fitz
Fanatical Member
Red sky at night get off my land
Posts: 1,719
|
Post by fitz on Sept 5, 2017 22:55:28 GMT
The contrast between the way hurling is reffed and the way football is reffed was striking yesterday. Imagine David Gough being in charge of a game where there was no free awarded for almost 10 minutes. It looked to me that the ref and his linesmen didn't want to be the centre of attention. They certainly didn't look like they had spent the days beforehand in the barbers making sure there wasn't a hair out of place as the TV zoomed in on them dishing out card after card. Great point. Unless a baseball bat was produced, no free. There were definitely fouls ignored but the game was played in a tremendous spirit. Once players realised it would flow, they seemed ready to absorb some expected injustices. Twas 'manly stuff'. A real honest game with so little time to be arsed with off the ball nonsense. Football officiating as highlighted by Gough's risible performance in semi, shows a gulf in honour in which both codes are officiated and often played. The frenetic efforts of players grappling to get sliotar off the ground is something to behold. Total concentration in desperation but not a dirty stroke pulled. It is truly a hair raising game of brilliance when both team throw down with honesty, passion, skill, heart and grit
|
|
|
Post by glengael on Sept 6, 2017 10:05:58 GMT
The u-21 Final should interesting, KK v Limerick. KK haven't won since 08.
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 6, 2017 18:49:01 GMT
The Kerry U21 hurlers are live on TG4 on Saturday playing Wicklow in the B final before the HH v Limerick game
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 6, 2017 18:53:13 GMT
Joe Canning opens up on parents' illness, how losing Galway captaincy knocked his confidence and GAA booze culture
Vincent Hogan August 6 2017 12:00 AM What if the wrong team just keeps winning? What if the evening cheers rolling up out of Croke Park tomorrow come from Tipperary lungs and Joe Canning soon slips into his 30th year, the light still on amber for his All-Ireland hopes? What if this story simply isn't destined to crest with a September climb up the Hogan?
It's almost a decade now since we in the media, like a College of Cardinals, took to welcoming a new Pope. Joe hit the summer of' 08 like a hurricane, scoring 2-12 for Galway against Cork in Thurles. Just 19 and only his second senior Championship game. The rest of the Galway team summoned three points between them.
Those who'd been in Semple Stadium that day acquired the status of eye-witnesses. The big kid just went barrelling into Cork like an angry weather front and very nearly won the game for a team that all but didn't show.
In the nine summers since, Canning's excellence has been a constant but, at some point, our narrative tilted. We took to wondering if he might simply be cursed to be remembered as the most gifted hurler never to win the Liam MacCarthy. This isn't his trade, his job, his livelihood, yet that is how he's found himself judged endlessly. As if the old game represented the only point of his existence.
We meet in Oranmore, nine years on from our first interview. The timing isn't his preference. An original plan to speak the week after the Leinster final was re-worked for our convenience. It feels important to record that.
The years have brought a conspicuous physical sharpening of Joe's body, but in other ways he is unchanged. In conversation, he seldom takes refuge in cliche. He is both interested and interesting, armed with the ice-pick-sharp self-awareness of a man whose every sporting disappointment seems to draw the clucking of a thousand tongues.
For most of his career, Galway defeats have been personalised into audits on his game. Then somebody had the bright idea of putting his image, in giant form, on the side of the team bus. "Oh I hate that," he says now unequivocally. "I don't want that. I wanted it changed at the time. But who was I to say take it down or not? That sort of stuff, I don't need, like."
Because it adds to the cliche about it only being about Joe?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, one hundred per cent. You know that perception was out there. But I think it's gone now for the last number of years and I'm a lot happier with that. Because, f**k it, that's not me. "Like, I come from a big family. I know better than anyone that you have to earn your crust and get on with other people to be a success. I remember having it out actually with Mam and Dad one day. Just telling them that I wasn't enjoying it, that I was sick of that perception that was out there. For a few years, every time we lost, it was nearly on my head.
"When we won, it was great. But, when we lost, it was the worst ever."
To some extent, that summer of '08 set Canning a vicious trap. It turned his story into a pageant. He became the kid who was permitted no frailties.
"Probably hitting that 2-12 against Cork was the worst thing I ever did," he says flatly now. "At that age… it set standards different to everybody else."
Standards he would become chained to.
Even now, even this summer with the new, thrilling democracy of Galway's attacking play, Canning can't quite escape the sense of being judged differently. The Monday before the Leinster final, his dad, Sean, told him he'd need to "improve" on his performance against Offaly. Why? Joe had not registered a score from play in Galway's 19-point win.
"He was seeing this in the paper, that I'd had a bad match or whatever," Canning remembers now. "Dad was at the match himself and we'd scored 33 points against a team playing two sweepers and two midfielders pulled deep, a team playing practically ten backs.
"I was trying to argue my case that, if we score 33 points on the day, does it really matter who gets what? But Dad being Dad and me being his son, he wants me to do well...
"And he's old school, he grew up in a generation where whatever is in the paper must be true. Or whatever is said in town over a few pints on a Saturday night, that's it. We'll often have arguments about stuff like that and that's just him being my father, wanting me to be better. I'd be a bit worried if he came in to me on a Monday and said 'You did fine the last day, just do that again…'
"He'd rather we'd score 36 or 37 points with me adding four or five from play and have lads coming up to him after, saying 'Jesus he was flying today!' I get that. That's what every parent wants. And we'll have it out, see each other's points.
"Maybe I wouldn't see his as much as he'd see mine (laughing), but that's part and parcel of it too."
Some weeks ago, Canning was giving a talk to school kids when, almost unwittingly, he found himself drawn towards a personal confession. For years, the compulsion to meet others' expectations became a little suffocating and joyless, a ritual in service to the idea that every big hurling game must, by necessity, be some kind of flashlight to his soul. Then, within a few short months in 2015, both parents were diagnosed with cancer, his mother Josephine with breast, Sean with prostate. Thankfully both are doing fine now, but those months served to recalibrate a lot of things inside Joe Canning's head.
Things he found himself exploring with those school kids.
"It's embarrassing for me to say it," he reflects now "but it probably took Mam and Dad being sick to make me appreciate life and appreciate that hurling isn't the be-all and end-all. It seems a bit foolish looking back, thinking 'What were you putting yourself under so much pressure for?' Or letting the public get to me more than anything else.
"Like, I realise that there's different standards that I'm judged on. I didn't score from play in the last two matches and people are like 'Jesus, he was non-existent!' You can't really win, but you come to accept that as you get a little bit older.
"Nobody really knew Mam and Dad were sick, apart from people close to it. It wasn't a public thing. I'd be very close to Mam especially, because I'm the baby in the family. When I was growing up, she brought me everywhere. Dad would bring the older guys to their games but with me, it was always Mam and my sister Deirdre. I'm obviously named after her as well.
