Maurice Brosnan: Eight observations from the hurling league
Gearoid Hegarty of Limerick after the Allianz HL win over Westmeath.
Gaelic football needs to change, suggested GAA Director General Tom Ryan in his Annual Report. They have crunched the numbers and prepped committees. It is time to act. What about hurling?
“Hurling is in a good place,” said Ryan last week. Its issues are off the field. Fair enough?
There is no doubt the intercounty hurling championship delivered last season. That shouldn’t cloud an objective assessment. There was a mixed response to rule trials in hurling and football recently. One is set to advance with a new working group and 10 specific ideas. Why not both?
Every sport should routinely engage in that sort of exercise. For too long hurling was content that all was well in every regard. The reality is that fresh revelations about the state of the game in large swathes of the country shouldn’t have come as a shock. It has been that way for years.
There is also a need to regularly maintain a grasp of its essence. Tweaks and trials should be welcomed. By consistently considering the game we can maintain an understanding of it. That can avoid kneejerk calls by pundits for handpass limits and puckouts past the 45-metre line, as we heard during the league last year.
For many it is a sacred sport, but relentlessly positive reflections do not serve it well. It is not about being positive or negative to the game, just be fair to it. The best portrayal is an accurate one.
Here are eight observations from the opening two rounds of the hurling league.
Every Liam Cahill team is goal-ravenous. Tipperary have only scored three so far, yet Sunday demonstrated they could soon drive that return upwards.
A half-time conversion of 66% looked great on paper but Cahill will fixate on goal chances that slipped away during that opening period. An overhit pass towards Jake Morris saw Galway goalkeeper Darach Fahy race off his line to clear the danger. Seán Ryan was free on the edge of the square when a handpass sailed over his head minutes later. He mishit a goal shot just after and had to settle for a Gearóid O’Connor converted 65. Ryan later rounded TJ Brennan, who was then taken off after just 24 minutes, and had a one-on-one effort well stopped by Fahy.
Cahill and Mikey Bevans will drill what they know this week. It is unlikely they will squander four clearcut opportunities again.
A few weeks after taking over as Cork manager Pat Ryan sat down for an interview with this newspaper to discuss what needed to change. They had been knocked out of the 2022 championship by Galway after some woeful shooting. Ryan stressed accuracy and shot efficiency were areas they would work on. In their 2023 championship fixtures, only Tipperary were more accurate.
On Saturday night bad habits crept back in. They scored nine points from play for a 30% conversion.
Davy Fitzgerald has always innovated with puckout shape and signals. All of that was on display last weekend. Waterford retained 50% of their restarts and scored 1-5 from that source. At times they moved every player outside of their 45-metre line and Clare still conceded the nearest option.
Paddy Leavey takes advantage of the space he finds himself in and strikes from distance to put 2 between the sides @WaterfordGAA #GAANOW pic.twitter.com/dZ11Xoubuw
— The GAA (@officialgaa) February 11, 2024
They are not the only team experimenting on their own puckout. Cork have occasionally resorted to the opposite, flooding players back inside the 45. Now we await the response. Who will be the first team to leave an unmarked forward close to Waterford’s goal and try to capitalise on a quick turnover? Waterford play Cork next on February 25.
Clare full-back Conor Cleary made one mistake, competing for a high ball and losing out while landing on the wrong side of forward Sean Walsh.
His coaching cues kicked in. React fast. Get close. Hurley in the near arm. Wait for a play. Textbook. 12 steps later Waterford’s number 15 tapped in a goal. Illegal handpassing is a blight because it makes it easier to maintain control and fewer turnovers. The same is true for steps.
Two weeks ago, Cavan kicked off their campaign in Division 3A having been promoted last year. They were one of the five counties that would have been excluded from the league in 2025 under the recently abandoned proposal.
In front of 118 spectators, they trailed by 15 at half-time but rallied to lose by four despite suffering a second-half red card. Post-match, manager Ollie Bellew gathered his group in a huddle and reinforced the message. They don’t want sob stories. Cavan can be successful at this grade and beyond.
“We’ve been trying for years to get out of the bottom tier. To do something. We were sure we would get it right this year with our preparation and hard work,” he said when speaking to the
Captain Canice Maher echoed that: “We showed the heart in this group to show some fight. I suppose it’s happy with the second half but overall disappointed.”Â
Cavan were 2/1 underdogs against Louth last Saturday. It was a home game with a puck around organised for half-time in Kingspan Breffni. They ran out six-point winners.
The clock read 71:11 with the scoreline Antrim 1-18 Dublin 1-20 in Corrigan Park. At least three minutes of additional time were to be played. With his side two points up, Dublin midfielder Brian Hayes conceded a sideline and went down with an injury. He stayed down for treatment while Antrim made a substitution.
As the physio made his way back to the dugout, his foot connected with the sliotar on the sideline. Antrim quickly replaced the ball and hit it at 72.09. However, the referee whistled to halt play and made for the Dublin bench.
A furious Micheál Donoghue protested as the member of his backroom team was spoken to and shown a yellow card. Play resumed with time at 73:21, two minutes after the sideline had been conceded.
Arron Bradley cut the gap to one with 74:00 gone. The final whistle sounded before the subsequent puckout had even landed. That yellow card became a possible footnote in some lengthier match reports.
The hurling calendar follows a predictable pattern. In January, the Fitzgibbon Cup needs respect. By February there are too many illegal handpasses. In March there are too many frees. We’ll worry about no one trying in the league and then everyone trying too hard in the Munster Championship. There’ll be a split-season debate as the championship draws to a close and a celebration of the club game soon after.
What intercounty managers say and what they do aren’t always the same. One manager who does repeatedly hail the value of the Fitzgibbon Cup, and back it up, is Limerick’s John Kiely.
“This week we had to leave off the Fitzgibbon Cup boys for midweek coming up. That was the right decision. It had to be done,” he said after their narrow win over Westmeath.
“We’re very pleased to see a cohort of our players involved in the final stages of the competition. It is a great nursery for intercounty senior players to get additional gametime at a very high level. The standard is through the roof. All the players are top-class intercounty hurlers. We wish our lads well for the week ahead.”Â
In Wednesday’s semi-finals, Mary I take on SETU Waterford and University of Galway face University of Limerick.
Before they played Wexford, Johnny Kelly made it clear he was under no illusion that the league revamp could bring some pain. Teams were going to target a positive score difference and they could feel the brunt of that.
On Saturday Offaly still managed to secure a draw while bringing their total number of players used in the league to 22. Ross Ravenhill, Adrian Cleary and Jack Screeney are yet to feature. It is coming up on a year since OisĂn Kelly suffered a cruel cruciate ligament injury, albeit that was his second in 18 months. They are the only team in Division 1A to use two different goalkeepers, Stephen Corcoran and Mark Troy.
Develop the squad, stay competitive, pick up some morale-boasting results along the way. What else is the league for?
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