Sport is more than test of skill

I WILL tell you something I have heard on more than a few occasions in various press boxes up and down the country: “Ah Flynn, you’re showing yourself up again, Ballyhea, only a junior hurler.”

Usually it's prompted by something I've said about an incident that just occurred on the field of play, something physical.

Straight off, let me emphasise that I do not condone dirty play. In fact I despise it and have no respect for those who indulge in it. But I don't have any problem at all with hard, physical play, even when sometimes it might appear, to the untrained eye, to have gone over the top.

I started my adult hurling career over 31 years ago after coming back from a fairly sterile 18 months in London. I'm not sure if the third-man tackle was still legal at the time, certainly I grew up with it, but even if it wasn't, junior hurling in North Cork was no place to be if you couldn't stand up to a physical challenge. At the time, tournaments were big, and being on the Cork/Limerick border we were invited to play in many an inter-county tournament, where there was often a lot more at stake than just parish pride.

Some of those games were lethal, went way beyond what was accepted as sport even in those less-civilised days. In one such tournament I got hit across the side of the head from behind, pole of the hurley, which left me deafened in one ear for several months. There is no place for that in any sport. But neither is sport a test of skill alone.

Nerve, courage, confidence, character, the ability to perform and excel under pressure, these are all part and parcel of sport, especially team sport. As I developed on the hurling field, even on the training field, I was tested many times in all the above departments. But over the years also, you learn to set those tests for others.

There are those who think hurling is, or should be, just about ball-control, about the players being able to take the sphere on the stick and do magic tricks with it, on the run, at speed. But hurling is like any other art, it's not always just what you see.

This weekend, Waterford and Clare meet in the All- Ireland semi-final. The last times these sides met in championship was in the 1988 Munster final replay. Because of what happened in that game, especially in the opening minutes, and even more so because of what happened afterwards, that game has gone into the GAA annals of shame.

It shouldn't have. I was at that game, and while it was a little over the top at the beginning, I never saw it as being dangerous, never saw the kind of real viciousness I often endured myself.

But that was on the pitch. Afterwards was a different story and some players, one in particular, suffered grievously. It was wrong then, wrong today.

This game is again going to be a torrid affair. It's an All-Ireland semi-final and again there will be tests set, questions asked by both teams. How much hunger have you got? How badly do you want this, how much fire in the belly?

That is the game lads, that's hurling, that's sport. If I want to see just the skills, they're down at our training ground every day. But if I want to see hurling, I go to see championship.

Last Friday night I saw a real exhibition when, under extreme pressure, Neil Ronan scored 13 points from 18, and we advanced to the Cork county senior quarter-final that's the same Neil Ronan who has yet to be played in his best position for the county. A few days prior to that, we won the North Cork Junior B championship for the first time since 1948. Contrary to what our captain, Michael O'Mahony, said in his cup acceptance speech, I wasn't playing back then. But I did play on Tuesday.

Ballyhea? Junior hurler? Yes and yes. But letting myself down? Never, lads, because that's where it all starts.