When the two of them got sick, it hit me hard. Like, people often ask me why do I play hurling. Why do you do it? I do it for Mam and Dad, to make them feel proud. To see the smile on their faces after a game. Like every young person, I probably took what my parents did for granted. But their sickness made me appreciate what they did for me a lot more. "That's the growing up part for me I suppose. I don't know if it's changing from a child to an adult or what..."
That summer of 2015 comes back to him now, laden with heavy energies. He was just pipped by Cathal Mannion as Galway's top scorer from play in a Championship campaign that took them all the way to September. But Canning's recall of it is that he was judged to have "had a bad year". Certainly, it was a campaign that came to challenge him in more personal ways than he'd known previously.
Having been Galway captain in 2014, he lost the role without any communication from management for the reason. He'd considered turning the position down when Anthony Cunningham first mooted the idea, worried that it might deepen the intensity of focus upon him. When he'd sought the counsel of two brothers, Frank and Ollie, they too expressed their reservations.
"But then… to be asked to captain your county doesn't happen very often…"
Galway's 2014 campaign had petered out with a late All-Ireland qualifier meltdown against Tipperary in Thurles and, when they regrouped the following season, there was no mention of who would be captain.
Had he seen the demotion coming?
"I wasn't told, no."
So how did he hear?
"I had to ring and ask," he remembers now. "For some reason, I don't know if I was injured or something, but I'd come back a little late that year and there were a few games that I didn't play in. I don't know why. But lads kept asking me 'Are you captain again this year?'
"Dad was asking me at home. 'What's the story?' And I'm 'I don't know...' "Because I played one or two matches in the League then and I wasn't captain. So many people were asking, it was getting to me. Because I honestly didn't know. Usually, it's announced at the start of the year, but it was never really announced. So I rang and he (Cunningham) never really said I was or I wasn't. He was just 'Well, we'll see in a while…'.
"Then David Collins was captain for a few games and continued. And that's the way it filtered out. I was never actually told, 'Listen, we're changing the captain!' And that was a big blow I suppose to my confidence.
"It's probably selfish to say it, but it's the truth. It was the first time I'd been captain of nearly anything. The only other times were my last years at minor and U-21. And I knew for years that captaincy didn't sit well with me."
How exactly? "I don't know, I suppose I grew up with Ollie being captain for years with the club. And it struck me that he always said the right things at the right time. That was probably ingrained in me more than anything… I felt I could never be the same as him as captain. I tried to and that was probably the wrong thing to do.
"Looking back, I probably wouldn't have taken it now. But then again, would I have ever got the chance again? Captain of Galway is a huge honour, like. You can't turn it down."
Living in Dublin at the time probably didn't help him in the role, and hindsight gives him an easy understanding now of why Cunningham might have favoured a change. But the execution of the decision left something to be desired.
"Just the way it was done," he stresses. "I wouldn't mind if I was told, 'Listen, we don't think this is working, we're going to go with somebody else...' One hundred per cent, I could take that, no problem. It's just I was never told really or given a reason why. And I accept it might sound selfish to say it knocked me, but that's human nature.
"It probably knocked Mam and Dad as well. They were asking 'Why aren't you captain?' People were asking them too. And I'm 'I don't know!' The normal thing is a captaincy lasts two or three years unless the management changes. But the management didn't change.
"And, yeah, I found that tough."
HE sits now in T-shirt and shorts, sipping constantly from a litre bottle of water. At 6ft 2in and 92kg (14st 7oz), Canning's athleticism is palpable. His frame has been re-shaped by the imperatives facing the modern GAA county man and it seems startling to consider that in the soaring skyline of Galway's attack, he is far from the most imposing now.
Canning's frame has changed with the years and it had to. In the first half of his career, his weight was an issue and he is disarmingly open about the route he took to change.
It was the season of 2009 and he'd been struggling for some time with the heel condition plantar fasciitis. The problem became compounded by sciatica and, with Galway due to play a Leinster Championship semi-final against Kilkenny in Tullamore, Canning was struggling to track down a solution. He'd got insoles and plasma injections, visiting just about every specialist familiar to the broader GAA community.
Then a friend in Cork recommended a Scottish chiropractor, Ian Law, based in Carrigaline. A recommendation that changed everything.
"I got all the usual warnings you get about chiropractors, people telling me 'Don't go near them!' he reflects now. "But I just thought 'I've nothing to lose here'.
In a single week, Canning was seen 21 times by Law, the results so profound he would continue visiting the practice for years to come. One of the immediate consequences of those visits was his body shedding large quantities of fluid.
"Whatever he was doing to me, I seemed to be on the toilet the whole time, p***ing. I was just getting rid of excess water and I'd say I lost about a stone in that time," he remembers. "He was just cracking my back and stuff. I was all tight and had bad posture and, because of that, seemed to be retaining excess water inside of me. I was probably blocked up a little bit.
So I lost a lot of weight then and that continued into 2010 and 2011. By 2012, I was down to my lightest ever. I mean going down to him, I was probably 16 stone. It was too much. But I remember we played St Thomas's in a (Galway) semi-final in 2013 and I was 88kg then, the lightest I'd been in a long time. Just under 14 stone.
"I'm back up to 92kg now because I'd probably lost too much. And I'm happy with that. Like, I'd be one of the lightest bigger lads in the Galway panel now, even if I still look a bit heavier than others.
"But seeing him was a big turning point for my physique."
He has had his injury setbacks along the way since, none more challenging than the chronic hamstring tear that forced him out of last year's All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary. The Galway physios had been able to tell him instantly that the injury would require surgery, but Canning admits he did not fully process that information until presenting himself into Eanna Falvey's clinic the following Monday week.
He had no power in the leg and found it painful to sit on, yet found himself clinging to the forlorn hope that aggressive physiotherapy might resolve the problem.
"Until I actually sat in Eanna's room and he said to me 'When can we get this surgery done?', it hadn't really registered with me.
"Suddenly, I was kind of sitting there, going 'F**k!'
He was operated on in Cork the following Tuesday, turning up at Portumna training that evening on crutches and with a knee brace that would remain in place for the next six weeks.
"I couldn't straighten my leg for those six weeks until they were happy the wound had healed," he reflects now. "The tendon had been stitched back. Like, I had to even wear the brace in bed because, if I straightened my leg, I could have ripped the stitches open.
"I was unlucky that it was so severe, yet lucky too that it wasn't worse. There was a centimetre and a half still attached to the bone and then it retracted down four centimetres. It's like an elastic band or whatever. So you just attach it back onto the bone. But let's say that centimetre and a half came off the bone too, that the whole thing was gone, they say more than likely it'd have taken a bit of the bone off as well.
