Eimear Ryan: If rewards are so great, players are incentivised to go to ground

The hurling games this past weekend were massively entertaining, but also provided us with a litany of simulation

Lee Chin has eyes only for the sliotar against Kilkenny in last weekend’s Leinster SHC semi-final at Croke Park. Chin went to ground for a spell in the first half — though to be fair, he was fresh off a barnstorming run down the pitch and possibly just needed a rest. Picture: Inpho/Brian Reilly-Troy

My partner is a soccer man — or a football man, as he would say himself. He supports Cork City and Liverpool, and has also adopted various ‘boyhood clubs’ in different leagues around the world: Juventus, Benfica, Dortmund, the Portland Timbers.

Before we met, he never watched hurling and I never watched soccer, but we have now come to a grudging appreciation of one another’s sports. (I do, however, still doggedly call it ‘soccer’.) When we first knew each other, I may have made a scathing comment or two about the culture of diving in soccer. ‘It’s the face-clutching,’ I tutted. ‘And the rolling around. How are they not mortified? How do they look at themselves in the mirror?’