Will Clare, under Davy Fitzgerald, ever be at their best?
If not quite in the way imagined. The fact that 2016 sees the same semi-finalists as 2015 should not obscure lessons learned. This season, hurling moved on quite a bit. Economists speak of ‘market corrections’. The most beautiful game, recently suffering in aesthetic terms, has been undergoing its own version of a corrective process.
Leading moral? The waning attraction of sweeper-focused and defence-orientated systems. That tide is ebbing. I happened to attend a press conference for one of last season’s All Ireland semi-finals. On the day, journalist after journalist peppered Kilkenny management and two articulate players with questions about sweepers. The only topic in town was this reinvention of hurling’s wheel. It was as if Popeye, in the guise of the fourth estate, had just discovered spinach.
