In hurling terms, Saturdays just aren’t Sundays
Strange thing. There are just seven games remaining in the hurling championship and five of them will take place on a Saturday. In the modern world sport on TV is the object of gluttonous consumption and one day blends into the next, but in the GAA Sunday afternoon is still prime time.
In a hopelessly condensed intercounty calendar, however, there are only so many Sundays and with so many games to be played the GAA and its broadcast partners must be flexible in their scheduling. In this context Saturday night games have become an attractive option. In the Munster hurling championship again this year those fixtures were a big success and putting one of the All-Ireland hurling semi-finals on a Saturday evening has been a box-office hit.
But once again the All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals are being screwed, shunted into a lunch-time/mid-afternoon graveyard slot on Saturday week because the GAA insist on clearing Sunday afternoon for the Tailteann Cup semi-finals – live on RTÉ – and because RTÉ are committed to showing the URC final every second year.
This year they could hit the jackpot with Munster and Leinster; two years ago, there were two South African teams in the final. In the backwash, the first hurling quarter-final will throw in at 1.15pm on Saturday week because provision must be made for both quarter-finals going to extra-time, and RTÉ must show at least a half an hour of build-up to the URC final.
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The real issue, though, is the Tailteann Cup semi-finals. When the GAA were desperately trying to get that competition over the line, live TV coverage for the semi-finals and final was part of the hard sell. But clearing a prime slot on Sunday afternoon for a second-tier competition that has much to recommend it, but is not of mainstream interest, is simply indefensible. Hurling’s lower-tier finals are not given that billing and nobody is arguing that they should.
RTÉ’s coverage of this year’s championship has been blighted by some poor match-choices. In this case, the GAA must take responsibility. For a knock-out game between two of the top six hurling teams in the country to throw in at lunchtime on a Saturday is beyond crazy. That scheduling has no editorial merit. — Denis Walsh
Limerick power on
Was there something ominous about the power outage that afflicted FBD Semple Stadium on Sunday just before the start of the Munster hurling final, which had to be put back by half an hour?
Limerick manager John Kiely made comparatively light of the delay afterwards, saying that picking up an injury in the warm-up would be worse.
“I think the players absorbed it and handled it well. It was clearly something you’d rather not go through. But you have to overcome adversity in sport. If that’s as big a piece of adversity we’ll meet this year, we’ll get over it.”
It didn’t escape notice though that the final against Clare, reliably epic during its two previous iterations, on this occasion lacked some voltage.
This was Limerick’s most comfortable Munster final win since 2019 when they beat Tipperary by 12 – oddly the last year the county didn’t win the All-Ireland. They also set a provincial record with six successive titles.
This era of dominance continues with the quest to become the first team in hurling to win the five-in-a-row and has been coterminous with the introduction of the provincial round robins.
One further impact of this has been the constant siege laid to box-office records.
Last year broke new ground with total attendances reaching 310,440 for the Munster hurling championship. Sunday’s crowd of 45,158 took this year beyond that mark to 315,881. — Seán Moran
Reid moves to brink of 700-point mark
The shootout for history continued over the weekend as TJ Reid moved 23 points clear of Patrick Horgan in the two-way battle for the summit of the all-time top scorer in championship hurling.
Reid’s tally of 2-6 against Dublin in Saturday’s Leinster final has left the Kilkenny forward on 34-597 (699) while Horgan remains on 28-592 (676) after Cork had a watching brief last weekend. However, Horgan potentially has two championship matches now to increase his tally before Reid is back in action again.
Cork travel to Tullamore next weekend for a preliminary All-Ireland quarter-final against Offaly, where they will be expected to beat the McDonagh Cup winners. Should they leave O’Connor Park victorious then the Rebels will have set up a quarter-final against Dublin. Two matches in which Horgan could score heavily.
Either way, it seems inevitable the 700-point barrier will be surpassed in the weeks ahead. Dublin gift-wrapped Reid his two goals last Saturday at Croke Park and for his last score of the game – a long range point from the middle of the field in the dying seconds of a game long since over as a contest – it looked like Reid was keen to keep his count ticking over. Because while the players might not openly admit it, both Reid and Horgan would dearly love to finish their careers as the leading scorer in the history of championship hurling. And, truth be told, it may all come down to raging against the light. Both players are 36 years of age, the outcome might yet be determined by who outlasts the other as an intercounty hurler. — Gordon Manning
Hegarty is fully back in his uncontainable groove
Immediately after the final whistle on Sunday, just as the sluice gates were opened on the terraces in Semple Stadium, RTÉ wheeled its props into place for the player of the match presentation. Within seconds it was mobbed. Gearoid Hegarty made his way through the crowd and as soon as he was in place he turned to the Limerick supporters in the stand and made two delirious fist-pumps. They went wild.
For somebody who has been Hurler of the Year, has five All-Ireland medals and three All-Stars, redemption might sound like a far-fetched concept. But at the end of last season he was the only Limerick player to start the All-Ireland final and not receive an All-Star nomination. It was an uncomfortable slight, but whatever might have been said, it was a fair reflection on his season.
In the Munster championship last year he was a shadow of himself. Sent off against Waterford, Hegarty was dropped for the next game against Clare. He was restored to the team for the third round against Tipperary but Limerick had eight scorers that day and he wasn’t one of them; he was taken off when the game was in the melting pot, as if they didn’t see him as part of the solution.
In this year’s Munster championship, though, Hegarty has been a different animal. His interventions ignited Limerick’s comeback against Clare in Ennis on the opening day, and when Limerick came from eight points down to lead Cork by four in Páirc Uí Chaoimh he was one of the three or four key driving forces; Seamus Flanagan scored a hat-trick that night but Hegarty made two of the goals. He was terrific against Waterford and uncontainable in the Munster final.
For Hegarty, scoring is only the tip of the iceberg but he managed just six points in last year’s Munster championship and this year he scored 1-11. He’s probably only warming up. — Denis Walsh
Tailteann Cup: no quarter asked
One resonant fixture in next weekend’s Tailteann Cup quarter-finals is the Newry meeting of Down and Wicklow. Fifteen years ago, the counties met in Aughrim in round three of the old All-Ireland qualifiers. That match ended with then Wicklow manager, Mick O’Dwyer leaping around the field celebrating a 1-15 to 0-17 victory.
There was a lot to celebrate. It was the first time Wicklow had reached the final round of the qualifiers – they would lose to Kildare – but it was also a dish of revenge eaten cold by the legendary former Kerry manager.
During his playing career, Kerry’s cause had been blighted by the rise of Down and their revolutionary tactics, breaking rather than catching the ball at centrefield and drilling their half backs and half forwards in being alert to these breaks. It didn’t go down – so to speak – well in the Kingdom. Speaking years later in 1976, when he was in the midst of setting new record as manager of Kerry, O’Dwyer had this to say.
“I think Down did a lot of damage to Gaelic football. They broke the ball a lot and they played it very close and marked tightly. They weren’t playing the ball that much but they played the man quite a lot. I suppose it paid dividends for them. They fouled men in the centre of the field – and won All-Irelands with it. But it was not a good thing for the game.”
One of Down’s enduringly proud boasts was that they have yet to lose a championship match to Kerry. On this occasion in 2009, however, a Kerry man got the better of them. — Seán Moran
