Who gave Enoch the log in codes?
Timmy Clifford is limited in his abilities as he is a grip changer/cack handed. Hasn’t stopped KK players making it before but he’s never going to be a 0-4 from play man because of this.
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Apparently all Wateford have to do to beat Limerick is target Diarmaid Byrnes according to Noel Connors.
Wonder have the new sliothars impacted diarmuid. His frees are off.
I’d take him off them Sunday. Just focus on his defence.
They’ll get some land when Byrnes lines out half forward
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The sliotars were the exact same last year too.
This batch are from the fact same source/factory
I don’t understand how reidy or gillane can’t take frees from 70/80 yards. Reidy especially.
Enda McEvoy: Last weekend was thrilling but in some ways also rotten for hurling
It is not the referee’s job to add to the spectacle at the expense of the rules.
MATTER IN HAND: In teeing up Patrick Horgan for Cork’s fourth goal against Tipperary, Shane Barrett showed how to execute a handpass correctly. Picture: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
SAT, 25 MAY, 2024 - 07:00
Rule 4 – Technical Fouls
4.2 (a) To throw the ball.
(b) To handpass the ball without it being released and struck with a definite striking action of a hand.
Early goals and late points. Cork rising and Tipperary sinking. Huge crowds, dubious penalties, umpiring controversy.
It was a weekend that contained almost everything. Above all it was a weekend that contained shameless rule-breaking to an unparalleled degree, accommodated by referees who didn’t want to know and who made no bones about not wanting to know. In some ways this was a rotten 24 hours for hurling.
Shall we start at Parnell Park, where the preamble to Dublin’s opening goal may have featured three throws — unquestionably two — and where Billy Ryan took eight or nine steps in sending Eoin Cody through for the winner?
Or at Semple Stadium, where the epidemic of illegal handpassing bet not just Banagher but Birr and Blue Ball and Bangkok too? Where early in the second half Mark Kehoe threw the ball to Jake Morris for the latter to point? Where it was hard to be sure whether Luke Meade had divested himself of two throws or just the one prior to Alan Connolly’s third goal?
“The flicks, the handpass – it’s wonderful to watch,” Marty Morrissey gushed. No, Marty. They weren’t handpasses and it was infuriating to watch. And dude, your job isn’t always to cheerlead for the match, right? Sometimes it’s okay simply to call the match.
One felt for poor Conor Bowe. Midway through the second half he had a temporary brainstorm and under pressure from absolutely nobody decided he’d venture a legal handpass. It took time. It took care. What was the man thinking?
“The game was riddled with unpenalised ball throwing,” tweeted the former Tipperary full-back Conor O’Donovan, long an advocate for amending the handpass rule. “Hurling is now a farce. With referees not penalising the throw we are seeing a sport that consists of ball throwing and ball striking. It’s called Hybrid Hurling.” Now here was somebody prepared to call it as it was.
Play
Unmute
Luke Meade of Cork during the Munster Hurling Championship match against Tipperary. Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
What made all this more irritating still was the fact that the protagonists were well capable of taking the legal option, and doing so cleanly and quickly, when they put their minds to it. A few minutes after his throw for Morris’s point Mark Kehoe produced a non-throw to Darragh Stakelum, who pointed. Unremarkable, except now we’re obliged to remark on these things.
And: far from throwing the ball back to Luke Meade in the midst of their duet, Alan Connolly, his right hand gripping his hurley two thirds of the way down, tapped it back to him off the bas. Fine improvisation, flawless technique and not a fraction of a millisecond lost.
And: far from throwing the ball to Patrick Horgan for Cork’s fourth goal Shane Barrett changed hands and offloaded it to his colleague. Copybook old-school stuff.
An hour earlier, 70 miles west, Mark Rodgers uncorked a monster of a handpass that split the Waterford defence for Darragh Lohan’s goal. It was high, it was looping, it contained a clear striking motion. The purist couldn’t have asked for more. The handpass is, after all, one of the skills of the Gaelic games family.
The spectator is left to conclude that this particular member of the family has become such a breakneck spectacle, Formula 1 with ash plants, that the men in the middle don’t want to be seen as the equivalent of marshals out waving their red flags and spoiling the excitement. On the basis that it’s long overdue, a small reminder as follows.
It is not the referee’s job to add to the spectacle at the expense of the rules. It is not the referee’s job to let the game flow at the expense of the rules. It may occasionally be the referee’s job to employ common sense at the expense of the rules but only in a one-off situation – on heavy ground when the sliotar is sticking, say - or a couple of one-off situations.
According to figures released by the former All-Ireland referee Barry Kelly on completing his term with the GAA’s Standing Committee on the Playing Rules, 100 handpasses occur in the average intercounty match, 40% up on five years ago. Three quarters – three quarters! - of them are illegal.
Lazy refereeing has brought us to this pass. Spineless refereeing is keeping us there.
