Why had we to wait this long for a day like this?

Last October when some of the country’s most enquiring coaching minds and leading service providers attended the HPX High Performance conference out in Sport Ireland’s fabulous new campus in Abbotstown, a number of the best operators working in inter-county hurling fell into each other’s company during a tea break.

As it happens, they all were involved in Munster hurling setups: Joe O’Connor, S&C coach to the Limerick hurlers; Podge Collins, who flourished as a player under O’Connor’s expertise when the latter was part of Davy Fitzgerald’s management team in Clare; and Damien Young, a performance analyst with Tipperary as well as a sports studies lecturer in Limerick IT-Thurles.

After initially chatting about some of the international speakers that would have just presented in the previous session, conversation soon changed from the merits of the New Zealand, UK and US Olympic models to matters closer to home and the revolutionary new hurling championship format that had been approved by Special Congress the previous month.