Hurling occupies one of those strange idiosyncratic places in Irish life that sees the sport regarded a genuine source of national pride, an expression of what it means to be Irish and the one true native game going back centuries while, at the same time, ignored and neglected in vast parts of the country to the point that some regard it is a nuisance.
That’s a pretty blunt way of putting it but you don’t have to look too far to see the pressure hurling is under – draw a line from Dublin to Galway and below it, hurling seems to be thriving and above it, hurling aficionados believe the game is on its last legs, kept alive by the cult-like devotion of its followers in those counties.
Hyperbole aside, hurling is the most unique Irish physical activity there is – horses are raced all over the world, the other major sports were imported from other parts of the globe and as much as I love Gaelic football, it origins aren’t welded into the fabric of this country’s history the way hurling is, a game that only exists where Irish people are living and working.
By my reckoning, hurling may be the only team game regarded as one of its country’s major sports – even America’s pastime, baseball, has only really caught on outside the US in Japan and a few Central American countries such as Cuba or the Dominican Republic.
The All-Ireland Football Final is probably a bigger event countrywide in terms of the battle to get tickets but there exists a cultural phenomenon that sitting down to watch the game is regarded as an expression of Irishness – even if you’ve never been to a game in your life, All-Ireland Hurling Final day is a sacrosanct event.
THE LAST POINT: BORING CONSISTENCY THE KEY TO SUCCESS
The reaction to last Sunday’s epic All-Ireland Final could be subject of a colum in itself – from the wonderful, edge of your seat battle that raged for more than 90 minutes, with no quarter asked or given to Irish people’s curious quest for validation in the reaction of those who watched the game live on the BBC.
Even the reaction to some of the refereeing decisions has been curious – hurling people seemingly want to gloss over a couple of fairly significant errors from referee Johnny Murphy, the glory of the game over-riding what seems like a pretty clear cut case of an injustice for Cork in not being awarded a free in the dying seconds of extra time.
Maybe that is to the credit of the hurling community – mistakes are made by players, managers and officials and after such a contest, focusing on one or two key issues seems out of kilter but then I imagine what would be the reaction if something so blatant was missed in next Sunday’s All-Ireland Football Final – no need to answer, we all know hellfire and brimstone would reign down for moths, not weeks, afterwards!
Yet hurling finds itself in a curious conundrum – the battle for Liam McCarthy has never been more closely followed and no controversy has been more fierce than GAAGO having exclusive access to Munster Hurling championship games in particular but outside of Liam McCarthy, the game finds itself under pressure.
The Munster Hurling championship is undoubtedly the most competitive and egalitarian competition in the GAA calendar but the Leinster equivalent is nowhere near the same intensity or competitiveness. Offaly’s drop down to the Joe McDonagh Cup hurt, one of the game’s traditional hurling powers and now Galway didn’t make the top three while Dublin and Wexford exited stage left pretty quick when faced with Munster opposition.
I honestly don’t know if hurling is a harder game to excel in, if the skills are more difficult to master than Gaelic football but more and more it seems that hurling is under pressure – even in counties we normally associate as hurling counties. Laois, Offaly & Wexford are genuine dual counties but Galway and Cork are enormous counties where hurling is confined to particular parts of the county and football in the other.
Even Carlow and Wicklow vacillate – hurling is big in both counties but if their footballers are building up a head of steam, they are the big ticket. Antrim is a curious case, competing at the top level in hurling in a football dominated province where their footballers know they are the second class citizens.
I’ve often wondered why hurling took root down south with the exception of Kerry where the big ball is King in the Kingdom. One theory was that the better land and literally bigger fields lent itself more to young lads playing the game after a day working in the fields but that doesn’t explain how hurling dominates Cork City with the famed Nemo Rangers an outlier down by the Lee.
THE LAST POINT: TESTING THE HEARTS OF LEITRIM FANS
The football community in those counties are every bit as marginalised and fanatical as their hurling counterparts in football counties – the solitary Waterford fan in Ballinamore for the Tailteann Cup clash to know that Gaelic football has its disciples and fanatics just as much as those wearing the Green & Gold in Leitrim are dedicated to the small ball game.
For all the tales of hurling folk taking pitchforks to O’Neills footballs such is their hatred of Gaelic football, there are just as many stories of players in this county being removed from their club football squads because they play a bit of hurling, a development far more recent that you’d imagine. I know of players put under enormous pressure by their clubs not to play hurling but the same applies to youngsters who are ‘encouraged’ to drop rugby, soccer, athletics or anything else in the pursuit of club glory.
Sometimes hurling doesn’t do itself any favours – the insistence that every hurling game be available on terrestrial television rather than on GAAGO comes across as extraordinary entitlement. The hurling community seems to be saying ‘To hell with every other sport, we want our hurling on TV and we want it now’, all proclaimed with the rather noble aim of promoting the game.
Promoting the game is a great catchphrase, it’s rolled out for every occasion – a few weeks ago, the fact that the Tailteann Cup semi-finals occupying a Sunday slot instead of two All-Ireland Hurling Quarter-Finals was built up into something of a national scandal, the idea that a second tier competition in football getting the prime Sunday slot an affront to the game of hurling.
It’s easy to devalue the Tailteann Cup by calling it a second tier competition but in reality, it is the All-Ireland for those 16 teams taking part in the competition – let’s not forget, more counties play Tailteann Cup football than play in hurling’s Liam McCarthy Cup. Even the timing of the games was blasted, too early in the day we were told but live terrestrial TV means compromises with RTE already committed to European Championships coverage.
Funny how those complaints melted away with two underwhelming quarter-finals – that shouldn’t come into it but it is an argument which rears its head every time there is a classic behind a paywall on GAAGO. All we hear then is about promoting the game but at its most basic level, one section of the GAA world doesn’t want to pay to watch their games while quite content for everyone else to fork out the cash.
I’ll be honest, I’ve kind of switched off hurling, not because of any reverse snobbery, but because the game has become long distance shootouts rather than one on one contests. It is not unusual to see a score a minute, scores from distances that scarcely seemed believable ten years ago.
I’ve often wondered if a heavy sliothar would cut back on scores coming from inside the 65 of the attacking team’s own 65 but in a game where the possibility of physical harm is already high with hurls flying all over the place, getting a belt of a heavier sliothar may actually be more dangerous.
THE LAST POINT: ROMAN WONDERS A REAL INSPIRATION
The epidemic of ball throwing and what looks like general lawlessness in scrums and rucks for the sliothar is both thrilling and baffling but we all love a physical contest so hey, let it go! Hurling commentators feed into this, only the good of the game is highlighted and the only criticism comes when referees enforce the rules as the holy grail of ‘letting the game flow’ seems more important to the evangelists spreading the word of the game rather than analysing what happens on the field.
Hurling needs to be promoted but the message comes across that the Liam McCarthy counties need to be protected more than growing the game in Leitrim, Sligo, Cavan, Longford and the other counties. Those counties came under pressure from within the GAA late last year but, in fairness, the GPA and the hurling community rallied fiercely against those proposals.
Oftentimes, it seems like hurling is happy enough with the same top ten or so teams doing battle for Liam McCarthy but the future of hurling resides in expanding the game’s reach rather than keeping the status quo – that’s the conundrum hurling faces.
