The Football Review Committee has created unease in the heart of Hurling Man. The relentless focus on the proposals of Jim Gavin‘s committee and the dawning realisation that the game was indeed being made better for players and spectators has created an excitement around this year’s big ball championship.
When football addresses problems, the natural response of Hurling Man is both dismissive and apprehensive: on the one hand, distancing himself and his game from the eternal problems of the other code; on the other experiencing anxiety that these barbaric nostrums might somehow mutate into general rule.
When football embraced the now defunct round-robin quarter-finals (Super 8s), there was a dark foreboding that they would infiltrate the whole summer like a form of invasive knotweed. In response the GAA introduced the group format in the provincial hurling championships.
These, of course, have been a riotous success, especially in Munster where this year there has been a succession of capacity attendances and some reliably nail-biting conclusions to the matches.
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Hurling Man shifts uneasily as football gets mysteriously entertaining
Yes, Hurling Man will lament that after the second week in June, just seven fixtures remain in his championship, while football is only getting started on its knock-out phase.
Yet, such has been the quality of the hurling championships with more than a fair share of riveting semi-finals and finals that few have felt it overshadowed by the parallel drama on offer.
This season initially looked very promising. After last year’s epic breakthroughs against five-in-a-row chasing Limerick, Cork appeared to have kicked on, winning the league for the first time in 27 years and laying waste to opposition as they went.
The potential following for the county hurlers is always huge. They have been selling out venues in Munster and last year helped to attract a capacity crowd to Croke Park for the All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick.
After the weekend, that rising reputation has been thrown into doubt. Their round-robin match against Limerick may not have had instant jeopardy, unlike last year’s championship encounters, which were sudden death for Cork and drew an appropriate reaction.
Graphic hidings like that on Sunday are an occupational hazard in hurling. As former Tipperary manager and coach, Eamon O’Shea, currently working in his home county of Galway with Micheál Donoghue, once remarked, the game is so skilled that even small disparities can end up in outsize margins.
Even so, for a team apparently on the road of inexorable progress, a 16-point defeat is a sombre starting point for the business end of a championship.
Limerick are now widely accepted as All-Ireland front runners after as good a display as they have given since the 2021 final. For a team that had been waylaid two matches from historic achievement last year, the rebound was predictable but not the complete lack of resistance.
If Cork are unable to reach the Munster final by not losing to Waterford on Sunday and then to give a significantly upgraded account of themselves in a Limerick rematch, the rest of the championship is unlikely to resume its status as a going concern.
Without that outcome, there will be diminished confidence about the prospects for a keenly contested All-Ireland.
Football is having a great season to date. There were inklings that the FRC enhancements were having an impact during the rain and the wind of the league campaign. Equally, though, there was trepidation that top teams may be holding back on ingenious strategies to confound or subvert the new rules or that the new two-point score would hasten and exacerbate punishment beatings.
That latter concern has not only failed to materialise but in fact winning margins have on average reduced since last year and across three of the four provinces with just Ulster margins of victory rising from 3.88 to 5.
The absence of an outstanding team, like Dublin recently overshadowing everything, has helped. But the championship has featured terrific contests, including three riveting provincial finals in Connacht, Ulster and Leinster, won by 0-2, 0-1 and 0-2, respectively.
As previously noted, the departure of Dublin at provincial semi-final stage helped no end in Leinster’s biggest final crowd in eight years, but small tweaks helped to bring that about.
The FRC had no role in the Dublin-Meath match being played in Portlaoise but the venue was more than likely an assistance to the underdogs, who had lost by 16 points the previous year when the fixture was played in Croke Park.
Gavin’s recommendations, though, did arguably influence the result. It was Meath’s harnessing of two-pointers that enabled them to express their first-half dominance on the scoreboard and lead by 12 at the break. The final score a year ago would have been a draw, as the winners’ four-point margin equates to their four-two advantage in two-pointers.
That famous result opened the door for Louth to win a first provincial title since 1957, which they did.
Matches have been more open and the availability of the two-pointer has contributed to as many unlikely comebacks as it has to hapless trimmings. The solo-and-go free has speeded up play and the penalty for impeding the kicker has been successful in preventing recourse to blocking and cynical interference as remedies.
Any inclination to backchat the referee is similarly punishable and such misbehaviour has been largely eradicated.
Whisper it to Hurling Man but it might even work a treat with the same carry-on in another code.
