Good article by Cusack again. It’s great to see someone critique the game who isn’t coming from a position of ignorance. He knows what he’s talking about.
I never think there’s much need for fretting over ‘state of the game’ though. It’s merely evolution. The obsession with physicality right now is at source an indication of greater implementation of conditioning expertise in preparation. And the gap is still big enough between hurling and professional contact sports that the trend is going to continue for some time.
The next big change I expect to see is the physical condition of guys coming out of minor. That McClelland lad for Dublin is going to become the norm. When you think about it it’s totally unacceptable for the mish-mash of physical conditions that elite players currently graduate from the underage system in. With the level of preparation now involved, a lad getting to 19 or 20 underweight is as bad as a lad only having one side. The gap from minor to senior just shouldn’t be as big as it is.
I think it’s going to go a lot more like the US high-school division 1 culture where players are being produced for the college system, wherein the players are at an elite level of athleticism. With the development squads the structure is already there to do it, and it’s only a matter of time before counties start producing minor sides who have 2-3 years serious conditioning programs done, and who are already sufficiently developed to mix it at senior level.
Yeah but players with exceptional technical levels like Deane will always come through, they’ll just get the conditioning training they need to make it at an earlier age.
Tackling and breaking tackles are skills in themselves people should remember, skills that are just coached better in Kilkenny than anyone else. Tommy Walsh is obviously an excellent athlete, but he breaks tackles easier than lads way stronger than him because he’s just better at doing it. Naturally smaller guys will still make it, but they’ll have to be given the conditioning and the skills they need to do so. Same as always really, just with added dimensions.
Do ya not think Kilkenny get away with a lot of actual fouling when tackling and that Donal Og is really calling for them to be refereed a bit more strictly? If someone could throw up the Sunday Game clip Duignan used to highlight their ferocious tackling on Sunday nearly all of them were fouls. For instance TJ Reid clearly fouled P Maher in the incident late the game when Maher swiped at him yet this was never mentioned and it obviously wasnt going to be a free as otherwise the ref would have thrown the ball in for Maher’s retaliation.
On the flip side a lot of this type of tackling is as a result of players running directly at and through their opponents which didn’t happen as much in the past, when fellas would have just let the ball go quicker. When they do this they nearly always take too many steps yet this is never called up. Everyone does it but an awful lot of KK’s quick-fire game killing goal bursts in recent years from the likes of Shefflin and Brennan came from them using their strength and bursting through tackles close to goal and taking seven or eight steps. Just when they go through a tackle en route it doesn’t look like it.
The games can be thrilling to look at the way they are being reffed nowadays so maybe this should continue but if you want to get away from the ‘physicality’ it just requires refereeing to the rule book. As Donal Og says Kilkenny would probably just win anyway.
The rulebook is woefully inadequate. It bears little or no relation to how the game is actually played and that’s where the problem is. Referees who try to apply the letter of the law completely destroy games because when it comes down to it, the law is an ass. The referees that players and managers respect are the ones who do the best job of interpreting the rules in a way that actually reflects the sport itself.
In terms of the tackle, any team trying to tackle in a way that is legitimate under the rulebook would be utterly destroyed. Opposition players would just blow past them all day long. Again the rulebook doesn’t reflect what players actually have to do to challenge the player in possession.
An expert group being called together to discuss the tackle with a view to redefining it might be a good thing. It might be, but it’s far more likely that it would be a disaster. If I thought it would work I’d be in favour of it, but more often than not organic change within the sport itself brings about far better solutions than heavy handed intervention.
What about the steps thing? Do ya think that’s a problem? Even if they were stricter on that maybe the game would become slightly less physical again as fellas would stop trying to run through each other like Jonah Lomu.
Hard to know really as there is very little wrong the with the sport that was played in 09 and '10 finals. The big problem we might as well admit it, is that Kilkenny are just too good. If they would just fuck off we’d have an unbelievably competitive championship and no one would be giving out at all!
That goes back to the whole thing of whether you give the advantage to the tackler or the player in possession. If it was strictly enforced you’d have one of two outcomes. The first outcome is that players start to move the ball much quicker because it’s extremely difficult to take the ball into contact and break the tackle (or tackles) in 4 steps, and the game speeds up significantly. The second outcome is that the game starts breaks down constantly because it is just too difficult for the player in possession and playing
defensively (or negatively) starts to yield greater rewards.
Again I’d be inclined to leave it up to the players and coaches to figure out the solutions. They’re the ones putting the most time into the game and they almost always know best.
As someone who has watched and played the game for a good few decades a couple of things strike me about this debate.
