No retreat as Rebels rule with possession

FINALLY made it to The Wind That Shakes The Barley and emerged afterwards deeply upset.

Much though it pains me to say so, I’m in total agreement with all the criticisms thrown at the film by the more rabid elements of the English press: far-fetched, unrealistic, irrelevant, and entirely lacking in balance. A hurling championship match in Ballingeary at the start of the movie, for heaven’s sake?

On a more serious note, a current revolution is being televised, just as Gil Scott-Heron predicted. Cork’s possession game, as seen last Sunday in Thurles, is re-making the game of hurling in front of us. It’s like having a pitchside seat at the invention of catenaccio in Italy, or seeing the first forward pass in American football, but no-one seems interested in talking about it.