Hurling is having its Bryson DeChambeau moment
Core skills of the game are being corrupted by the rise of long-range shoot-outs
THE winter All-Irel and Championship already feels surreal, ghostly and apocalyptic — so much so that even the deserted square in Thurles on Sunday afternoon, an hour before throw-in for Clare versus Limerick, resembled an out- take from 28 Days Later.
Among other strange sights was players wearing tracksuit bottoms during the warm-up, like the grizzled lads of Junior B who couldn’t resist going hard at it the night before and are happy to stay fully clothed for fear of being sprung early from the bench.
The public address system informed the teams that there were to be no handshakes or huddles at the end, and then followed by playing Hozier’s Take Me To Church at an ear- splitting volume, no doubt an attempt to manufacture some atmosphere in the absence of crowds.
After a terse week, when the l ogic of proceeding with the Championship while the country is in Level 5 lockdown was interrogated, and various critics wondered why the GAA seemed to have the same power as a certain religious institution, the track may have been meant for those worshipping via their home televisions.
For a match that doubled as a League final due to the disruption to the 2020 calendar, there has never been a trophy celebration as low-key as when Limerick captain Declan Hannon went solo up the steps of the Ryan Stand, sheepishly lifted the cup, and then rejoined his team-mates who had fanned out on the field THE in a socially distanced fashion.
scoring rate was also surreal. This was meant to be winter hurling, a time of year when the heavier sod slows everything down, when the colder air reduces striking distance of the sliotar, when the play slows a fraction compared to the hard, fast ground of summer.
And yet Limerick won in the end by 10, the final scoreline of 0-36 to Clare’s 1-23 raising questions about where the game is going, now that it has returned.
The statistical bible @GAA_ Stats quickly put the game in historical context.
‘Limerick’s total of 36 white flags is the second most ever (40: Cork 2019). It’s the most number of white flags for a team with no goal scored. It’s only the 4th time ever to have 60+ scores in a SHC game. It’s the 4th most w/flags ever in a SHC game.’
And there’s more: ‘ Limerick’s league win today was the highestscoring “home” final ever. Only the 1966, 1968 & 1970 finals vs New York were higher-scoring. It was also just the 7th NHL final to be won without the winners scoring a goal.
‘It’s only the 15th time (from over 2,100 games) that a team has won a SHC match by 10+ points, while scoring fewer goals.’
For all the scoring, all the genius of Tony Kelly’s joint record of 17 points and the marvellous skills of the likes of Gearóid Hegarty, it felt strangely unfulfilling.
This f elt different to Cork putting 40 points on Westmeath — a team from the Joe McDonagh Cup — in a preliminary AllIreland quarter-final last July. This was the Munster Championship against Clare, the land of Lohan and Loughnane.
Kevin Egan wasn’t alone in posing the question online.
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t enjoy hurling as much now that there are 60-70 shots on goal per game, and consequently a huge amount of restarts/stoppages? I feel like a huge amount of the continuity is gone out of the sport at the very elite level,’ he wrote.
As Michael Duignan replied in kind by way of explanation: ‘Agreed Kevin. Combination of lighter sliotar, better hurls, more skilful players and massive strength of the modern player.’
Not just continuity. ‘Basketball with sticks’ was one phrase used in reply.
As hurling writer Enda McEvoy put it: ‘It’s become TOO high scoring — and no, that’s not a good t hing. Scores s hould be earned.’
This column has flagged the changing scoring patterns for some time now. It has tracked ‘the 100-point club’ in the National League and highlighted how that glass ceiling has been smashed in Division 1 since 2015.
What is being lost? Quite a lot, actually.
The evolution of the game has seen ground hurling all but disappear. A TV viewer might accidentally stumble upon old matches and admire ground hurling’s lostart quality, like an anthropologist would the first cave paintings. Overhead pulling has also gone by the wayside, a staple of midfield and centre-forward play which, when carried off, has a glorious, crowd-lifting thrill to it.
The traditional midfield battle, where two sets of players tried to dominate the puck-out and dropping ball, has all but vanished. The middle third now a rolling, roiling ‘middle eight’ that can resemble the heaving mass of humanity that used to be Thurles square an hour before a Munster Championship throw-in.
For all the chances being created, the rate of goalscoring is not increasing in kind.
Go back 25 years — to Clare’s emergence from hurling’s wilderness and the defensive totem of Brian Lohan and Co. They were originally destined to get the redcarpet treatment on 2020’s AllIreland final day, walking out and waving to the crowd as part of the regular jubilee celebrations.
In the 1995 final, Clare’s 1-13 (14 scores) was enough to beat Offaly’s 2-8 (10 scores).
The Clare team now managed by Lohan hit the same number of scores combined on Sunday (24) yet were effectively beaten out the gate by the final whistle and left to stare into the chasm of a DUBLIN 10-point defeat.
versus Laois in the Leinster quarterfinal to mark the start of the All-Ireland Championship at Croke Park on Saturday night followed a similar pattern with Donal Burke matching Kelly by scoring 17 times in a Championship game and bridging a record that dates back to Eddie Keher in 1972.
When points are coming this cheap and this quickly, it devalues the whole scoring system, robs the game of its traditional nuance. Increasing the value of a goal is one way of keeping up with inflation but it’s arguably still not worth focusing on — not when you can rattle off five points in four minutes like Limerick did after the break.
The fundamentals of the game are under attack.
Hurling is having its Bryson DeChambeau moment.
On Friday, golf ’s own mad scientist and thinker put up an Instagram post: ‘First time over 400 yards… carry.’ Gulp.
Last season, DeChambeau was tops on the PGA Tour in driving distance with an average of 322.1 yards off the tee. After winning the US Open, he has his sights set on next month’s Masters — by going even longer. ‘Not even the 48-inch driver,’ he added, the maximum length allowed under the Rules of Golf.
To hit 400 yards is bordering on ridiculous and has the rest of the field running scared.
He is threatening the very fundamentals of the game by bypassing all the elements set up to make it a challenge – fairway bunkers, narrow fairways, trees, even going long over doglegs.
Hurling, too, is in danger of being bypassed in this new scoring blitz. Many elements are in danger of becoming redundant.
The weight of the ball is at issue here. The Junior B hurler who is slinging over 100-metre points is fairly thin on the ground. One simple answer is to have a different, heavier sliotar in use at elite level, at inter-county level.
What is being lost outweighs what is being gained. Only with a reduction in distance will the g a me be restored to its traditions.