Hurlers whose swing makes them identifiable

Not to overanalyse the All-Ireland final last Sunday week or anything . . . but . . . can we just talk about the very end of the game, when Joe Canning was doing his best to imitate the Grinch and steal Christmas from all of Limerick?

As we all know now his late, late free didn’t quite carry all the way over the bar and Tom Condon’s handling made the game safe for the green and white.

No disgrace in that: Canning has a superb strike, but that free was a long, long way from the Limerick goal. The Galway man was in his own half, having played almost 80 minutes of hurling, and though the TV close-ups saw him slow his breathing as he tried to get himself set, his storming final quarter, as he reeled in Limerick almost single-handedly, must have sapped his energy.