Tactical innovation is a given for any progressive game

The end of hurling, or the end of the end of hurling? When you have well-known players like Ken McGrath tweeting that they’re glad to have played when they did then you suspect that something is amiss in the game.

For this observer the issue is not tactical stalemate or the attractiveness of the game. The tactical battles being seen now on the hurling field are decades overdue thanks to a couple of significant victories -— that Cork-Galway All-Ireland final in 1986, a prime example — and the slavish adherence to the 1-3-3-2-3-3 formation for almost a century.

The traditional view of hurling tactics leaned heavily on a couple of notions that were eventually interrogated out of existence: that you couldn’t strategise in a game where the ball could travel back and forth huge distances in short time frames, and that the premium on skill — defensively, individually— meant dawdling on the ball was an invitation to having the sliotar flicked out of your hand legitimately, or blasted out of your hand, illegitimately. Neither option was inviting.