Lower tier hurling counties deserve more coverage
Firstly Longford won their first All-Ireland in 125 years with a deserved victory over Donegal. And how they celebrated. 125 years is a long time to wait. Then Armagh had a thrilling one-point win over unlucky London in the Nicky Rackard Cup. And, in the Christy Ring, Kevin Martin’s Westmeath beat Kerry by a point with the last puck of the game.
As a Kerryman, I was really proud of the fitness, application and skill of the Kingdom men. They took the game to the more experienced Westmeath side and, considering it was Kerry’s first Christy Ring final and their first game in Croke Park, they performed excellently.
John Meyler and his selectors have done a great job and, considering Kerry had to line out without hamstring hit Shane Brick, their best hurler for most of a decade, they did well. Kerry took the lead, Westmeath fought back and seemed to be on their way to victory, but Kerry pegged back a four point deficit as the game entered it’s final minute.
Then the controversial moment. What seemed to nearly everyone to be a throw, rather than a legitimate hand-pass, made for the winning Westmeath point from sub Andrew Dervah. If a foul had been called, Kerry would almost certainly have won as it was only 45 metres from the Westmeath goals. Such are the ups and downs of sport, but to give Kerry their due they took it on the chin and remained on the field to applaud Westmeath.
Afterwards, though, it was the big topic of conversation. Supporters said “we will be able to decide whether it was a throw or not when we see it on the Sunday Game”. But it was never shown. Indeed, the three All-Irelands played in Croke Park on Sunday only got five or six minutes between – tokenism really. In fairness though, with so many big games at the weekend, the Sunday Game couldn’t show them all and priority was given to those of greatest appeal.
However, and this is the crucial point, when these competitions were introduced during my Presidency, I specifically went to Central Council and got it passed that the Ring and Rackard cups would be played in Croke Park as certain raisers to All-Ireland semi-finals and covered live on TV.
That would mean a minimum of two hours live TV per game, plus extensive coverage on the Sunday Game and the print media. But somebody decided to lump all three games together in Croke Park on a Saturday on one of the busiest weekends of the year.
Thus, little coverage and a very small crowd. Very far from what I had envisaged and what we did in the first years of the competitions – when they were played as curtain-raisers to All-Ireland semi-finals and shown on TV.
While it’s good to have the finals in Croke Park, an awful lot more could and should be done to recognise and encourage the other tiers of hurling, apart from the MacCarthy Cup. It’s time the hurlers in these counties stood up for themselves and demanded their rights in accordance with the decision of Central Council.
