Anthony Daly: Hurling supporters don't really know what they are watching

FRUSTRATION: Waterford's Shane McNulty in action against Antrim’s James McNaughton. Pic: ©INPHO/Ken Sutton

When I began scrolling through Twitter on Sunday afternoon, one of the dominant themes and trends centred on Graham Potter and his Chelsea side. Another Premier League defeat and it’s not just the crew from the infamous Chelsea Headhunters who want Potter’s head on a stick – every second Chelsea fan on social media was calling for it too.

I was delighted that Chelsea lost because it was my beloved Spurs which took them down. But you couldn’t but feel sorry for Potter either, especially when he detailed during the week just how much of a toll the club’s current struggles are having on him and his family. You can only imagine how much the pressure has been ramped up now after a loss to one of their London rivals.

Potter comes across as a very decent bloke but decent doesn’t cut it in the Premier League, especially when the club have spent £400m in just under nine months. Chelsea have been decimated with injuries too but nobody wants to hear that stuff.

The handful of Chelsea supporters that are still showing some faith in their current manager are probably like a lot of hurling fans at the moment. They know some sides are hammered by injuries. They’re not overly concerned by results at the moment once the team comes good when it matters. And yet, they get stroppy and edgy when some results – irrespective of the opposition or the context – are just deemed not acceptable enough for a county of their standing.

Nobody in Wexford is calling for Darragh Egan’s head on Monday morning. But the locals can’t be happy. Henry Shefflin’s status will always insulate him from any excessive criticism, but yesterday was another one of those frustrating, inconsistent, up-and-down displays from Galway under the Kilkenny man. They were playing Limerick. It’s only February. But still…..

On the other hand, everybody – apart from Limerick, Tipperary and Cork – is a little confused and frustrated at the minute at what is unfolding. What does the hurling league actually mean? The frustration from supporters comes from not knowing what you’re going to get. Whatever the Wexford supporters thought they were going to witness on Sunday, the last thing they thought was that it would be a horror show.

Yet it’s only two weeks since the Clare supporters were exposed to a similar grim viewing experience. We all expected some kind of a backlash yesterday but, for any Clare supporters who travelled to the south east, they certainly didn’t anticipate a massacre.

Were Clare that good? Or were Wexford that bad? I don’t know - I had to make do with turning the raido dial between Clare FM and Radio 1 – but I’m sure the Wexford supporters felt seriously short-changed.

I thought the GAA made a bad call earlier this year when raising the price of National League matches to €18. Well, if this kind of stuff keeps continuing, a lot of supporters won’t bother paying it for the last two rounds.

The GAA have to be asking if there is some way they can do more to try and make this league a better and more consistent product? Pitches are so good now at this time of the year (although that may be down to the good weather) that you’d have to wonder if the league could start in mid-January and finish in mid-March?

That would still leave at least four to five weeks before the round robin championship begins. Teams would still be training hard but at least they can still target the league more than what they’re currently doing. That schedule would mean an end to the pre-season competitions but would anyone care?

A game then like Galway-Limerick would surely mean more than what it looked like it meant to Galway. That may be highly critical when they were playing the All-Ireland champions. Galway may be down a lot of bodies but I still think that they should be doing better than they are. They did put on a real burst in the second half but I never felt that Limerick were going to lose the game.

Limerick had faded out of the Cork and Clare games so you were wondering if they might do the same when Galway got the deficit back to two. But they just drove on and left Galway in their rearview mirror.

On the other hand, you’d wonder if some teams – like Clare and Galway in their last two matches – have just decided that there’s no point going after Limerick in February? Otherwise, why would Galway leave Hayes unattended at wing-back? Would it not have made sense to push Joseph Cooney up on Kyle and just go after him? Especially when Cooney has the power and physique to match up to Kyle.

This was another very satisfying day for Limerick. Tom Morrissey was the TG4 man-of-the-match after a brilliant display but I’d have given it to either Dan Morrissey or Kyle Hayes, even if Kyle was lucky to stay on the pitch when he should have been sent off. Richie English was outstanding too.

What will have pleased John Kiely most is that the players who effectively didn’t feature last year, or who played in different positions, or in different roles, contributed 0-15 on the scoreboard – Hayes, who was at wing-back, Peter Casey, Cian Lynch, Shane O’Brien and Micheál Houlihan, while Tom Morrissey nailed three frees.

Limerick are getting a lot out of the league, unlike other teams, but it’s hard to know what other teams are looking to gain from this campaign. Darragh Egan won’t get too carried away but he has concerns, especially around Lee Chin, whose injuries keep coming back. Darragh must also must be wondering if the panel depth he is looking to create is going the way he wants or needs it to.

Brian Lohan will be delighted with this display, especially after the Limerick game, and particularly with John Conlon back and playing a full game. Tipperary, Cork and Kilkenny won the games they were expected to while it took Waterford longer to get over Antrim than they, or their supporters, probably wanted.

Waterford summed up much of how teams are using this league. Stephen Bennett didn’t feature. Austin Gleeson was hauled off the bench again, where he was effective once more. Gavin Fives, Paddy Leavey, Reuben Halloran, Padraig and Patrick Fitzgerald got more game-time.

Leaving some of your best players off was always a risk Davy Fitzgerald was willing to take against an Antrim team that has been performing well. Even if Waterford had lost, would it have been the end of the world?

No. There are no Graham Potter jobs in hurling. And the headhunters here aren’t as cut-throat as they were in that old Chelsea firm.