrence in hurling. Now the inter-county hurling championship is over, it is high time referees reflect on their lack of enforcement of the rule that prohibits ball throwing.
Hurlers who are not penalised for throwing the ball are in effect getting away with cheating, with both the integrity and reputation of the sport being seriously damaged as a consequence of referees failing to enforce its playing rules, in order to let the game “flow”.
In 2025, camogie players showed moral fortitude when threatening to refuse to play unless the rule was changed to allow them to wear shorts, which it subsequently was.
Hurling referees now need to display a similar level of moral rectitude and be assertive enough to threaten to put down their whistles unless the GAA authorities definitively eliminate this ball-throwing scourge without delay, by way of an appropriate rule change, such as prohibiting players from hand-passing the sliotar directly from the same hand that is holding it.
The introduction of such a rule would not be at the expense of hurling’s other hand-passing skills and would be in the best interests of the sport.
For the next nine months, inter- county GAA will not be mentioned on radio, TV, and in the newspapers because the all too short seasons in both hurling and football have now been completed for 2026. Many supporters like myself believe that the seasons are far too short at present, and we want them lengthened.
I suggest the following changes:
- Play the hurling and football inter-county championships on the first and second weekend of every month beginning in March;
- Play the club championships beginning in April on the weekends that the inter-county championships are not being played;
- The club championship games should be played with the inter-county players included, because county managers have had far too much power for far too long. They should not be stopping inter-county players from playing club games whenever they are required by a club;
- Both senior All-Ireland finals would return to September, and at that stage the club championships would be at an advanced stage in every county.
This would result in most of the hurling and football being played during the summer months, which is as it should be.
The claim that club competitions are damaging Kerry is not just wrong — it is a blatant attempt to shift the blame away from the real source of the problem. Club games are not breaking county players. Ninety-nine percent of club footballers have no involvement with the county squad, and their training loads are modest and amateur.
The real issue is the near-professional intensity of the county training programme. Players are being driven through relentless conditioning, high-speed sessions, and constant tactical drills. Bodies are being pushed to the limit week after week. When players breakdown, it is because the county setup is running them like full-time professionals in an amateur sport. Blaming a club match for that is simply not credible.
Kerry’s clubs produce every county player. They keep football alive in every parish. They provide the volunteers, the coaching, the facilities, and the community spirit that make Kerry football what it is. To point the finger at their competitions is not only inaccurate — it is deeply disrespectful to the people who carry the sport on their backs.
Let’s stop dressing this up: Clubs are not the problem. The county setup needs to take responsibility for its own training demands instead of shifting blame onto the very foundation of Kerry football.
On behalf of Keep Ireland Open, which campaigns for legislation to be enacted to protect and extend responsible access to the countryside for walkers and other recreational users, I wish to congratulate all the members and supporters of the Cobh Right of Way campaign led by Diarmuid Cahill on their success in the Circuit Court in Cork on July 22.
After a campaign lasting up to eight years, they have proved that a right of way exists on the path along the coast of Cork Harbour adjacent to Deep Water Quay in Cobh. They were able to do so because such a right of way was established in law in a series of acts of the British parliament from 1854 to 1884.
This is a magnificent and hard won achievement by a group of ordinary citizens aided by a legal team which included Eoin Brady, Solicitor of FP Logue LLP, Peter Leonard BL, and John Rogers SC, which gave its services on a pro bono basis. They were also helped by the excellent research of Vandra Costello.
What the Cobh Right of Way group has achieved is most unusual in the Irish context because we don’t have legislation which protects access to the countryside for recreational purposes as is the case in most other European countries.
Worse than that is that many habitually used paths and access points have been closed restricting access in many parts of the country.
This is bad for the general public and the tourist industry. What a bad impression the “No Admittance” signs which proliferate around the country make. Anyone who wishes to see the extent of this problem please examine the inter-active map on the Keep Ireland Open website.
This shows the paths and access points which have been removed that we’re aware of. There are many others of course and we’d appreciate being told about them.
The article by Cindi Bonny [Wednesday, July 29] is utterly shocking and very sad. This happened in 1993, which is horrifying and disturbing. That it carried on well into the 1990s is totally barbaric. This was a national horror story, where girls and women gave birth to their babies.
The same went on in the UK, where all convents were run by the Irish nuns. Mary the mother of Jesus wasn’t married when she became pregnant, but the Catholic Church will make excuses for that, like they do for all conflicts. What about the priests who fathered children? Of course that’s different, says the Church.
The Catholic Church has double standards and are total hypocrites, liers, the list goes on and on to describe their sadistic behaviour. No matter how many attempts that are made to get justice people who were raped and sexually assaulted by the priests, Christian Brothers, nuns, monks, and lay people who were part of the Church’s servers.
No one of them should be allowed to get away with the crimes they committed on innocent children and who ever else they assaulted.
The treatment of all the girls and women who were forced into those horrific hell holes, was nothing but barbaric, cruel, they were treated like if they were in a prisoner of war camp. How the Catholic Church ruled everyone lives by ridiculous man-made rules. The Church will never be prosecuted by any justice systems.
They are waiting until those nuns are all dead, so it makes it impossible to bring them to court and put them on trial, and that goes for the Christian Brothers, but it’s the Church that should be taken to court, as they are the ones who knew and carried out heinous crimes against humanity.
One good thing is there isn’t that many people going for religious life, how wonderful it will be not to have any more nuns, and in the future there won’t be enough priests to make it viable to supply the services it once did. We don’t allow them to brainwash us anymore, blinker us with lies, and manipulate us.
Only about 31% of Ireland regularly attend Mass. In time this will get smaller, so the Church won’t have control over anyone anymore, so has lost the majority of it powers and control, so in the end the Catholic Church will be a skeleton of what it once was. Out of the millions of Catholics, all over the world how many are practising?
I don’t want anything to do with the Catholic Church, because of what it has done to those mothers and mothers and the thousands of babies neglected, who died or were sold for financial gain. How do they claim to be doing the work of Jesus, they are doing the work of the devil. There are many more crimes of which they are guilty, but as usual it’s all covered up.