"So that's never going to sit back perfectly on the bone. That's what happened Paul O'Connell. It's like a piece of jigsaw that doesn't quite fit. So I was lucky in a way. I mean I never once thought that I wouldn't play again.
"Like, I'd heard stuff, I was told I mightn't. But the competitor in me would always want to prove people wrong in that."
The early prognosis was that, at best, it would take Canning seven or eight months to get back playing. He managed to crack a comeback inside six.
"I nearly fell out with the boys (physios) a couple of times because they wouldn't let me train," he remembers. "Looking back, it was obviously the right thing from them. I was constantly on to them 'Lads, I feel fine, let me back out!' They had to hold me back a little bit because, obviously, I wasn't right.
"I could have wrecked it."
Galway, of course, finished just a solitary point short of Tipp last August, Canning and Adrian Tuohy both incapacitated for the second half, then watched their neighbours jump all over Kilkenny in a one-sided All-Ireland final.
It was paltry consolation to a group now under pitiless scrutiny from their own. The player-driven removal of Cunningham as manager soon after their 2015 final defeat left them in a cold environment, the stark reality of which now came home to bear in February. When Galway spurned a six-point lead against Wexford to effectively blow their National League promotion chance, the Salthill acoustic turned ugly.
"We got a fair doing from a lot of local journalists after that," reflects Canning now. "That was worse, I felt, than any loss in a long time. It was a sickening one for a while. Just the reaction to it and what we were described as I suppose…"
He doesn't deny that the Cunningham story would have stiffened local anger.
"Oh yeah, but that's an easy thing," says Canning. "Like, Clare players didn't want Davy, but there was little enough about it. It was fine. There's lots of other counties that that happened to in the last few years and it was fine.
"It was just an easy stick to beat us with. But, like, you live and die by the sword. And that's fine if that's what they want to go back to the whole time, fine. Fair enough. But we've moved on. You have to. That was done two years ago, so that was a tough one to take, especially from local media.
"But you know, nobody was thinking about the sixth of August back then. And you can understand that in a way as well. It seems a long time ago now, but that hit us tough as a group. It was something that we didn't really want to experience again."
Five weeks later, Galway would find themselves ten points down on the same field in a quarter-final against an experimenting Waterford, yet ended up winning by three. And nobody has managed to lay a glove on them since.
What has changed?
We kind of took it on ourselves as players on the pitch more than anything," he suggests. "In years gone by, we'd probably have just played out the match. 'Ah it's grand!' Accept we couldn't turn it round. But I remember lads like David Burke and Johnny Coen being very vocal on the field.
"And that was a huge, huge turning point in our season. Because, obviously, if we didn't win that we were out of the League. And it was a long time from then till the Championship game against Dublin."
The fear, of course, is that the 'difference' in this Galway team proves illusory. Canning understands that. But he believes in what he sees as the trust Micheál Donoghue has been investing in the players this year, the sense of giving people time.
"In years gone by, I suppose if you weren't going well, you'd be whipped off straight away," Canning reflects. "Like, remember Conor Cooney got brought on in an All-Ireland final and was taken off again after a few minutes. Conor is one of the best forwards in Ireland, he has everything. And you can see him flourishing now because he has that confidence from management.
"Like, I just think that it's a different culture that we have now. It's more about the players stepping up. I think they have more… not authority, but ownership of the thing. There's more communication. We're a little more mature. A lot of the guys are 23, 24 or 25.
"Like I'm one of the oldest!"
But what if the wrong team just keeps winning? Galway have appeared in three All-Ireland finals during Joe Canning's time, drawing one and losing two.
The energy around their replay against Kilkenny in 2012 switched profoundly when his shot rebounded off the butt of a Canal end upright and, within seconds, Kilkenny sniped a Hill end goal.
Such small moments can define careers, he understands that.
What he argues is that they can't define a person.
Funny how this inter-county life can so corrupt perspective. Recently, he attended a Gavin James concert in The Big Top and was helping his girlfriend bring down drinks from the bar when a fellow punter intercepted him with the caution 'Jaysus Joe don't be drinking all those!'
Canning, as it happens, was drinking coffee.
But that's the perverse groove of a county man's existence now. Feeling answerable to strangers.
"The balance is wrong," he says flatly. "Like before the third Lions Test, there were pictures of the players drinking beer. After Ireland beat Italy at the Euros last year, there were pictures of them slugging bottles in the dressing-room. It was accepted.
"I'm in Limerick a lot now (where he is a partner in the Camile Thai restaurant) and you'll see Munster players out after a Pro12 game, having a few beers, nothing major. It's fine, it's accepted. But the amateur athlete does that and it's frowned upon.
"Because of that, the culture in the GAA is for lads to go on the p*ss for a day or two after a big game. And that's totally wrong for both your body and your mind. They end up sick for nearly a week afterwards because they feel they have to go ballistic.
"I'm not for a second recommending a drink culture, but the balance is so wrong. You're always kind of on edge now when you're out. You're almost paranoid. And that's wrong too."
Tipperary on the horizon again naturally concentrates the mind now. Especially so for any son of Portumna, separated, as they are, from Lorrha only by the width of the Shannon.
But Canning approaches the challenge, comfortable in his own skin. He's been to Syria and Swaziland in recent times with UNICEF and reckons he has a fair handle on perspective.
"This is hurling at the end of the day," he says quietly. "When I said recently that it won't define me, I had people asking me 'Why don't you take it seriously?' I do take it seriously, but what defines me is how I am seen by my family more than anything else. Like my family don't look at my medals at home. I don't even know where the medals are.
"Perspective is lost on so many things in Irish society, it's crazy!"
So Joe Canning ten years from now, with or without a Celtic Cross? What does he envisage?
"Just someone happy and healthy and, hopefully, with a business that I can work in for the rest of my life," he says. "Maybe a family and marriage too. I'll be 38, so still hurling? I don't know. Like, I see Ollie still going at 41, but he's just a different animal.
"Like there's not that many years left in me at inter-county. I could have been gone last year. I'll be 29 in October and you don't see too many boys playing past 30 now.
"It all depends on how my body is and if I'm playing well enough to get picked by management.
"But I don't want to go out on anybody else's terms either. If I don't feel I'm up to it next year, that could be when I go.
"If it's two years or three years or four years and I feel I can still offer something to the panel, then I'm all for it. But if I feel that I'm only there as a token gesture... that's not me. I won't be hanging around. I don't like people kind of feeling sorry for me or being nice to me for the sake of it.
"I don't appreciate that at all. I'm the same as anybody else. I like to earn my stripes."
