Hurling awards: A season of new beginnings and familiar endings

Once Colm Lyons blew for full time in yesterday's All-Ireland final at Croke Park the curtain came down on the intercounty hurling season. Apart from its historic July finish, how will the 2022 be remembered? Our writers record the best and the worst of a year like no other. 

Diarmaid Byrnes of Limerick celebrates with the Liam MacCarthy Cup after the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Kilkenny and Limerick at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Game of the Year 

Yesterday’s match was an incredible contest but the Munster final is still entitled to be acknowledged as the game of the year. In the history, rich lore and iconography of the Munster final, the 2004 decider between Cork and Waterford earned the right to be considered the greatest, certainly the best of the modern era. That match had everything but the Limerick-Clare final in early June was such a classic that it entered that conversation as possibly the greatest ever. It was such an epic, hard-hitting and ferociously contested battle that it also produced a standard of hurling under such intensity unlike anything seen before in hurling.