Liam O’Neill keeps open mind as to how hurling is developed

GAA president Liam O’Neill has opened hurling to a wider debate so that “all hurling people can give their views” and articulate “where they see it going in the future”.

He stopped short of calling for a Hurling Review Committee – along the lines of the Football Review Committee, which recently introduced the black card to deal with cynical fouling in that game – although O'Neill was clearly prompted by comments from Kilkenny manager Brian Cody earlier this week, and his misgivings about the enforcement of discipline in hurling, and also a recent proposal by Kilkenny hurling icon Eddie Keher, who advocated the abolition of yellow and red cards.

“Clearly, with the contributions given in the last couple of days, there is an appetite for discussion, so let’s do it,” said O’Neill.

“We’re not going to be prescriptive about it. And I’m not sure how it will work out. We’ll discuss it at Central Council, and whether it will be an open hurling forum, whether we will have a meeting, because I’m not quite sure how people will want to do it.

“But I think now that the debate has been opened up, let’s go do it. Let’s talk to hurling people, let all hurling people give their views.

“I think we’ve proven in the FRC survey, where we got 13,900 responses, that people want to talk.

“And I think in that survey it was mentioned that 20 per cent expressed the view that they wanted further development of hurling. So it’s in that context we’ll do it.

“And rather than having a debate across the airwaves and doing nothing, let’s have a debate where we can give everyone their opportunity to input into hurling, and where they see it going in the future.

“You can say you want no change. If we had no change in hurling, we’d still be playing across the valleys.

“That’s where our hurling started. But hurling has evolved and it has to continue to evolve. And we reached the stage last year where the evolution of hurling reached the stage that it gave us that great championship.

“If people don’t want to change at this particular point in time, that’s fine. But at least let’s have the debate and get people’s views on it.”