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 6, 2017 18:54:42 GMT
It was a surprising interview to give before they played Tipp.
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2017 6:43:16 GMT
Comment: If the cup was Galway's, the privilege was all ours thecouch@independent.ie
Tommy Conlon September 10 2017 9:00 PM 0 It was a grand old day for the grand old game. About it hung an air of innocence and experience, sadness and joy, a range of intertwining emotions that made for an occasion both uplifting and poignant. All-Ireland finals are generally black and white in nature: winners and losers, ecstasy and despair, with nothing in between.
For most of the last 15 years All-Ireland hurling finals in particular were usually writ large in black and amber. As Jackie Tyrrell reiterated without compromise in his riveting interview with Seán O'Rourke on RTE radio on Friday morning, Kilkenny and Cody brought the matter of winning to a fanatical plane. For the hundreds of thousands of neutrals watching at home, it frequently led to a one-dimensional experience. You could admire wholeheartedly this team of champions, a machine of unprecedented greatness in the history of the sport, but somehow it was hard to take much pleasure in it. There was something grim and remorseless about it all.
Last Sunday's final was a much more holistic affair. There was something in it for everyone. The novel pairing of Galway and Waterford meant that a sense of innocence was restored to the occasion. The atmosphere was drenched in a sort of childlike excitement, a kind of giddy naivety. It had a fiesta feel, a wholesome sense of parents and children gathering for a day out at the carnival. And this was before a ball was pucked. The game itself once again demonstrated hurling's miraculous ability to serve up so many wonders of skill and courage. The miracle is the consistency with which the sport delivers these pleasures: not that it has the potential to produce this astonishing array of gifts, but that it fulfils this potential so often. All the flicks and tricks with ball and stick, the shimmies and swivels and balletic pivots, the ferocious body shots and selfless acts of physical courage: they are so common as to be routine, done in an instant and instantly forgotten because it is expected of them - and because there's another one about to happen anyway.
This is a table from which the diner rarely leaves without feeling happily replenished. Every game is seemingly a banquet. Sunday's edition was no different. And at the end of it all, Galway prevailed. Here was a classic case of experience trumping innocence. They had paid their dues; they had learned their lessons; quite simply they were ready to win. Waterford to their immense credit hung tough. They hung in hard all the while that the tide was going against them. They went deep into themselves and took it down the home straight, into the final five minutes.
But the satisfactions of the day didn't end at the final whistle. There was more to come. Among them was the pleasure of witnessing an artist and gentleman finally reap his reward. People like to see justice being done. The agony of sport is its chilling aloofness to pleas of mercy or prayers of hope. You get what you take from it, not what it gives you. Joe Canning's deliverance, therefore, was a blessed case of justice being done at last. Better still, the teenage prodigy of 10 years ago has evolved into a statesman of the game. His level-headed post-match interviews revealed a mature, thoughtful and articulate human being, in parallel with his still amazing talent on the field of play.
Derek McGrath's tears, the heartstopping photograph of his head on the shoulder of Dan Shanahan, added another layer of depth to the post-match ambience. The Waterford manager, for all his obsessions with hurling, for all the demands of building a championship team, has never allowed it to get in the way of his humanity. If it was unusual to see a man shed tears in this quintessentially male environment, the raw devastation among Waterford's ranks was to be expected.
Equally we have become accustomed to demonstrations of pure euphoria from the winners on All-Ireland final day. But this occasion again had many more shades of grey than the usual binary poles of ecstasy and emptiness. Galway's euphoria was tinged with melancholia. Instead of pure unadulterated joy, there was emotional complexity that needed careful navigating.
And how sensitively they navigated it. Tony Keady was not forgotten. His wife and children were wrapped in warm embraces, taken into the heart of the happiness, their terrible loss recognised, their grieving presence integrated into the ceremony of triumph.
This wasn't merely an expression of hurling's family solidarity, nor even of the wider GAA's capacity for help and healing in times of personal tragedy; it was a demonstration of Irishness and how kindly we deal with bereavement in the community.
In his captain's address, David Burke remembered another fallen comrade, his former team-mate Niall Donohue who died by suicide almost four years ago. He referenced the Pieta House organisation and its important work for people suffering from depression. It was a small but ground-breaking moment in a ritual that has become iconic over the decades: the captain's speech from the Hogan Stand. It is a hallowed tradition and Burke, in his brief time in the spotlight, used the platform exceedingly well. In this moment of invincible victory, our eternal vulnerability was acknowledged too. Sporting days as fulfilling as this are rare; they remind us of our goodness; they inspire optimism for the next generation. If the cup was Galway's, the privilege was all ours.
Sunday Indo Sport
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Sept 12, 2017 21:14:39 GMT
Brian Cody ratified for a 20th season in 2018.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2017 22:06:56 GMT
Cannot see Kilkenny being as patient with Cody as Tyrone with Harte
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 13, 2017 7:12:02 GMT
The KK under 21s were cat...... no pun intended.
It was a very lopsided competition with Galway and Munster counties on one side of the draw.
All the games in Munster were brilliant contests on TG4 as was the semi final between Limerick and Galway.
KK would have been put to the sword a lot earlier had they met any of those.
There is something great going with so many hurlers going to colleges in Limerick such as Mary 1, LIT and UL. Standards clearly being risen when they all get to play together and against each other in the Fitzgibbon Cup.
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 13, 2017 7:23:19 GMT
Jackie Tyrrell’s new book a revealing insight into Cats’ mindset during the Cody era
Sat, Sep 9, 2017, 09:00
Keith Duggan
One of the most unexpected developments in modern hurling has been the emergence, out of the marble, of a cast of ex-Kilkenny hurlers as firebrand opinion-makers and downright entertainers.
A friend who lives abroad phoned the other day, amazed by the candour of the pre-publication extracts of Jackie Tyrrell’s memoir. He grew up nowhere near hurling’s perpetual Berlin Wall – the Tipp-Kilkenny border – and so has no vested interest in the rivalry but was still stunned by the provocation of Tyrrell’s depiction of Tipp circa 2012 as “shaping and hiding behind their bull*”. Tyrrell is equally unflinching in laying out his own motivations and willingness to indulge in the grimmer side of defensive chicanery in those years. Assigned by Brian Cody to shadow Lar Corbett in 2011, Tipp’s rangy and coltish goal machine, Tyrrell took to the task with glee, standing on his opponent’s toes, kicking at his heels, trying to pull down his socks, which Corbett always wore stretched to knee-level. “At one stage when he tried to dart away from me, I caught his helmet. My fingers edged through the bars on his faceguard and I scraped him below the eye with my fingernails. I’m not sure if I drew blood but when Lar started complaining to the referee I just shrugged my shoulders.”
n Tyrrell will later acknowledge that the Tipp team four years later had learned how to stand up to the physical rigours of the Kilkenny collective. He would have known that the above passage cannot reflect well on him. The subtitle of the book he has co-written with Christy O’Connor is A Warrior’s Code. But eye-scraping is not warrior-like.