First up, as a spectacle the game is being destroyed by the need at all times for a player to get the ball into his hand. This leads to the interminable rucks and throw ins that now account for a sizable portion of game time. The notion of pulling on a ball on the ground is alien, entirely alien, to inter county players. It’s obviously a cardinal sin to give away easy possession but these rucks are contributing hugely to the physicality required for the game.
Similarly doubling on the ball overhead, is finished as an art form. Half forwards and midfielders are expected to be able to catch their own ball or else the team is fucked. That’s a new development. In the 70s 80s and early 90s the only players expected to be proficient in overhead catching was the full forward. There is also clearly something underhand about the way a number of halfbacks compete for the high ball which Cusack alludes to. Too many half backs obviously leverage off the forward in front of them when challenging for the ball, which is a foul everytime but it is a subtle one and rarely given. When a back who is 5 or 6 inches shorter than the man he is marking wins a ball over his mans head from behind without his feet leaving the ground there is obviously something afoot. When this happens ten times in a game you have to start smelling a rat.
The obvious way to play against a dominant half back line though unless you want to bypass it the way Cork used to is to have the courage and the skill to play fast ball. To double on the puck outs and pull on the breaking ball. To do that you need fast skillful players and not the behemoths we are developing now.
I groaned when I read above the comment about minors having two or three years serious conditioning ? Ffs these are teenagers who should be getting a serious education, first and foremost and then should be enjoying themselves. Creating a generation of gym monkeys is not what hurling needs. What hurling needs is a generation of fast skillful mavericks. Guys who learn their trade belting a sliothar off a gable wall, not pumping weights in a gym. On a related note development squads will be the death of hurling. Maverick hurlers either don’t make the cut for these or have the maverick coached out of them. These squads are breeding a generation of big bulky lads with identical skills no matter where you are in the country. They are all coached the same way and of course a chap who is 6 foot at 14 will always dominate so it is these chaps who make the squad. Smaller kids and late developers don’t make the squads and in effect their inter county careers are over at 14. A Joe Deane or a John Mullane wouldnt have a hope now of an intercounty career.
Lads are playing the game the way they are coached i.e. drills are all about gaining possession into hand quickly and maintaining that possession.
I have always viewed hurling as a unique field sport where the emphasis was on moving the ball quickly so as to gain maximum reward i.e. to score goals and create goal opportunities. To do this you must risk losing possession through ground hurling, overhead pulling etc.
That is not to say that if a player gains possession and has time that accurate balls can not be played that give the forward an obvious advantage.
Backs hate quick unpredicatable balls but the modern one dimensional forward is incapable of flourishing under this type of game and as a result the game has ‘evolved’ into what we see today where teams are literally trying to score x amount through possession.
Hurling has always been an instinctive game and that is what made it beautiful. Unfortunately to play intercounty nowadays you require only a certain skillset as tactics are devised around this.
The other thing I meant to mention was socio economic factors. TASE often slags hurling off as a hobby. But that’s what it was and that is what it will become again except for a privileged few. For economic reasons people with jobs are working way longer hours and the days of a lad spending five or six years in an IT effectively as a full time hurler and then falling arse backwards into a handy job in the bank are over. People will work their holes off to get a good leaving and a top degree and if they are lucky enough to get a job they’ll work damn hard to keep it. They won’t disappear five days a week at 5 oclock to do mental training sessions and then turn in exhausted for work the next day. Not in most jobs anyway. So hurling will have to revert back to being a hobby that you indulged when you are not at work rather than work being something that passed the time between training sessions.
…except that really hurling is about ‘moving the ball quickly through your own players so as to gain maximum reward’ - the latter part isn’t just stating the obvious, you have to have the former and latter in tandem to be effective. Ground hurling and overhead pulling get in the way of intelligent hurling not only because of the inaccuracy but also because modern players typically move the ball faster and further out of their hand then they do on the ground. Look, the only way to beat a team like KK (and Galway as well probably) and thus change the way teams play the game is by precision hurling, intelligent use of the ball in every sector of the pitch and non stop support play. A return to primordial styles of hurling is the antithesis of the type of hurling needed to beat a team like Kilkenny.
Bullshit, lads are playing with hurleys a couple of inches less than ideal. they are doing this as the modern game is not about driving the ball long, overhead pulling or ground hurling.
Paudie O Sullivan plays with a ridiculously short hurley. I know for a fact that when questioned about this, he remarked ‘sure i never need to pull on the ball’.
I have seen plenty of accurate ground hurling and overhead pulling in my time. You think this is impossible Turenne as you are of a generation that has come accustomed to the ‘modern game’ where this is not used.
