Eimear Ryan: Scant TV highlights did camogie classics little justice

Part of me wonders – does it make sense to bundle the two sports together in a Sunday night highlights show?

Wed, 16 Jun, 2021 - 16:48

Like many GAA fans, I settled down at 9.30pm on Sunday evening in a state of suspense. It’s the same coin-toss at the end of every weekend, whether it’s Allianz League Sunday or The Sunday Game. What will be up first – the hurling or the football? Which of our national games has the national broadcaster decided will take precedence this week?

Actually, last weekend, nothing happened at 9.30pm. The Euros were on, so Allianz League Sunday was pushed back to 10.10pm. I made another cup of tea and flipped over to Dermot Bannon to kill 40 minutes. When I checked back, Seán Cavanagh and Pat Spillane had joined Joanne on the big semi-circular couch. Back to Dermot so.

To be fair, there are some Sunday evenings when I’ll happily watch the big ball as the curtain-raiser to my true passion, hurling – but after 10pm on a school night, I was low on patience. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Even in Cork, where hurling and football are both held in high esteem, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who loves them both equally. We all have a fave.

In fact, part of me wonders – does it make sense to bundle the two sports together in a Sunday night highlights show? Maybe there’s a case to be made for two separate Sunday Games – one for hurling and one for football. It’s not as if there isn’t enough content for two shows, or that there wouldn’t be a captive audience for both.

Of course, I say this as a hurling person, after a weekend where football got an hour of coverage and hurling got 20 minutes. Some weekends, the balance would be tipped in hurling’s favour, and you’d hardly hear me complain then. But in a weekend with six decisive league matches, 20 minutes isn’t nearly enough.

Perhaps most regrettable of all, last Sunday’s camogie league semi-finals got a scant two minutes of coverage in total. Both games – Kilkenny versus Tipperary, and Cork versus Galway – were thrilling affairs. Cork and Galway was a gritty down-to-the-wire battle that went to extra time; Tipp and Kilkenny an emotional rollercoaster. In fact, they may well have been the most exciting games of the weekend, but when they’re given so little time, the average TV watcher will never know. When the highlights programme only has seconds to feature you, most of your heroics disappear into the void.

Ursula Jacob was given the unenviable task of summing up the riveting Kilkenny-Tipperary clash in 10 seconds or less, which called for broad strokes: Tipp were gallant and pushed Kilkenny hard, but ultimately the All-Ireland champions showed their class and experience, which enabled them to clinch it in the end. There was no time to dig in to what actually happened, which is that Tipp dictated the game from the start, and that Kilkenny were fortunate to emerge with the win in injury time, having led the game only once in the early stages.

As a Tipp woman, I am admittedly exercised about this, but Tipp’s dominance throughout was no fluke. They hunted in packs, pinged balls into space, and backed themselves to take long-range points, with some outstanding scores from Roisín Howard and Cáit Devane in particular.

New additions to the management, Denis Kelly and Angelo Walsh, seem to have the team bursting with confidence. While Tipp will be kicking themselves for letting two goals slip by them in the crucial closing minutes, it’s not as if the heads dropped – they got their noses in front twice more with points from play from Ereena Fryday and Orla O’Dwyer. However, Denise Gaule converted three frees in a row to secure the win for Kilkenny.

A crucial moment arrived earlier in the match – Kilkenny’s first-half goal from a penalty. Tipp were leading 0-9 to 0-3 at that stage, and the goal kept Kilkenny in touch at the break. Denise Gaule raced in on goal with Aoife McGrath on her heels and took a shot. Mary Ryan showed patience and precision to block the shot, and emerged with the ball in her hand. The whistle went and Gaule slotted home the resulting penalty with a perfectly-judged bouncing shot. But watching back, it’s hard to see where the foul was, and it’s frustrating to see good defending penalised.

So often, the narratives that we use around sport serve to reinforce the status quo. When we say that a team ‘showed why they’re champions’, what we’re really saying is that they deserved to win because they have won before. When we praise a strong, successful team for their experience or character, we’re implying that their opponents – often an emergent team – did not display these qualities. It’s rarely that simple.

Credit to Kilkenny, they sound like they know they have many questions to answer, both after the Tipp game and their tight quarter-final grapple with Limerick. ‘We were struggling everywhere,’ said manager Brian Dowling, with commendable honesty, after the match. ‘I don’t know how we did it.’

As for Tipp, it might well suit them to go into championship as underdogs, as the plucky side who nearly caused an upset in the league. But on the evidence of their performance last Sunday, they look stronger than they have in years, and real contenders for the championship.

Were I calling the shots at RTÉ, there’d be an hour-long hurling programme of a Sunday night, with camogie matches getting equal time and analysis as their hurling counterparts. But until then, the two brilliant semi-finals can be viewed on the Camogie Association’s YouTube channel – well worth a watch. Roll on the Galway-Kilkenny showdown on Sunday night.