Referee Barry Kelly during the 2017 All-Ireland Hurling Championship semi-final between Galway and Tipperary. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Then again, how hard ought we to be on the men in the middle if their riding instructions mandate light-touch regulation? An intercounty referee brought in to oversee one team’s in-house match recently told the players they needn’t be too fussy about their handpasses because clamping down on throwing the sliotar would not be a priority come the championship. (Goalies straying outside the small square when taking puckouts the opposite, seemingly.) Here’s a referees’ assessor – they’re known as referee’s advisors nowadays - who of necessity prefers anonymity. He’s frank about what’s happening. Words did not have to be put in his mouth.
“The ball is being thrown with impunity. Limerick have it down to a fine art but everyone’s at it. It’s got to the stage where even I’m ignoring it in my reports because the rule is not being applied. A lot of the problem is that the players are so good at it - it’s not as prevalent in the McDonagh or Ring Cups – and once they’re past the referee and have their back to him they can throw it knowing they won’t be spotted.”
Our man is not somebody for viewing the past through rosy binoculars. The modern game, he insists, is “100% more enjoyable” than the hurling of 40 or 50 years ago but there are two problems: throwing and steps. “And the non-application of the rules is deciding tight matches.”
Logic says it can’t be long before a big match is decided by a score arising from a blatant throw, in which case all hell will break loose. Or more likely all hell won’t break loose and there’ll barely be a whisper because we’ve become inured to it.
Tom Morrissey of Limerick during the 2022 All-Ireland Hurling Championship final against Kilkenny. Picture: by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Two years ago in the All-Ireland final, with the clock reading 63 minutes and the scoreboard reading Limerick 1-26 Kilkenny 2-23, Tom Morrissey turned infield from the Cusack Stand sideline and flung the sliotar back to Kyle Hayes, who split the uprights from 60 metres. Colm Lyons was ten metres away with a clear line of sight of this potential two-point turnaround and did nothing. Limerick being Limerick it didn’t make a blind bit of difference in the end; they pushed their lead out to five points before winning by two. But that’s not the issue.
It is diverting to visualise the Munster or Leinster final being refereed by a man determined to adhere to the rules, a kind of contemporary Gary Cooper figure. Ponder the ensuing anti-classic, a horrible, fractured, joyless affair riddled with frees where every ball moved via the hand is, unless enacted with the stipulated “definite striking action”, is blown. The crowd would hate it, which is unfortunate. The teams would hate it, which is not, and would not be slow to mend their ways once the penny dropped.
Naturally it won’t happen. It would take a brave referee to give two or three early frees for illegal handpasses. It would take a referee with a death wish to give more than five. And even then he would, as per Barry Kelly’s figures, have 70 more to go.
Limerick are taunting us
The most egregious umpiring decision of the weekend came not in Ennis but in Thurles. Patrick Horgan didn’t so much time his run into the square as time his amble and poke the sliotar home. It shouldn’t have been a difficult call. It wasn’t.
That’s two wins for Tipperary in 14 provincial outings since the 2019 All-Ireland triumph. Turns out Liam Sheedy did a deal with Faust on the road home to Portroe from training one evening. Who knew?
Every year Limerick demonstrate the decency to refrain from going four for four in the round robin, as if to give hope to the world. They’re just taunting us, of course, and a defeat in Páirc Uí Chaoimh that looked nothing to worry about a fortnight ago looks even less so after Cork’s franking of the form.
It is to be hoped that the concession of four goals in Ennis, three straight down the middle in the absence of Conor Prunty, does not force Waterford to second-guess themselves tomorrow. If it’s unlikely they’ll beat the champions by cutting loose, it’s a certainty they won’t beat them by sitting back.
Lastly, should we not see Noel McGrath in the intercounty arena again after today the pleasure, the privilege has been entirely ours. Many a lesser player would have sprained a wrist attempting the pass he six-ironed over the Cork cover for Kehoe’s goal.
No. He didn’t throw it.
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Ruh roh
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Fifty grand I’m hearing
Article about last weekends hurling that then goes off on Limerick… Kinda like on here. Limerick are on everyone’s mind.
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The Kilkennys don’t like the new order
An awful lot of words to get to his historic gripe…Tom Morrissey threw the ball to Kyle Hayes for the lead point late in the AIF 2 years ago.
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Do the Limericks have someone in the Eddie Keher role to reply with the virtues of manliness ect
We had Tom Ryan but he’s still sour with Limerick over the league semi final collapse
He wanted to mention Barry letting Coen throw the ball to Joe for the winner in 2017…… he really wanted to but the KK is strong in him
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That thrun ball changed hurling.
Thats a great piece by Enda McEvoy that should be on everyones lips but there is a clear policy in modern day GAA that throwing is now considered good for the game, the game is totally shite nowadays. Even take Cork u20s last night, they threw and stepped their way down the field.
Their is little or no passages of actual “hurling” in the game any more which is very very sad to see.
It stopped a 4 in a row for Tipp
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That was probably the most vivid example of a game being decided by a throw but McEvoy failed to mention it alright.