Cusack claims hurling no longer rewards skill
While praising Kilkenny, the Cork captain believes they have altered the way the game is played to such an extent that physicality has become the overriding attribute.
“All great teams change the sport they play,” he wrote in his gaa.ie column. “They come up with a way of playing which makes the sport itself change.
“There is much, much more to Kilkenny than their physicality and if that part of the game gets ratcheted up every summer, it is as much because of the obsessions of other counties as it is about Kilkenny.
“Still, whenever people try to start a discussion about the way hurling is evolving they run into the same arguments. You’re just being anti-Kilkenny. It’s a man’s game. Sure it was only handbags.”
Cusack suggests hurling is refereed with a higher tolerance for physicalexchanges and the officials’ interpretations of rules no longer reward skills as much as they used to.
He feels the unseemly scenes that marred the first-half of last Sunday’s game were symptoms of the malaise in the game.
Referring to The Sunday Game Live he wrote: “Cyril Farrell looked a bit shocked and at half-time he started to ask an important question.
‘You have to say, where are the rule books?’
“He was just getting going when he was interrupted by the line which ends all arguments these days about the state of hurling. ‘It’s a man’s game,’ said Tomás Mulcahy.
“I don’t know. We need to move beyond these facile arguments and look at the bigger picture.
“To me there’s nothing manly about some of the dark arts that have beenallowed to quietly creep into hurling these days.
“Fellas kicking each other. Fellas giving each other the butt of the hurley. Pulling at face guards. There’s nothing manly about high tackles and pulling and dragging and body charges.
Earlier this summer, Cusack’s team-mate John Gardiner claimed that matches involving Kilkenny are refereed differently to others.
A member of the GAA’s playing rules committee along with Kilkenny manager Brian Cody, Cusack feels modern hurling’s obsession with physicality will only be addressed when the GAA decide to do something about it.
“I believe that the next development in hurling will involve a return to moving the ball quicker and into space.
“To even think about that at the moment, though, you need to be able to compete physically.
“That will happen if the GAA lets it happen.
“And when it does happen Kilkenny won’t disappear. There is a fair probability that they will just do that better than anybody else too.
“When we look back at this time in hurling, though, we won’t justremember it for Kilkenny’s brilliance but for the way in which the game has changed.
“It’s not the same game that I started out playing in the 1990s. When we talk about hurling these days we spend a huge amount of time speaking about ‘physicality’.
“Teams psyche themselves out of matches these days worrying about physicality. Players are judged on whether they can stand up to that physicality. And the point is that there is actually no point in having the discussion.
Cusack referenced Ger Loughnane’s point on The Sunday Game Live that the opening minutes of Kilkenny-Tipperary were similar to the infamously ugly start to the 1998 Munster final replay between Clare and Waterford.
However, Cusack pointed out two players (Brian Lohan and Michael White) were red carded in those early exchanges as well as Colin Lynch receiving a retrospective red card unlike on Sunday when the only initial punishment handed out was a yellow card to Tommy Walsh.
In a passionate passage, Cusack outlined his grievances with a list of fouls players not in possession are permitted to do with their non-hurley holding hand (“the spare hand”).
Cusack is doubtful skilful players of the recent past would survive today.
Taking Offaly’s 1998 All-Ireland win as an example, he stated: “Michael Duignan played that day and he’d probably survive today, but would there be a place for lads like Brian Whelahan, and Johnny Pilkington and the Dooleys?
“That win was a victory for hooking, blocking, flicking, first touch, quick movement, wrist hurling and imagination. Hurling wasn’t soft then but it rewarded different styles and different approaches.”
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