Shinty may not be so shiny but it still deserves to be shown more respect
MUCH has been made of how little exposure the lower-tier hurling counties received at the All-Star awards ceremony, but it was hardly the only slight fired in their direction in recent weeks.
Don’t be too hard on yourself if you were unaware that Ireland hosted Scotland in a shinty international last weekend as we almost missed out on it ourselves.
The first time we heard about it was 48 hours before the fixture was announced via email for Abbotstown. As it turned out, the match would prove to be every bit as underwhelming as the build-up, with Scotland completing their own fivein-a-row with a 22-point victory.
We can’t get too precious about this as shinty has never kept us awake at night, but the result was inevitable given that the Ireland team was made up in its entirety of players from outside the Senior Hurling Championship.
In the past, high profile stars such as Tipperary’s Pádraic Maher and Kilkenny’s TJ Reid, were among those who graced this annual series, presumably to enhance the experience and accentuate the sense of pride among those players from the game’s developing counties who got the call up.
These days, hurling gets its international kicks from the Super 11s which takes place in New York next weekend and which was launched amid much fanfare this week.
Tipperary, Kilkenny, Limerick and Wexford will travel for a sport which is a marriage of several disciplines and has been around for five years.
Meanwhile, the first shinty international was played in 1897, but that does not insulate its descent into irrelevance.
It won’t be mourned in that sense, but while it is still breathing there is a duty on the GAA to show it a greater duty of care.