On the phone, the friend wondered why he would choose to publicise that small, inglorious detail. As it happened, even as we spoke, there came through the open window the sound of The West’s Awake being sung in the yard of a nearby school. Several of the new All-Ireland champion hurlers had arrived with the Liam MacCarthy cup. There it was, glinting through a dull light of a midweek morning for anyone passing by to see.
It was the most vivid example of the fact that, just like the Sam Maguire, the Liam MacCarthy Cup is as magical as anything to be found on the pages of Tolkien. Both of those big silver cups have had, for over a century, a disproportionate hold on the Irish imagination. Counties – players and supporters – want to have the cup just to have the cup. Last Sunday, David Burke raised it in front of the crowd in Croke Park: it seemed like most of the 82,000 were still there. As it happened, I was sitting not far from Conor Hayes, the last Galway man to lift the same cup in Croke Park. Hayes applauded and seemed relieved as well as delighted. It was a cool moment. Marvellous photograph After the big celebratory homecomings in Ballinasloe and Salthill, having the cup is about the localised privilege of bringing it around the place and letting people enjoy it. Tyrrell’s book lays out the fierce and sometimes brutal application of the physical and mental energies that went into the winning of that cup as often as Kilkenny did. Nine All-Ireland titles is at once a brilliant and ridiculous accomplishment for any one hurler. It’s hard to imagine it being repeated.
The trade-off for counties like Galway, a gold-carat hurling land which has won just five titles ever, is that the outpouring of emotion and pride is beyond adequate description. There’s a reason so many of the players declare it to be “unbelievable”. Maybe Morgan Treacy’s marvellous photograph of Mícheál Donoghue leaning over his father as he held the cup came closest to explaining it. There’s just something beatific about achieving what had come to seem almost impossible. Winning the All-Ireland means different things to different counties. For Kilkenny, fierce and unrelenting as Cody’s best teams were, the joy was the quiet and internalised glow of another successful harvest. On one of those September Sundays when the Cats seemed to be incapable of not winning the MacCarthy Cup, a few of us were sitting in the upper Hogan.
It wasn’t all that long after the final whistle but the Cats were so well-versed in the victory ceremony by this stage that it was over in no time. Before the vanquished opposition had even left their dressing room, the speech had been made, the Kilkenny crowd were already racing back to the Marble City and golden streamers lay scattered across the grass. There were a few people on the pitch. Brian Cody, the victorious Kilkenny manager, cut an unmistakable figure as he loped towards the tunnel under a peaked cap and big sky. A short distance behind him walked Rackard Cody, the long-serving Kilkenny kit-man, carrying the Liam MacCarthy unceremoniously by his side. Neither man was paying much attention to the object of victory. The way Rackard held the cup was striking in its familiarity. A friend sitting beside me said that “it’s like watching a husband dutifully carrying the shopping home for his wife”.
Those were the years when the hurling fraternity despaired of ever breaking the Kilkenny stranglehold. Since then, so many of black and amber serial winners retired. When Eddie Brennan emerged on the Sunday Game as a persuasive and fair analyst, one of the most striking aspects was his willingness to call the performances of his own county with a detached eye. Others have followed suit.
Constant vigilance Henry Shefflin, Brian Hogan and JJ Delaney have all returned to speak with a freedom and license in which they simply couldn’t indulge during their black and amber years. More extraordinarily has been the reinvention of Tommy Walsh, the exemplar of a let-your-hurling-do-your-talking player as a high-octane radio-man with a flair for colour. There’s an irony in the public getting to know these hurlers after they finish up in the game. But it’s better than nothing.
Brian Cody turned up to launch Jackie Tyrrell’s book this week and when interviewed by KCLR, he unsurprisingly said that no, he hadn’t read it and hadn’t even seen the extracts. He must have known days like this would come. For years, rumours of the lawlessness of Kilkenny’s in-house matches travelled the country.
The details are laid out in Tyrrell’s book in a chapter entitled ‘Savagery’. The vicious exchanges between friends and team-mates informed the steel and ravenous ambition through which they dominated the game for over a decade. There is and was, of course, so much more to Kilkenny: the mesmerising stick-work, the brilliant games, the terrific hurlers who came and went without, it seemed, ever uttering a word and the constant vigilance of Cody.
They changed the game and forced the contenders to get better. And it took time but all have responded. Clare won an All-Ireland. Cork are rising. Tipp have won two. And now Galway have the year they long waited for. Right now, in fact, Galway have everything Kilkenny want. And they also have the wherewithal to leave a maroon stamp on the coming years if they can retain the controlled fury which informed their brilliant summer. Only they know what went into the winning of that cup. Keeping it is the next trick.
In Kilkenny, there has been no word yet as to whether Cody will be back. Next year will feature so many persuasive candidates that it surely demands a 20th season of the tall man on the sideline. His return alone would be a signal that just because the stories are out there now, nothing has passed. Nothing is over.
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 13, 2017 7:25:00 GMT
You have to admire Tyrrells honesty on the one hand but it is awful stuff highlighted above.
Cody hasn't read the book!!
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Sept 13, 2017 8:05:57 GMT
The KK under 21s were cat...... no pun intended. It was a very lopsided competition with Galway and Munster counties on one side of the draw. All the games in Munster were brilliant contests on TG4 as was the semi final between Limerick and Galway. KK would have been put to the sword a lot earlier had they met any of those. There is something great going with so many hurlers going to colleges in Limerick such as Mary 1, LIT and UL. Standards clearly being risen when they all get to play together and against each other in the Fitzgibbon Cup. Loughnane described Brennan's kilkenny u21s as agricultural. www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/how-did-they-get-so-far-ger-loughnane-takes-aim-at-eddie-brennans-agricultural-kilkenny-under21-side-36121023.htmlCyril Farrell cut Mags Darcy down fairly quickly on TSG last Sunday when she muted the structure of the u21 hurling championship.
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 23, 2017 17:15:30 GMT
Kieran Kingston has stepped down as Cork senior hurling manager.
The Cork County Board have confirmed Kingston was offered a new two-year term last week, but he has decided against staying on with the side.
The news will come as a shock to the county, with Kingston overseeing a encouraging 2017 which included a Munster title and retaining their Division 1A league status. He was first appointed manager for the 2016 season, and previously served as selector and coach under Jimmy Barry Murphy.
County board chairman Gerard Lane says he is "hugely disappointed" to see Kingston leave the position after "such progress" during his two years in charge.
