ENDA MCEVOY: We can’t turn back the hurling clock

Eamonn Cregan recently expressed concern with the growth of “hurling scrums”, claiming that players are determined to get the ball into their hand instead of pulling first-time. Is this true? Is ground hurling gone forever? Or is today’s game much more precise and controlled than the game of old?

Let us take as our starting point one of the most spectacularly trite observations made on the 2012 hurling championship, or indeed on any hurling championship.

“Hurling,” declaimed a Down footballer on Twitter during the Kilkenny/Galway replay last September, “is a game of hit and hope?”