Taking hurling to the next level
A crafty piece of skill, it’s also an ingenious means of fashioning a new possession so that the ball can be taken to hand a second time. In Nowlan Park at the weekend, both Conor McDonald and Kevin Moran pulled it off. If you didn’t see them doing their thing, boy were you unlucky.
What would Ring think? He’d probably smile. There’s nothing in the Official Guide against it as much as you might wonder if it was in the thinking of the rulemakers when they sat down to form the parameters of the game.
But the problem with hurling right now is the acumen of the modern player has evolved long outgrown the established rules.
It’s a challenge facing Liam Sheedy and his Hurling 2020 committee as they look at the game. But we may have here 20 suggestions that can help:
1. The five-second advantage rule, applicable in football, should be extended to hurling. As things stands, with frees scoreable from beyond the 65 metre line now, the only advantage that can be given to the team of a fouled player is a free.
2. Clubs must come first but it’s a failing of the Championship structure that a team like Galway can exit the Leinster and All-Ireland competitions in the space of seven days.
3. Two referees? Yes, oh yes.
4. Only for the profile shots of players on RTÉ and Sky Sports, would this writer know the identity of most of this promising Wexford team? More — more than what is offered for footballers — has to be done to promote our masked hurlers. Putting names on jerseys would be a start.
5. Let’s get rid of the impractical four-step rule. Referees don’t apply it, not consistently anyway. Make it six and insist they should be counted even when tackled.
6. Dónal Óg Cusack’s crusade against the spare hand tackle is a righteous one. Limits should be put in place on what a player not in possession can do with their free hand.
7. The gateways for developing teams to loftier reaches have to be wider than at present. Getting into Division 1B is like trying to join the Freemasons.
8. The top flight structure does not serve the league well. Rewarding the third and fourth Division 1B placed teams with quarter-finals over the fifth and sixth Division 1A counties makes a mockery of the competition.
9. This column was involved with Dublin goalkeeper Alan Nolan some years back in an experiment to see which sliotar went the furthest. That favoured by Cork at the time was the winner. Several brands get the GAA’s seal of approval but there must be a consistency in distance.
10. After some early successes, penalties under the new rule interpretation are being saved, Austin Gleeson’s on Saturday being the latest. A penalty has to be a just reward as well as an accurate punishment. One-on-one from before the 20-metre line, le do thoil.
11. Back to the promotional perspective — encourage the GAA to create an online results archive on its website. The feats of those who have worn their county jerseys with distinction deserve to be chronicled in a central resource.
12. Write down the words “Munster championship” and the following: “Do not touch”.
13. Write down the words “Leinster championship” and the following: “Do not seed”.
14. Elongate the Christy Ring, Nicky Rackard and Lory Meagher Cup competitions. The perception is the GAA want them over and done with as soon as possible.
15. Kilkenny don’t complain but the four-week gaps between winning provincial titles and All-Ireland semi-finals are far too long. Their opponents have momentum while they can’t even arrange challenge games. Not that the Cats do much of that, anyway.
16. It pays to foul in hurling right now. Whatever about the black card, which could open up a can of worms, punish non-penalty fouls inside the 20m line further by allowing the frees to be moved to the centre.
17. There is a lot of dual referees out there and they must be considered but, as John Allen suggested last year, there wouldn’t be too much harm in the establishment of a separate hurling refereeing body. It isn’t a sister but a cousin to Gaelic football.
18. We were sympathetic to Galway earlier but if they want to be taken seriously, they must be part of Leinster for the U21, minor and club championships. Then, and only then, give them home games.
19. Don’t punish the pioneers. Antrim may be isolated but the Team Ulster idea is a slap in their face.
20. Let there be hurling every weekend from the end of May to the end of July. Replays this year have ensured that, and the wall-to-wall coverage of the Championship has been great.
* Email: john.fogarty@examiner.ie
Few have a heart for the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC). They are the third most important body in the organisation and the workload placed upon them is massive, but theirs is a thankless job.
It is ever more so in light of Mick O’Dowd’s allegation that Mickey Burke was bitten on the finger in Sunday’s Leinster final.
After receiving referee Pádraig Hughes’s report yesterday, it is now incumbent on them to get to the bottom of the matter.
O’Dowd likely raised the subject with the media having not seen replays of the incident but Meath have gone too far now to row back on their claim.
If Burke was bitten, he was bitten, and the Dublin player should be punished. If he wasn’t, Dublin are owed an apology.
But if Burke was guilty of dangerous play that saw him being bitten, then he should too be penalised.
Not that it makes Meath’s allegation any less, of course. A bite is still a bite.
Yes, do spare a thought for those CCCC men.
Cork don’t usually look west for favours but if they want to realise how fickle this game can be, they need only ask Kerry.
Eamonn Fitzmaurice was deemed a mere salvage operator after Colm Cooper’s season-ending injury.
Now, after one game, they’re being mentioned as a viable number two to Dublin.
Cork know themselves how bipolar people have felt about them. The Rebels were written off at the end of last year on the back of the mass retirements, only to be hailed as the kings-in-waiting after a strong league run. Now they’re being dismissed once more.
This season was always going to be a rebuild but on Saturday they will beat Sligo and restore much-needed confidence.