Mr Lane said: "It’s a huge disappointment to see Kieran leave this position after such huge progress during the two years of his management. The performances of the team throughout the League and Championship were a direct result of Kieran’s input and he has left Cork hurling in a very good place."
"Our board had an outstanding relationship with Kieran and his backroom team and we are very sorry to see his departure.
"Many new players got the opportunity to develop under his management and proved their worth in Championship 2017 only going down to Waterford in the All Ireland semi-final.
"Kieran has laid a very solid foundation and left the team in a very good position and on behalf of all in Cork GAA, I wish to sincerely thank him for his wonderful contribution to Cork hurling. I would hope Kieran will stay involved in some capacity with Cork but I fully understand the demands on an inter-county manager and I wish him the very best for the future."
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 25, 2017 18:05:24 GMT
Did board come up with the resources to keep hold of Kingston? 13 Monday, September 25, 2017Michael Moynihan The jokes weren’t long in coming as the new Páirc Uí Chaoimh neared completion: Cork would have a great stadium, but where was the team to play in it?
Flash forward to the third quarter of the All-Ireland senior hurling semi-final, when Cork were two points up.
Waterford would eventually overhaul them to make the final, but by any metric Cork’s progress in the 2017 season was phenomenal.
The lion’s share of the credit goes to Kieran Kingston, who stepped down as manager last Saturday.
Last May an untested Cork side were fifth in the provincial rankings, their supporters hopeful of a decent showing against All-Ireland champions Tipperary in the provincial opener.
By July they were Munster champions, having beaten Tipperary, Waterford and Clare en route. With encouraging signs at U17, minor and U21, the general expectation on Leeside is that the good times are around the corner.
Which is what makes the loss of Kingston so disastrous. When the Tracton man took over Cork were at a low ebb, and proceeded to lose to Wexford for the first time in 60 years. The harvest from years of failure at underage level didn’t look promising in terms of rebuilding prospects: Down for years was the common refrain.
Credit Kingston for boldness.
He consulted widely and brought Gary Keegan on board to help the team focus on improving their performance as a result. He instituted a development squad policy to accelerate the progress of promising young players and showed the courage of his convictions by picking some of those young players come the summer.
How did that work out?
Two of those young players were nominated for All-Stars last week, Darragh Fitzgibbon and Mark Coleman, with Coleman also making the shortlist for Young Hurler of the Year. Another of this season’s full debutants, Colm Spillane, picked up an All-Star nomination too.
Another crop of young players was earmarked recently for the same development squad process, and with candidates arriving with more successful underage careers, there was a genuine sense that another generation of quality players could be brought through in the next 18 months to two years.
Why then did Kingston step down?
The manager has referred in the past to the workload involved in senior inter-county management, and the difficulties of combining that workload with his own business, one which necessitates considerable travel.
Given that he also spent three years as a selector — and coach — with the previous manager, Jimmy Barry-Murphy, it’s understandable that a certain amount of fatigue would set in.
But having brought the county senior team from nowhere, practically, to within sight of an All-Ireland final, it appears negligent of Cork County Board officers not to have been more proactive in keeping Kingston at the helm.
A county board elsewhere, witnessing his achievements, would have moved heaven and earth to facilitate Kingston and retain his services.
Certainly, better lines of communication between the executive and management would have helped. At the scheduled county board meeting tomorrow night it would be interesting to hear, for instance, exactly how much contact there was between senior officers of the board and Kingston since the defeat to Waterford in August.
A wag told this writer that the Munster Council should have sent Kingston and his backroom team up to Dublin for the All-Ireland final on an all-expenses-paid trip, given the 27% rise in attendance at provincial games this year driven by Cork’s renaissance; did the executive of the Cork County Board ever consider such a gesture as a thank you?
On a more serious note, there have been tensions behind the scenes. Sources close to team management indicated recently that before one significant national league game this spring the Cork hurlers simply could not find a pitch to train on and had to cancel a session — a terrible indictment of a county with over 200 registered clubs.
This is where resources become an issue. The recent revelation of a Cork football support fund, rumoured for some months but hardening into fact on these pages last week, shows the importance of maintaining competitiveness — not financing managers, but facilitating management.
Extra finance brings in resources, and those resources free up time, which is what those at the top level of management truly struggle to find. With extra resources in place then time spent sourcing fields to train in or organising players’ gym memberships can be better spent coaching and managing.
In that regard Kingston’s Cork were positively spartan, bringing a backroom team of about a dozen to games: One, Declan O’Sullivan, doubled up as physio and team strength and conditioning coach. Compare this to the two and three dozen bodies found in the Bedouin caravans accompanying many intercounty teams.
Kingston’s departure leaves the door open for another man to come in, of course. The Cork County Board has expressed its interest in appointing coaches rather than managers, which puts selectors Pat Ryan and John Meyler in pole position to replace Kingston. That offers some prospect of continuity to Rebel supporters.
And the possibility of an external appointment?
“If it happened, it would be a first,” Lane said, “so I wouldn’t expect it.
“What you want is to have somebody capable in the role and there are a number of capable coaches and managers here in Cork.”
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Sept 27, 2017 17:18:23 GMT
Kieran Kingston: Cork teams need alternative flow of funds 161 Tuesday, September 26, 2017Michael Moynihan Outgoing Cork senior hurling manager Kieran Kingston isn’t ruling out a return to inter-county management in the future, but says that Cork, like many counties, could benefit from a supporters’ club or other mechanisms providing extra financial resources and facilities for its elite teams.
“I am not taking up the option of a further term as Cork senior hurling manager as, for the foreseeable future, I’m unable to combine my work and family commitments with the sheer amount of time needed for inter-county management at the top level,” Kingston said last night.
“I’m self-employed and I travel with my work, which thankfully is very busy at the moment. This impacts on the time available for intercounty duties.
“As many inter-county managers have pointed out recently, only those involved at this level are aware of the sheer level of time commitment involved. To be honest, you need to walk a mile in a manager’s shoes to get some idea of the job.
“It’s a professional commitment in all but name, and it amounts to a second full-time job for any manager who has ambitions not just to participate, but to succeed at the highest level.
“As everybody knows, the position of Cork senior hurling manager is a voluntary one. Certainly, financial considerations played no part in my accepting the position originally, nor in declining the offer of a further term recently - I simply could not and would not in any way commit to a further term unless I could give the position 100% in terms of the time and focus it deserves.
“Cork hurling, the players, backroom team and supporters expect and deserve that.”
Kingston was warm in his praise for those involved with the Cork hurling squad, on and off the field.
“I certainly want to thank the people of Cork for their fantastic support during my time with the county hurlers. Their passion and encouragement was humbling and energising for all of us who were involved.
