Hurling is losing its warrior spirit
Referees are dishing out yellow and red cards far too easily
ON a weekend when Patrick Horgan skipped past Joe Canning to become hurling’s all-time championship scorer, it was a player who held the role previously that sprung to mind.
Kilkenny’s Eddie Keher held the record from 1972 until 2010 – until Henry Shefflin blew past. The former’s tally of 35-334 (439) took him past the legendary Christy Ring and put him in the conversation about the game’s true greats. Keher’s total was compiled in a time when Tipperary’s famous ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ full-back line was in vogue, when forwards were almost casually given a flake or two as they soloed towards goal.
In those days, to enter the actual goalmouth area could be enough to warrant a novena or two from supporters of a religious bent in the stand. There was certainly nothing soft about what constituted ‘the warrior game’, a phrase that has almost come to epitomise hurling’s unique selling point.
‘The blood and bandage’ is a colloquial name for Cork’s colours that always seemed to resonate. One of the most famous images of Ring himself is walking off the field in the 1957 championship against Tipperary, arm in a sling, as umpire and Limerick great Mick Mackey leans in to have a word in his ear.
Back in early 2014, Keher was so concerned about the direction hurling was going that he wrote to Croke Park officialdom seeking the removal of yellow and red cards as they are ‘totally at variance with the ethos, physicality and manliness of the game of hurling’.
On RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke, he expanded. ‘You can’t commit a technical foul,’ he said. ‘We always admired players who went for the 50-50 ball or even the 40-60 ball. Now, if you commit a technical foul, the player is consigned to a passenger for the rest of the game.
‘He can’t tackle or do anything. That takes away from the great physical part of our game.
‘Dirty play is another thing and people have misinterpreted what I said about that. I don’t advocate a return to the “Hell’s Kitchen” type of hurling. I’m talking about good, physical challenges. I just don’t like seeing cards bandied about in a triumphalist way.’
Kilkenny manager Brian Cody echoed his view, highlighting the high-profile dismissals of Shefflin and Horgan the previous summer to back up Keher’s thesis.
‘There is an over-emphasis on cards, without a shadow of a doubt. It can’t become a non-contact sport and there’s an emphasis on heading in that direction.
‘In Henry Shefflin, we’re talking about stylish players and players who play with absolute skill, being double yellow carded for nothing. And we saw Pat Horgan, who you could class in the same vein, a very skilful player, doesn’t get involved in rough and tumble stuff either, being red-carded as well. Both of them were rescinded.’
Double yellow carded for nothing pretty much covers what happened to Gearóid Hegarty on Sunday against Clare.
Just the latest in a series of yellow and red card decisions that continue the dilution of hurling as ‘the warrior game’.
That the 2020 Hurler of the Year was issued a first yellow card for pulling on a sideline ball as Clare’s David McInerney deliberately didn’t retreat the requisite 13 metres is a sad indictment of the game.
‘Absolutely crazy,’ said Shane Dowling on The Sunday Game and he was right. Then consider the second yellow that resulted in his dismissal: trying to tackle Clare substitute Aaron Fitzgerald in the hard-boiled, aggressive manner that is his right, only to catch him with the hurley in innocuous fashion. Despite it being hurley on hurley, the Clare player goes down like, as Dowling puts it, ‘a fella being shot with an AK47… this is very disappointing from his behalf.’
Not the first this year, and probably not the last. After consulting with his umpire and sideline official, referee Colm Lyons sees fit to issue a second yellow and a red.
Now Clare themselves recently appealed Ian Galvin’s red card against Cork for yet another soft sending off. Unfortunately, a byproduct of all the soft cards means that diving and feigning injury have become a regular feature.
Players think they can con a soft card out of officials, so have embraced the gamesmanship that became so pervasive in Gaelic football that another type of card – black – was introduced. The same sort of cynicism that saw hurling co-opt a black card.
A couple of hours earlier at Walsh Park, another former Hurler of the Year Austin Gleeson was dismissed for a hugely contentious second yellow.
Like Hegarty, it was his second red card of the year, to go with the one he received when giving Wexford defender Simon Donohue an innocuous dunt late in the league semi-final only to see the player collapse to the ground.
Like Hegarty – who The Sunday Game showed being wound up and grappled off the ball at one point by McInerney – here was Gleeson ending up on the ground in a grappling match with Robert Downey, only minutes after picking up his first yellow for a shoulder challenge on Mark Coleman that was a split second late but hardly deserving of a booking.
Right at the start of the game, Damien Cahalane got stuck into Stephen Bennett. Used a bit of stick too in front of the linesman on the stand side. No action was taken. When he tried it on a second time, he deserved his warning or certainly a yellow.
But, like a throwback, the game went on with no action and a fullblooded, physical, intense Munster championship game played out. And between Clare-Limerick, it was a cracking Sunday afternoon of live action that showcased so much of what is good too about the modern game – bar the cards.
Add them to the long list of wrongful reds this year – Cian Lynch’s straight red for NUIG after getting his hurley tangled in the legs of Bryan O’Mara in the Fitzgibbon Cup final was just shocking. Arguably a game-changer. Same as Hegarty and Gleeson.
Look at Noel McGrath’s red card in the Munster club championship against Ballygunner, when Paddy Leavy collapsed and made the most of the sort of contact that McGrath has taken himself plenty of times during his career.
“There is an over-emphasis on cards now”
“Referees make the wrong calls on hearsay”
Or Barry Coughlan doing the same when John McGrath went after the match ball.
All on the basis of second-hand evidence, forcing referees to make wrong calls on hearsay.
Players will always try to seek an advantage where they think they can get it. So don’t let them think they can get it.
At this point, the GAA will have to move towards the use of VAR for any red-card decision that the referee doesn’t see himself.
Nobody really wants to go down that road of introducing video delays to a game that is a mile-aminute. Introducing retrospective bans for diving or feigning injury is another way but the latter can be fiendishly hard to prove.
The alternative is to embrace the wisdom of Eddie Keher. Ditch the cards. All the participants involved know what truly constitutes dirty play and removal from the field. That hasn’t changed, in all the years of competition. The referee’s black notebook could do for cynical play.
Stay on this current course and the game is in danger of moving so far from its roots as to be unrecognisable.
It’s time to put the warrior back into the warrior game.