Hurling pundits not honest about throws, claims O’Donovan
OFFLOAD: Shane O'Donnell of Clare is tackled by Mike Casey of Limerick during the Munster final Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Former Tipperary defender Conor O’Donovan has criticised hurling pundits for not being honest about the level of thrown hand-passes in the game.
A long-time advocate of addressing illegal handpasses, the two-time All-Ireland winner has a motion going forward to Congress next year to prohibit handpassing the ball or palming it from the same hand that is holding the ball.
Instead, transferring the ball by hand would be permitted by a definite striking action from the other hand or tapping the ball on the hurley and striking the ball with either hand.
The GAA’s previous playing rules committee applied his idea to last year’s All-Ireland Freshers League where the redefinition of the rule contributed to an exponential rise in the stick-pass to hand-pass ratio to 8:1. In last year’s senior inter-county championship, the ratio was 1.5 to 1, although comparisons have to take into account the senior fixtures are 10 minutes longer.
O’Donovan makes an exception for Joe Canning who called out the amount of throwing as “probably the worst thing in hurling at the moment", but has condemned Canning's colleagues on RTÉ for turning a blind eye to what he considers “a virus” of the sport.
“They are not being honest and the game deserves more respect from them,” says the Nenagh Éire Óg man. “If these guys were being honest, they would realise the game’s integrity is at stake and a rule change is required. Their views would have a big influence on the thinking of people towards bringing about a rule change.
“They will never focus in on an instance where the ball has been clearly thrown by a player but the referee hasn’t penalised it. You could see questionable hand-passes in the All-Ireland final but none of them were highlighted on ‘The Sunday Game’. Because the referee doesn’t penalise it, it’s then deemed ‘a great score’.
“There’s the contradiction with the pundits. They will pick up on where referees penalised hand-passes where with the benefit of replays and slow-motion they find that there might have been a possibility of a clear striking action as the rule states, but they never discuss an unpenalised throw.”
O’Donovan maintains an Aidan McCarthy point late in the first half of the All-Ireland SHC final last Sunday week should not have stood as Shane O’Donnell had not made a definite striking action in the buildup. He has doubts about the validity of Clare’s first goal because of another O’Donnell hand-pass.
O’Donovan cites Dublin’s first goal against Kilkenny in this year’s Leinster SHC round game in Parnell Park as an obvious example of a score that should have been disallowed for a throw ball by Chris Crummey in the build-up.
Conducted by Gaelic Stats on behalf of the GAA, the statistical analysis of the nine conditioned Freshers League games last year revealed the average number of stick passes per game was 170, to 21 from the hand.
While 71% of stick passes reached their intended target, compared to 88% of hand-passes, it was found that 15% of hand-passes were either thrown or illegally passed from the same hand.
The matches also insisted that puck-outs travel beyond the defending team’s 45-metre line. Just over half of the restarts – 52% – were won by the team in possession with 78% of all puck-outs being contested.
In the 2023 All-Ireland SHC, played without restrictions, 67% of puck-outs were claimed by the pucking. In last year’s competition, 29% of restarts did not pass the team’s own 45m. Short puck-outs represented just 14% in 2016.
There was a dramatic contrast between scores directly from puck-outs in the conditioned Freshers games (21%) compared to last year’s SHC when it was 56%.
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