A golden age of hurling needs officiating which it deserves
End the debate - hurling needs a second referee
We won’t bother getting into the individual issues and mistakes and general head-scratching strangeness of the refereeing errors made over the weekend and cut to the solution.
In the past, your correspondent has idly suggested a second referee for big intercounty games, only for opposing arguments have been made.
One is that you can’t have a championship played under different rules, which sounds reasonable until you recall the season hurling penalties were moved outside the 20-metre line on pain of death.
That was a championship played under different rules but I see no asterisks in the record books.
Then there’s the ‘two different interpretations of the rules in two different halves of the field’ argument.
This would be plausible if the interpretation of the rules was consistent from one referee, but no matter.
The plain facts are that while the conditioning and preparation of hurlers and the technology of the sliotar and hurley are far in advance of what they were even 20 years ago, we are stuck with the same number of on-field officials as we were 100 years ago.
A second referee, please. End of.
Kilkenny’s seniors not alone in ripping up the form-book
There is an intriguing pattern of boys mirroring men going on in Kilkenny at the minute. Through to the All-Ireland minor and senior hurling finals, both Richie Mulrooney and Brian Cody’s teams have taken uncannily similar routes to the August 18 finals.
For starters, both teams beat Munster champions Limerick in All-Ireland semi-finals last Saturday at Croke Park.
Before that, both of them lost Leinster finals to Wexford - forcing them to rip up their scripts and start over - and before that again both teams were largely written off by hurling commentators as likely to be part of the chasing pack this year.
The Kilkenny seniors, for example, began the summer as fifth favourites for the All-Ireland with one bookmaker. Now it’s down to a two-horse race and it’s the same for Mulrooney’s minors who have played eight games to reach this point, losing two of those.
Aside from the Leinster final, they also lost to Galway in the All-Ireland quarter-final group stage. Like Cody’s team, they too weren’t overly-fancied at the beginning of the summer with Mulrooney admitting even the players themselves may have struggled for belief.
“The lads may have been unsure going through the Leinster campaign just how good they were,” said Mulrooney. “We kept telling them they were getting better and better and to be back in the All-Ireland final with them is fantastic.”
‘It’s time to get sweeper critics down off their high horses’
Davy Fitzgerald, not for the first time, had words yesterday for those who persist in portraying his use of a sweeper as defensive.
Have a look...
“People talk to me about the sweeper systems being negative. It’s time to get them down off their high horses and just look at hurling and stop being so negative.
"It drives me nuts, people talking about stuff they haven’t a clue about. If you call Wexford negative then I don’t know because we were getting attackers...
“We were getting players all over the place. We scored three (goals) we could have scored six. We were there. We were right there. Talk about hurling?
“That’s the right way to play hurling, not get it between two people and beat the lard out of each other.
"Play the game short and long, play it crossfield then be manful as well.”
Fitzgerald’s point is interesting given the numbers. Wexford’s average score per game this summer came in at 25.16. It’s the lowest of the four All-Ireland semi-finalists but not by a whole pile.
The others? Limerick managed 26.5, Tipperary are coming at 26.7 and Kilkenny at 27.
Should be some final.
Tullamore another turning point for Cork football’s road to redemption
Common sense saw that two Tyrone and two Cork teams were playing back-to-back in yesterday’s Tullamore triple-header.
From a Cork perspective, there were benefits to having their U20s and minors playing one after another, particularly when the U20 side scored a come-from-behind two-point win.
The victorious Cork players were swapping shirts with their Tyrone counterparts underneath the tunnel when Bobbie O’Dwyer’s minors emerged from their dressing-room to head onto the pitch.
And what it would have done for those young lads to see the U20s break from their duties and form an impromptu guard of honour to clap the minors onto the field.
The U20 win also guaranteed the majority of the decent, if not spectacular, Cork following in Tullamore remained on for the minor game.
The two victories continued this restorative summer which Cork football is enjoying.
A first All-Ireland final appearance since 2016 secured and a first All-Ireland minor semi-final appearance since 2010 booked.
An important couple of weeks lie ahead to see if further progress can be mined.
Galway’s bid to join elite company.
Brian Hanley insists that history is bunk where Galway’s bid for a three-in-a-row of Electric Ireland All-Ireland minor titles is concerned yet it will be a remarkable achievement if they can pull it off.
Only five times has the three-in-a-row been achieved before at the grade and by only three counties; Tipperary 1955-1957 & 1932-1934, Kilkenny 1960-1962 and Cork 1937-1939 & 1969-1971.
If Galway hadn’t slipped up to eventual champions Tipperary in 2016, they’d be sitting on a four-in-a-row at the moment and aiming for five on the trot next month when they play Kilkenny on August 18.
Galway manager Hanley’s issue with the three-in-a-row tag is that the change in age grade from U-18 to U-17, and the general large turnover in players each year, renders it irrelevant.
He said: “Sure three-in-a-row has nothing to do with us. This is our first year together as a team. There’s only one player who was playing on that team last year.
"It’s not relevant to minor. If you’re a senior team it’s relevant but it’s not relevant to minors.
It’s not an issue.
Peter Keane made similar comments while in charge of the Kerry minor footballers throughout their march to five titles in a row between 2014 and 2018.
Still, it’s an achievement the Kerry public are mightily proud of and Galway supporters would love to etch their county’s name in history next month too.
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