Walsh upstages King Henry

YESTERDAY morning, if you were of a gambling bent, you could have had 9/4 that Kilkenny’s Henry Shefflin would outscore Wexford on his own in this All-Ireland semi-final.

Henry finished with 14 points one more than Wexford’s combined 1-10.

What odds then, those 14 points in the bag, that Henry would also have picked up the man-of-the-match award? Several times already this season those who make those decisions have taken just such a lazy and obvious option, gone for the guy who put the scores on the board regardless of how those scores had come (frees, soft scores at the end of big moves), regardless of how that player had been performing generally, regardless of how well someone in a less exalted position has been playing. In fairness to Shefflin yesterday wasn’t one such occasion.