“The players themselves left no stone unturned in their commitment to Cork, and I mean that. I couldn’t have asked any more of them, and they’re a credit to their families, their clubs and their county.
“Similarly, the entire backroom team put their lives on hold and committed 100% to the cause: I want to put on record my thanks to them for everything they did.
“I wish everybody involved only the best in the coming years, and I have to thank them for creating unforgettable memories such as the Munster hurling campaign, culminating with the Munster hurling victories in minor and senior this year. I also want to thank my family for their huge support and encouragement over the last two years, and before that, when I was a selector/coach with Jimmy Barry-Murphy.”
The Tracton club man did indicate he may be open to a return in the future: “Right now this is a busy time with work, and I also have three kids in college, so it’s full on. Who knows what might happen in the future - if the appetite was there in a couple of years and the opportunity arose again to go back into inter-county management I would certainly consider it.”
Kingston believes Cork hurling has a bright future ahead but that it needs to be fully resourced to succeed.
“I think Cork have the players and the capability to succeed at all levels in the next few years but the approach has to be planned, structured and resourced properly. We have some excellent young players in Cork at all levels.
“County boards can only do so much - if you look at any top county, in hurling or football, most of them have funding mechanisms running alongside the county boards which help with resources and facilities.
“I’m not talking about paid managers but the resources which give counties those vital extra percentage points which can make all the difference, such as the Cork footballers’ fund I read about recently in the Examiner.
“That’s a good example of what I refer to and it exists in other counties as well. You don’t get into a job like this for pats on the back but I suppose I take some satisfaction in handing over the reins to the new manager with the team in a good place, and I wish him all the best.
“It’s been a challenging but hugely rewarding five years, the last two in particular as manager, and I want to thank the County Board for the opportunity to manage my county team, as I consider it a huge honour to have done so.
“I’ve always been hugely passionate about Cork hurling, and that passion is as strong as ever, but I’ve also been involved for five of the last six years, and continuing for a further two years is not possible at this juncture.”
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Oct 11, 2017 8:33:12 GMT
|
|
|
Post by glengael on Oct 11, 2017 8:52:14 GMT
Sean Boylan made a successful transition from hurling to football manager, I wonder how this will go.
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Oct 11, 2017 12:52:18 GMT
Sean Boylan made a successful transition from hurling to football manager, I wonder how this will go. Good comparison.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 13:22:57 GMT
Maybe one for the dub posters but how good a hurler are connolly, Kilkenny etc. Would they be standout interco hurlers? The ability of potential dual players to make it in the other code tends to be exaggerated usually.
|
|
|
Post by givehimaball on Oct 11, 2017 14:10:35 GMT
I'd say getting back a large chunk of lads who left during Cunningham's time in charge, will be the focus. No chance of there being any dual intercounty players in Dublin - Gavin just won't allow it.
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Oct 11, 2017 16:18:40 GMT
I'd say getting back a large chunk of lads who left during Cunningham's time in charge, will be the focus. No chance of there being any dual intercounty players in Dublin - Gavin just won't allow it. Dublin's and Gavin's football run will end at some point.
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Oct 11, 2017 20:27:23 GMT
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Oct 12, 2017 8:02:58 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Oct 12, 2017 12:13:20 GMT
Dublin has 6 all ireland senior titles. Remarkably, it appears that one Jim Byrne is the only native dubliner to win a medal. All others were country lads working in dublin.
I think this appointment could be the making of dublin if they can get the lads in their late 20s back into the fold...two the best best hurlers were just making up the numbers for the footballers panel this year.
Dublin were not far away from winning both minor and u17 in 2017. They have been strong at u14 for a while.
I cant see Con not giving hurling a shot if Dublin get motoring. It would mean opting out of football for a year or two. He is something else playing hurling.
I cant see Connolly opting for hurling at this stage.
|
|
|
Post by kerrygold on Oct 12, 2017 12:30:25 GMT
Agree re Connolly. Kilkenny, O'Callaghan, Costello and a few others will be interested in adding a hurling medal to the collection.
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Oct 14, 2017 14:29:05 GMT
Dublin hurling is set to follow the trajectory of its footballers
Over the past decade things began to go terribly right for Dublin GAA’s county board
about 8 hours ago Keith Duggan
Deep down, everyone knows that if the smart lads of the GAA were tasked with running what we gamely refer to as the Irish State, there is a fair chance that things would turn out okay for us all. True, we would not all have partied quite so much, at least not before a motion to do so had been strenuously debated and then passed by a two-thirds majority. But the grittier stuff like the health service, the nutso-housing issue, the ailing national pension fund and “Saturday Night with Ray” would be mere putty in the hands and minds of the combined GAA secretariat. They have a knack for knowing what to do. The GAA would not only have burned the bondholders; they would have had them out collecting for the U-8s in Scotstown on the first Sunday of the McKenna Cup.
Right now, the Dublin county board is like the super-athlete of the GAA’s administrative division. John Costello does not run around as flamboyantly as Hannibal in the A-Team of old, lighting up a Cuban and glorying in the latest success but it’s clear that he loves it when a plan comes together. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely when exactly is started but, sometime over the past decade, things began to go terribly right for the Dublin GAA and if someone does decide to chronicle the harnessing of the city game, then the only reasonable title would be: How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Southside.
The details of how all of this happened are hazy because in the last few years, the terms of engagement with the media became limited to clearly defined hours and consequently the Dublin GAA became a more remote organisation. Costello has overseen an operation relentlessly driven to problem-solving and then moving on. The Dublin senior football team became the front of house act for the values and culture of Dublin GAA as a force and what an advertisement; like an ongoing show in the Gaiety playing before a full house, 365 days of the year.
Once, the city’s football team had been a conundrum as successive generations of footballers failed to live up to the omnipotent aura created by Kevin Heffernan’s 1970s revolution. The speed with which that problem was solved has created a very specific sensation in Gaels and would-be competing counties. GAA people outside the city regard the Dublin football team with a conflicted feeling of admiration for the way they play it along with envy at their long run of success, fear that they may be uncatchable, resentment at the growing suspicion that they have all the financial and corporate advantages and, finally, resignation at not being able to produce a team capable of competing with them.
All of that has happened since 2009, when Pat Gilroy took over the football team, winning a first All-Ireland since 1995 just two years later. Confirmation that Gilroy has been this week installed as Dublin senior hurling manager has undoubtedly prompted an emergency meeting in the war rooms deep beneath the Marble City.
