Championship Preview: Getting to grips with Hurling

BIGGEST hurling story of 2015, thus far? No question there: Henry Shefflin’s retirement.

There was abundant coverage of the announcement, all the way to over-kill. Yet an intriguing snippet slipped unremarked. The player’s father, Henry Sr, said of his son: “I always remember one instance. He was hitting the ball, right hand under. I told him he was holding the hurley wrong. He kept asking me afterwards: ‘is this the right way, Daddy?’ I didn’t have to tell him again. He was no more than three. He was barely able to talk.”

This anecdote lit up a crucial, but neglected aspect of the game: grip. What could be simpler? The father tells the boy that there is a right way and a wrong way of hitting a ball. The boy assents. Thirty-three years later, the grown man departs the intercounty arena with a fair claim to being the greatest of them all.