This might sound strange, but in my career, I didn’t encounter much of the stuff that we saw before the throw-in in Páirc Uí Chaoimh last Sunday. Most of the time it was no more than the belt of a shoulder from my marker. I don’t remember getting a dunt of a hurley. Definitely nothing like the craziness we saw in the Páirc.
As a forward, I never really wanted to get into it. I just didn’t see the benefit of it for me. I always thought it would put me in the wrong frame of mind. If I went to shake hands with my marker and he hit me a shoulder, I’d hit him back, but that would be it. I would never be the aggressor in the first place.
I look at subs coming on and the first thing they do is hit their marker a shoulder and I always think, “What’s the idea of it? Why bother?”. I was always taught to hurt your man on the scoreboard, and if I was getting a bit of attention off the ball, I’d save my reaction for after a score.
What amazed me about the carry-on before the throw-in in the Cork-Tipperary match was that the Tipp forwards seemed to be the instigators at that end of the field. They were completely wound up. It was the same before the Limerick game a week earlier. What good does that do? In a championship match you must play with aggression, but most of all you must play with control. Having smoke coming out your ears isn’t going to help that.
Darragh McCarthy probably wasn’t the only player to hit his marker with the hurley before the ball was thrown in last Sunday, but he was the one that was caught. Three weeks earlier Séan O’Donoghue had cleaned him out in the league final and maybe that was part of the context for what he did.
But McCarthy was man of the match against Limerick in Thurles. He’s a brilliant young player who made the step up to senior hurling effortlessly. He must have fancied his chances against any of the Cork backs. What frame of mind was he in running out onto the pitch? Instead of thinking about the first ball, is this what he was thinking about? Is that what all the Tipp players were thinking about, giving their men a belt before the ball was thrown in?
If it was, they went onto the field in the wrong state of mind. McCarthy and Tipp paid a heavy price. McCarthy is young and will learn. I wonder will Tipp learn.
The other big talking point from last Sunday was Adam Hogan throwing himself to the ground in Walsh Park, after Dessie Hutchinson tipped him on the arm with his hurley. Hutchinson was booked for making minimal contact with the hurley, but Hogan should have been booked for diving.
Hogan plays the hard man and is well known for verbals and trying to antagonise players off the ball, but there wasn’t an ounce of toughness in the way he behaved last Sunday. That kind of stuff is becoming a blight on the game and the responsibility to stamp it out rests on everyone, not just referees, but players and managers too.
Brian Duignan didn’t cover himself in glory either. Daithí Burke was sent off for hitting him on the shoulder under a dropping ball, and the hurley snapped in two. Duignan turned around and started pushing Burke and then, a few seconds later, he went down holding his head.
In these situations, I always think of Tommy Walsh in the 2009 All-Ireland final, when Benny Dunne hit him on the head under a puck-out. Dunne was correctly sent off, but in fairness to Walsh, he jumped back up as soon as he hit the ground. There’s an onus on players to behave in a manly way. We’re not seeing enough of that.
The issue here is the spirit of the game. I’ve noticed more players and managers trying to get opposition players booked. Diving is part of that. In soccer now they have a rule where if you ask for a player to be booked, that is a yellow card offence. If things keep going the way they are, the GAA should consider that.
The way the game is played now, with so much swarm-tackling and hard-hitting, referees have an incredibly hard job. I was part of the live coverage on RTÉ for the Kilkenny-Galway game a couple of weeks ago and we were hooked up to the referee’s communication system, so we could hear his interaction with the other match officials and his conversations with players.
I haven’t always been Séan Stack’s biggest fan, but I was hugely impressed with the way he spoke to the players that day. From my experience, if a player is given a decent explanation from a referee they will take a decision on the chin, whether they agree with it or not. Referees can’t be expected to explain everything, but with a contentious call, it is the only way to prevent frustrations building up. That kind of frustration makes a referee’s job even harder.
There’s only one game this weekend, but it’s fascinating. Nobody really knew what to expect from Waterford last Sunday, coming out of Division One B in the league, but they were well worth their win over Clare.
Limerick will be a different test, but I’m not sure what version of Limerick we’re seeing at the moment. When you look at some of the big names on the bench you’re wondering if they’re coming back from injuries, or if the team is moving on without them? To me, Limerick didn’t seem to be at full throttle against Tipp, but maybe they don’t have the gears they used to have.
It’ll be interesting to see if they leave Will O’Donoghue at six and Kyle Hayes at 11. O’Donoghue is a good centre-back, but I think by playing him in that position, they’re losing a lot in the middle of the field. His physicality and turnovers and link play in the middle third were huge for Limerick over the years.
A lot of these Waterford players have suffered at Limerick’s hands in recent years, but if there’s any good time to catch Limerick, this could be it. I think they have a serious chance.