Imminent threat The threat is real and imminent. Gilroy’s return to the sideline is like a declaration of intent. The next task for Dublin GAA is to put its senior hurling team on the same plateau as its footballers. It was Gilroy who implemented the titanium mentality within the football team, replacing the streaks of flash and peroxide with an essential toughness of mind and soul and, also, a kind of coldness. Those qualities were in place when Jim Gavin stepped in to apply the kind of precision engineering of coaching and ethos and an emphasis on the collective that is unlike anything the GAA has seen before. It is why some people are uncomfortable when watching Dublin now, as if they are less a GAA team and something dreamed up in the laboratories of Apple.
There is something hauntingly heart-of-the-matter about the observation made by Colm Cooper that no matter what you do when you play this Dublin team, they ignore you: “It’s as though you don’t exist.” What’s a team to do if they can’t even provoke the bit of hate or resentment? How better to nullify all the old enmities and rivalries than by behaving as if your opponent simply isn’t there?
The challenge now, for Dublin GAA is to establish the city’s bona fides as one of the leading hurling counties. Yes, hurling has always had its strongholds within the city and yes, it has its six pre-second World War All-Irelands and the renaissance of the county team under Anthony Daly’s passionate stewardship was a joy to behold. However, even as we watched that 2013 Leinster championship win, it was hard to escape the feeling that the project was fuelled by the Clare man’s unnatural levels of passion and emotion: that the players somehow conspired to produce that performance because they couldn’t bear the idea of looking “Dalo” in the eye if they lost. That’s all very fine for a one-off furnace of a season. But it is not the foundation on which to build a legacy and a tradition. It’s not logical or sustainable, which are the two qualities applied by the Dublin board in turning things around. And that’s where Gilroy comes in.
The immediate stories about the tussle for Dublin’s excellent dual players – Diarmuid Connolly and Ciarán Kilkenny among others – are good for fun and speculation. But they miss the point. As Gavin has demonstrated with repeated calculation, Dublin is not about any one individual. In fact, if music-head Kevin McManamon convinced Cian O’Sullivan, Con O’Callaghan and Michael Fitzsimons and to drop the aul’ gah-and-career lark so the four of them could go away and form the next great rock band (just four kids from the southside with a dream . . . ), well, they’d be missed for at least a month. And then Dublin would just keep on trucking. (That said, if they convinced James McCarthy that his true vocation lay in besting Stewart Copeland at drums, then all bets are off. McCarthy’s the exception which proves the rule).
Consistently competitive It might take longer than two years for Gilroy’s hurlers to elbow their way into contention against a rejuvenated All-Ireland Galway squad, a smarting Tipp, a gathering Kilkenny. But the system will be put in place and Dublin hurling teams will become consistently competitive, then consistently good and finally consistently excellent. We may judge the Gilroy project on where the team finishes at the end of the 2018 or 2019 championship. Be sure that Costello and Gilroy himself will not: the state of the city hurling team in 2025 is the important thing.
The high-end of the GAA season will slip into ballgown and tuxedo mode for the next few months while the foot soldiers – the club players – finally get their day in the rain, battling through winter mud for county and provincial glory and trying to get it all done before darkness falls at four o’clock.
Meanwhile, the fixtures for next year’s inter-county season are out. The whole shebang starts up again almost as soon as the Christmas decorations have been boxed away. A January 27th double header in Croke Park featuring the Dublin hurlers and the All-Ireland football champions: that’s entertainment. It has become Dublin’s show because the GAA decided that the malfunctioning city team was a problem that needed sorting. That’s done now, which is just as well because once the Dubs really get motoring, the GAA is going to have 31 new problems on their hands. They have to leave running the country to the amateurs for a while yet.
|
|
|
Post by Mickmack on Nov 22, 2017 8:32:58 GMT
By John Fallon RTÉ Sport reporter New Dublin hurling manager Pat Gilroy said he doesn’t foresee the likes of Diarmuid Connolly or Con O’Callaghan lining out for the hurlers any time soon but he wouldn’t rule it out down the road.
Gilroy, speaking in Boston where he took charge of the Dubs for the first time in the AIG Fenway Hurling Classic, said he wouldn’t do anything which might harm the Dublin footballers.
And he stressed that players would need to want to play for the hurlers for him to be interested in taking them on board.
"I speak to Diarmuid Connolly regularly because he’s a clubmate of mine.
"I don’t think Diarmuid is in a position where he wants to commit to the hurling. He’s 30-odd now. Unless you’re playing hurling a huge amount there’s no way you can think about playing inter-county.
"He was starting to get up to speed, to the kind of hurling he could play as a kid in the semi-final, but he wasn’t one of Vincent’s top players. I think that’s the way he feels about it.
"As I said before I’m not going to do anything that’s going to damage the footballers. There are enough hurlers in the county without having to interfere with that.
"If a fell wants to commit to that and he’s playing with his club and he’s playing well then we’ll look at it."
Gilroy said that O’Callaghan is a particularly skilful player in both codes and he would love to have him in his side.
"If a fella really wants to play for the Dublin hurling team I will take him and grab him with both hands. But he has to want to do that.
"I’m not going to begging anyone to play for the Dublin hurling team. There’s enough fellas that really, really want to.
"And if they really, really want to, they are going to be much better than the fella that’s not sure which way he wants to go.
Con O'Callaghan "I think, to be fair to the likes of Con and that, he’s going great with the football. It’s up to them. They might think at some stage in their lives, I’ve enough of football, I want to give hurling a go. He’s young enough and good enough to do it.
"It will be his decision if he decides I’ll give the hurling a lash. Maybe if he goes to March and he decides I’m enjoying the hurling so much, that’s what I want to do."
Gilroy continued: "Myself and Jim (Gavin) will have a very open dialogue about anybody because it’s the only way it will work. We’re both playing on the same team here.
"We’re both Dublin. We won’t want to be doing damage to each other. And at the end of the day if a fella’s head is turned to football or turned to hurling, let him go that way.
"I know in my own club, if a fella wants to transfer, you just let him off. There’s never any objections. Good luck. If you want to go, go.
"You have to have a fella who is really sure in his mind of what he wants to do."
Gilroy added that he sees no reason physically why players can’t play hurling and football but he believes that the GAA calendar does not lend itself towards that.
"If the GAA wanted to have dual players they could set the fixtures out so that dual players could play. But if you look at the fixtures there is going to be clashes all the time. It is very difficult but it is possible.
"I don’t see why in past generations people were able and they can’t do it now. However, the fixtures now dictate if a guy is going to miss out on an important Leinster match or an important All-Ireland match.
"But I think it would be physically possible. A lot of these fellas who are in college and are free for the summer, so there is no reason why they couldn’t play both games.
"Nearly all of our panel and a good few of the football panel play hurling. Pretty much everyone here plays football with their club. If the GAA really wanted to have dual players it could have it but they are making it hard with the fixtures are set out," he added.
|
|