Cody has blown them all out of the water again
WHEN I stood on the sideline as Limerick manager, there was no round robin, no safety hatch after a defeat, only the bus home to lick your wounds and go and milk the cows.
There was no draw the following morning on RTÉ radio, no place to hide.
I can’t abide the gimmickry that has crept in to the Championships.
People are delighted with the new hurling format, or so we’re told. The general consensus, fed by those fans with typewriters, is that it has all been great.
When president John Horan was on RTÉ for the latest draw, he said the crowds were big, the excitement was there — nothing about the product.
In any business, the product is the key — just ask Brian Cody. Why are people falling for all of this artificial marketing hype?
For all the hype about the newlook Championship format, to me, it is a phoney system. When I said it before, I got a lot of stick for it. But it doesn’t bother me to be the odd man out. Because now that it is all over, nothing has made me change my mind.
Everyone seems to have got caught up in the euphoria of the idea. I’m not one for knocking ideas but in my opinion, this is nothing more than a glorified League.
The more chances you have, the more chance you have of the top teams coming through.
In Leinster, the top three was well flagged while Munster was a complete mixed bag. That’s being kind to it.
Is everyone else on the tablets? I’m a traditionalist. Always have been. They have moved the goalposts too many times for my liking.
For all this talk of crowds being up, sure they would have to be with all the extra games. When we played in Cork or Thurles, there could be 40 or 50,000 at it. You got up in morning and the hairs were standing up on the back of your neck. There was no back door, no escape hatch. That brought an edge that is just not there now. It has been replaced by hype, which seems to work for some.
If you dissect and analyse a selection of the big matches, Limerick’s first game against Tipperary at the Gaelic Grounds was a non-event. What Tipperary were at, nobody knows. Starting with the team selection.
A game with a lot of hype, CorkLimerick, was another game that had the masses drooling. To me, Cork are a watery outfit who struggle to win two big games back to back. They couldn’t beat Limerick who were down to 14 men from the first half.
They have moved so far away from the traditions of Cork with this tipping and tapping. It’s back to the Dónal O’Grady era, except using the stick and not the handpass.
I honestly don’t know what they are doing; I don’t think they know what they are doing themselves. The second-half collapse against Tipperary and the struggle to get over a tired and depleted Waterford team who had little to play for says as much. Once a year would do me to watch Cork play in this manner.
For a team that won Munster last year, I haven’t seen one bit of improvement under John Meyler. And these are classical hurlers they have in the ranks.
Same with Waterford under Derek McGrath. Now they were done out of the Tipperary match. That decision in Limerick to award the ‘goal’ against Austin Gleeson was a hammer blow, a psychological blow that they never recovered from. It reminded me of the infamous goal in the LouthMeath Leinster final of 2010. Louth were a team that really needed to make the breakthrough – instead, that controversial defeat and decision had long-term effects. It remains to be seen if the same happens with Waterford.
Look at Limerick then, who went down to Ennis last weekend and collapsed. It was appalling to watch. Absolutely dire.
Manager John Kiely is deeply committed, only in this for the good of hurling. To say that the team were flat or tired though is a strange comment.
These are young fellas, in the prime of their life. If they were flat or tired it’s the training regimes that have the players murdered. The way things have gone, I’m more aligned to the Leinster style of hurling. I was hoping Dublin would make the breakthrough under Pat Gilroy but, like Waterford, the decision not to give a free out that led to Kilkenny’s winning goal in the opening round, undid them. It was the difference between winning and losing. With the exception of Davy Fitzgerald in Wexford, the emphasis is more on physicality and tradition. The Munster system has been diluted and polluted. Even with all the schemes and systems that Fitzgerald tells us he has, once again, Brian Cody has blown all of them out of the water.
The Munster system has been diluted