Patrick Horgan: Two hurling league finals on the same bill? Utter madness
FOCUS: Cork manager Ben O'Connor during the Allianz Hurling League Division 1A match against Offaly at SuperValu Páirc Ui Chaoimh. Pic: Tyler Miller/Sportsfile
The league finals are the next big date in the hurling calendar - it’s the second biggest national hurling competition, but you’d have to ask if the GAA really cares about it.
Having a double-header for Cork-Limerick and Clare-Dublin makes no sense to me at all. Cork and Limerick would sell out two stadia with the supporters they have, but now, with two games on, each county will only get a quarter of the tickets available. Madness.
We want people seeing the games and going to the games, to celebrate a big occasion and to have a great day out. What we don’t want is the Dublin and Clare supporters leaving the Gaelic Grounds after their game is over, leaving seats empty behind them that Cork and Limerick supporters would have killed for. That’s not even getting into the cost of tickets for a double-header, which is hefty when supporters are really just interested in their own county.
It makes obvious sense to have Clare and Dublin to play in Thurles, and to have Cork play Limerick in the Gaelic Grounds. Better for the teams, better for the game, and most important of all, better for the supporters.
Last weekend’s games saw Cork a bit sloppy in the opening 20 minutes against Offaly, but eventually they took over and won by 24 points. It’s a no-win situation - Cork were expected to win by 20 points, and when they did win by even more than that there’s a focus on the negatives. In fairness, they hit six goals and Offaly ‘keeper Liam Hoare made some very good saves, so it could have been more.
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Cork obviously worked on a few things in the warm-weather camp they were on, and all of that has to be put into practice. In that sense it didn’t matter who they were playing last Saturday night - they needed their best team on the field to try out what they’d worked on, so they fielded 12 of their All-Ireland final team.
Were there things on Saturday that Cork will want to improve? Of course there were. Hurling can be a game of mistakes, and not everything was smooth last weekend. Cork look strong, though, and they looked fit, which is a tribute to Ian Jones and the S&C team.
Another bright spot for Cork was the return of Paudie Power, who had to overcome a bad cruciate ligament injury in the last year. It’s good to see him back - and he’s certainly someone who’s worth having in the camp, because he has something to offer. He’s a poacher who can snap up a goal in a heartbeat but he’s also very direct, and he was in flying form before he was injured. If he can get to that form again I think Ben O’Connor and his selectors will have something to think about, because he’s a very dangerous forward.
Another man who’s showing up well for Cork is Barry Walsh - we’re out on Wednesday night with the U20s and we were delighted to see Ben take Barry off at half-time for that reason!
He’s obviously going to be very important for us, but he’s already turned into an important player for the senior team, which is every young lad’s dream. As an U20 management team we want to see the lads develop and improve and play for the seniors - that’s the ultimate goal - so we’re delighted to see Barry doing so well with the seniors.
Elsewhere, Kilkenny and Tipperary drew in what might have appeared to be a bit of a nothing game, but it may have been useful in giving both teams a chance to try some different options.
Tipperary, for instance, might not have caught fire yet this season but they’ve still won the games they needed to. They haven’t had their full team out yet, which means they’ve had to try a couple of new players in certain positions, and the knock-on effect of that involves shifting other players to different positions, so you’ve got a lot of moving parts involved.
There are reasons for that - Tipp put a lot into the league last year, and having won the All-Ireland it was a long season with plenty of knocks and niggles picked up along the way. It made sense to rest and rotate players in the last few weeks. Now they’ve got a nice bit of time to get any injuries sorted and to get through a serious block of physical training before tapering down for their first championship game, against Cork in Thurles.
Kilkenny showed the benefit of experience in that game Saturday. A couple of weeks ago I said they needed TJ Reid to come back, and in fairness he immediately showed what they were missing.
It was great to see him back and hitting 1-8 in the game, and the Kilkenny forward unit is already looking better with him involved. They hit 3-24 on Saturday night, which is a fair improvement on their average score per game before that - 1-17. That isn’t going to win anything for you.
It also makes Leinster more interesting, because Galway showed up well against Limerick. I’ll discuss Limerick in more detail before the league final, but Galway have already been very impressive in this league.
They might not be using this new pattern of play that long but they’re working hard and implementing it well.
They can still improve: when they do their video analysis this week they’ll see they were winning by five points to one and their target man up front, Jason Rabbitte, was causing problems for Limerick early on.
To me the move would be to keep lumping the ball down on Rabbitte until Limerick figured out what to do with him, but they stopped doing that. Galway had a short puck-out intercepted for a point, and Limerick got it to five points to four within a couple of minutes. The momentum shifted a bit and when Galway took a sideline later on, instead of going down the line they tried playing it across the field, and Limerick broke through for a goal.
When Galway went short with puck-outs they were trying to work the ball from deep, whereas when Limerick go short they strike it, which minimises the risk. That’s not a criticism of Galway, necessarily - every team makes mistakes as they try to implement their style of play, but it’s all about learning from those mistakes. Galway ended the game trying to get a winning goal with the last puck of the game, but they could have been in a far better position by then.
If you add up that short puck-out in the first half, the cross-field sideline which gave up a goal, and one or two other points Galway conceded, then you’re talking about an eight point swing, and they could have been six points up at the end.
The important thing for Galway - and for all teams - is to learn from that experience. We’ll see in the championship which teams have learned the most valuable lessons.
*Condolences again to Michael Lyster's family and friends on his passing last weekend.
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