IN ALL FAIRNESS - Hurling trending in the wrong path

The first half of Saturday’s National Hurling League game between Limerick and Tipperary was a hard watch. Even taking the cold and wet conditions into account, there was little to excite the over five thousand people that made their way to Cork for a neutral venue hurling league game.

The over proliferation of the handpass and Brick-flick is something all hurling people should be concerned about. Sports evolve and certainly hurling is going through a major one at the moment, but evolution is good once the game doesn’t suffer, and I feel it is at the moment.

Hurling is now being poisoned by the possession disease that has made Gaelic Football a hard watch in recent years, bar when the few elite teams face off against each other. The thinkers have gotten their hands on the game and in an effort to find a new element to the game of hurling, they have made it harder to watch.

Now, some will argue that last years Munster Championship was one of the great hurling competitions with the quality of games, but there are elements such as the rise in the number of rucks for possession, clear throwing of the ball (Tipp as bad as anyone at the moment) plus the spare hand tackle which is making any legal use of the handpass very difficult indeed.

Nenagh Eire Og’s Conor O’Donovan has been on a crusade to tidy up this element of the game with changes to the handpass rule. However, I feel his proposals would be a profound shift in the way hurling would be played, maybe that would be a good thing. However, handpassing from the hand that the ball is in has been a skill in the game since 1884 and should not be removed. What is needed is enforcing the current rule of a clear striking action. A handpass that is a millimetre off the hand is not a clear striking action, in fact most inter-county teams are rolling it off the hand.

There is no doubt that this is being coached as coaches know that referees are not going to pull for it in all instances as they will come under pressure from players, managers, and supporters to keep the game flowing and not blow for technical offences. However, this is what is needed and why sometimes you have to destroy to create. What is needed to tidy up the current handpass is a hardline approach where any dodgy handpass is called as a foul. If that means forty handpasses in a game are pulled for frees then so be it. Coaches and players won’t be slow falling into line if the know illegal handpasses will be pulled. They are coaching throwing now because they know they will get away with it.

Because they are getting away with it, more teams are using the handpass as it is the safest way of retaining possession, along with the brick-flick, even if the ball only moves five yards. It might be the right thing to do but it doesn’t add much to the spectacle.

Long gone are the days when a full or corner back would win his battle and come out with the ball, open his shoulders, and leave the ball down the field a hundred yards, something that usually got the spectators out of their seats. Michael Breen won one such ball last Saturday night but instead he ended up giving a misplaced short pass into the midfield which ended up in Limerick possession. With the possession game, plus with teams largely setting up with sweepers, we don’t see many one-on-one battles anymore. Even team positioning doesn’t have the importance as they once did, the half forwards particularly are no expected to be back in their own full-back lines at times.

Limerick are the worst offenders in a lot of these aspects, but they are so good at them, and is why they are as dominant as they are, and good luck to them for that. However, I would hate to see their approach being copied by all teams. We saw Tipp trying to do it in the first half last Saturday night and the game was devoid of excitement, although things did improve in the second half.

You only have to look at Waterford for a team are straight-jacketed in a gameplan that even when they are a goal down with time almost up against Wexford, they still stick to it, even sitting off an allowing Wexford to play the ball around their own half killing time, even though Waterford needed to get their hands on the ball to try and retrieve the game.

Inter-county players are coached to such an extent that spontaneity and ingenuity are rare in the modern game, apart from Limerick who manage to marry both to a very high level. Key players in the modern game are the Tom Morrissey kind (as good as he is at what he does) rather than the Eoin Kelly’s, and when hurling is trending in that direction, it’s not a good one.