HURLING AND FOOTBALL WERE NEVER AS FAR APART
It’s a brave new world for one code while the other stumbles on towards an inevitable conclusion
THIS summer will mark 20 years since the end of hurling’s revolution. For five crazy and eventful summers, the Liam MacCarthy was passed from Offaly to Clare to Wexford and back to Clare and Offaly. It was fresh and wonderful and was meant to herald a brave new era for our national sport.
Once the revolution was over though, the game reverted to tradition. From 1999 to Clare’s success in 2013, the All-Ireland title once again became the preserve of the big three — Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary. In the same period, eight different counties took home the Sam Maguire with two, Armagh and Tyrone, getting their hands on it for the first time.
Things have flipped again. While the football fraternity are fretting over what will become of their game in the face of Dublin’s total domination, hurling is promising a return to its unpredictable and democratic state of the mid-1990s.
Drawing up a list of realistic contenders for the All-Ireland title illustrates the stark difference between the codes. In football, a lot of people would consider Dublin and Mayo as the two teams likely to take home the cup on September 2. At a push, Kerry could be included and if you were feeling particularly generous, you might say Tyrone. So, football has four credible All-Ireland contenders and that’s stretching things.
Now, look at hurling. Galway and Tipperary are rightly considered the favourites but a case can be reasonably made that another six teams should have ambitions of claiming the top prize — Waterford, Kilkenny, Wexford, Clare, Cork and Limerick. Eight sides with genuine All-Ireland ambitions. It is something that’s only a pipe dream for Gaelic football, in its current state.
With one code so rich in promise and the other at risk of stagnation, perhaps the time has come for hurling to stand on its own two feet, so it can truly thrive. It is something that has been advocated almost since the inception of the Association, by hurling men everywhere. That the game needs to release itself from being bonded to the bigger ball.
But with attendances thriving, with the new round-robin format creating increased interest, with Wexford and Limerick threatening to emerge as genuine forces once again, should we not consider the idea of a separate hurling body so that the game can thrive even more?
It is not a new idea. Former Wexford boss Liam Griffin floated the idea of a body that solely looked after the game back in 2002. ‘Personally, I feel it may be time to have a separate hurling authority,’ he said at the time. ‘If a person is dying of several diseases, doctors won’t try and treat them all together, they’ll see can they sort one out first. Hurling needs a focused approach that maybe a large umbrella organisation like the GAA can’t give it.’
At the time, Griffin made the suggestion to stop hurling being wiped out in large parts of the island. And while it is true that the game, at an elite level, still resembles a regional, rather than national, delicacy, wouldn’t a separate hurling board be more inclined to build solid foundations in the upper part of the island, where only the evangelical zeal of the odd committed club man is keeping the game alive?
The problem with keeping both codes under the one umbrella is that both teams have to be treated as if they are the same, when they are clearly not. So when Páraic Duffy unveiled his proposal for the Super Eights, hurling went up in arms, with some claiming the game was being neglected. Hence we have the new round robin format in Munster and Leinster.
The funny thing at the time was that the hurling Championship was everything that the football Championship should be. They had four tiers (now five with the advent of the Joe McDonagh Cup) to accommodate the fact that there are teams competing at different levels. Hurling has long since accepted that some teams will always be stronger than others, something that football is struggling to come to terms with. But it means that hurling will start with a bang this May — Limerick will face Tipperary, Cork will play Clare, Galway face Kilkenny, Tipperary meet Cork and Clare clash with Waterford all over two weekends —while football has to fall back on two games, Mayo vs Galway and Tyrone v Monaghan, to give the impression that it is competitive. There is a concern that the round-robin format will see a decrease in attendances, particularly towards the latter stages. Considering hurling’s bumper attendances last year — down to Cork and Wexford reaching their respective provincial finals — it is understandable. But even in the age of the sweeper and seventh defender, hurling has attracted crowds. And in the summer, it can put football in the shade — two days after 4,500 walked through the turnstiles to watch Cork’s Munster football semifinal with Tipperary in Páirc Uí Rinn on a sunny Satur-
Perhaps it is now time for hurling to stand on its own two feet
day afternoon, almost that twice that crowd came to the same ground to watch the same two counties contest a Munster minor hurling match.
A separate body will only ensure that those attendances continue on an upward graph. And they can also look at tackling hurling’s problems and ills in a way separate to football. Cynical play has infected hurling to perhaps a greater extent now than it did with Gaelic football before the advent of the black card. The sharp decrease in goals in this year’s Allianz League wasn’t simply down to teams deploying a sweeper. A far greater reason was that whenever forwards had a sniff of a goalscoring opportunity, they were simply hauled down by defenders. In almost every Division 1 game, there was evidence of this.
If the suggestion of a black card does cause hurling people to roll their eyes skyward and guffaw, then why not set up a body that can devise their own solution to this growing problem. And a separate body can look at issues which football doesn’t have to concern itself with. Standardising the weight and size of the sliotar, standardising the size of the hurl, devising a way to cut down on the number of rucks that are now developing in almost every match. Hurling and football have different issues — they should work separately to solve them.
If hurling focused simply on itself — and making itself the best product that it can be, it can be marketed and promoted to the outside world accordingly. And the game can concentrate on getting into the vast tracts of this island where it has never been able to penetrate.
Hurling and Gaelic football will never feel like two more separate entities than this summer, as excitement builds over the possibilities of one All-Ireland Championship while the other staggers to what seems an inevitable conclusion.
If the national game is on the brink of another revolution, there will never be a better time to let it stand alone. Stand on its own two feet. After all, that is what Michael Cusack envisaged when he founded the GAA. He did so as a means to ensure that hurling flourished.
More than 130 years later, hurling has the chance to flourish again — but its best chance of doing so is by standing on its own.