Why football envies hurling’s privileges

Some of you may consider yourselves to have been spoiled by the amount of hurling in recent weeks.

Why football envies hurling’s privileges

Then there are some of you who would feel the game has received preferential treatment since the start of the Championship.

Considering 11 of the 16 live televised games have been hurling, both sentiments are understandable.

But a reckoning is coming.

Twenty of the 29 games in the Liam MacCarthy Cup have been played; the Sam Maguire Cup is only halfway through its 68 matches.

That element of the privileged argument busts because hurling is now competitive from the outset of the competition and therefore makes for attractive viewing, but the smaller ball game does appear to receive more favourable terms from refereeing to analysis.

However, the biggest bonus hurling comes next year with the change from the U21 to U20 grade and an allowance for players to line out for both their county’s under-age and senior teams. Footballers, on the other hand, have largely been deprived of that dual status.

The reasons for that have varied from former GAA director general Páraic Duffy’s determination to transform it into a more developmental grade (he initially wanted U21 scrapped entirely) to football simply having more teams involved. But when hurling is protected it’s expected football figures will have their gripes.

Hurling is always a little bit different and I would bow to the expertise of our hurling development committee on that,” said ex-GAA president Aogán Farrell last November. “They are not fully convinced that it should be the exact same in football and I would await their expert view on that.

The likes of Jack O’Connor have made valid points questioning just how healthy it is to deprive footballers from playing at U20 level because they are good enough for senior. “A player can start off with his U20 team and if they are knocked out of the championship, he can then move up to the seniors the same year,” he pointed out recently. “But you can only go up, you can’t play with the seniors and then come back down.”

Kerry U20 manager Jack O’Connor
Kerry U20 manager Jack O’Connor

It has also worked the other way, as Offaly starlet Cian Johnson discovered when the county board denied him the opportunity to play senior football this year. “I want to play for the seniors, it’s always been my dream and the senior management want me to play for them but Offaly are just preventing me from doing that,” he said last month.

I was chatting with the Offaly chairman (Tommy Byrne) and his point was I can play for the Offaly seniors for the next 15 years. But you don’t know what can happen with an injury or a loss of form, or a move out of the country. I want to take the opportunity while it’s here.

As Johnson rightly says, there is never a time like the present and this form of protectionism hurts the players as much as the weak and developing counties. Dublin can easily afford a fence being put up between their two panels but the likes of Carlow and Wicklow, who compete in the same underage Leinster championship, simply can’t.

Solutions? O’Connor has mentioned the possibility of amending the rule so that an U20 player on a senior team that has exited the Championship could then be available to the U20s.

That is unlikely to aid him considering the earliest the Kerry senior team has exited the Sam Maguire Cup this decade was July 31 in 2010, the Super 8s don’t conclude until the August Bank Holiday and the U20 All-Ireland final takes place on that same weekend. However, it might be of use to one or two of those U20 footballers on the 16 senior sides who will have exited the Championship in five days’ time.

It has also been suggested that those U20 footballers on a senior panel that don’t start or feature in a senior Championship game may be allowed to play in the underage grade.

It’s worth considering as is a later start, perhaps after the second round of the qualifiers, with a more concentrated schedule for the U20 championship (make it completely knockout for a start). That way, if the leading older teenagers and 20-year-olds on Division 3 and 4 senior squads were permitted to return to the U20 teams they could do so without their sides having yet been knocked out.

Last month, we mentioned the idea of a handicap system in the Leinster SFC and it might be a workable proposal for the U20 football championship. If the grade is to be thoroughly developmental then the GAA has to recognise that the rule doesn’t read the same in Dublin as it does in Leitrim.

Let the have-nots have their best youngbloods available at senior and U20 level. But then should the likes of David Clifford, Seán O’Shea, Ross McGarry, and James Madden lose out on what has been a rite of passage for the majority of county footballers?

David Clifford cannot line out for the Kingdom at U20 level
David Clifford cannot line out for the Kingdom at U20 level

The eligibility terms were introduced in good faith to curb burnout and improve player welfare, yet they will be interpreted as discriminatory next year when hurlers have freedom of movement between their U20 and senior set-ups. As if there wasn’t enough for football to be envious about.

More pitch battles ahead for Croke Park

As is the case in most young Irish families, there might be a fan or two of Taylor Swift in the Jim Gavin household but if her two concerts this past weekend impact on the condition of the Croke Park surface on Sunday the Dublin manager mightn’t be so fond of her visits to GAA HQ.

In the past two years, Gavin has been critical of the GAA’s habit of organising gigs during the Championship, his latest comments on the matter coming last August.

Jim Gavin and Stephen Cluxton after last year’s All-Ireland final
Jim Gavin and Stephen Cluxton after last year’s All-Ireland final

Roscommon manager Kevin McStay joined him at the time and the quick turnaround from the events on Friday and Saturday to the Dublin-Laois game would raise fears of there being difficulties with the pitch once again.

Thirteen days after the Leinster final, the sods will be taken away again as Michael Buble entertains on July 7, just seven days before the inaugural Super 8 weekend takes place at the same venue with four games over two days.

It is all but certain to be the first of two matches for Dublin there in the space of 21 or 22 days.

Eight days before the All-Ireland SFC final, Pope Francis will attend the Festival of Families in Croke Park, where the pitch area will again be covered and there will be plenty of footfall.

In last Sunday’s Leinster SFC semi-final double-header, there didn’t seem to be many ill effects from last month’s Rolling Stones concert but they had over three weeks to ready the pitch on that occasion. Few should condemn the stadium being used as a non-GAA event venue but if it jeopardises the quality of the Championship then there is obviously a difficulty.

Having their own farm for replacement sods next year will aid the GAA but this summer seems to be more about coping than anything else.

At least Munster sides know where they stand now

Just how informed are we after the Munster senior hurling championship? More educated than watching the Leinster equivalent, you would think. In a gauntlet of a competition, nobody was going to come out unscathed and the five Munster teams’ flaws were always going to be shown up.

Praise for them comes with asterisks. So Cork finished the campaign unbeaten. No mean feat but struggling to beat a battered Waterford side on Sunday was nothing to sing and dance about and their lack of ruthlessness in the two drawn matches is a cause for concern.

Limerick became another statistic in Ennis when feeling the effects of their third straight weekend on the spin, and Clare have come nowhere close to a full team performance yet have won their last three games.

Galway remain favourites to retain their All- Ireland title but have they been exposed to what the Munster men have endured? Hardly.

It would be all too easy to think Micheál Donoghue’s outfit remain far and away the best side in the country but they have yet to be sufficiently tested — facing Wexford and Kilkenny teams playing their third game in 13 or 14 days cannot be classed as serious examinations.

The other side of the argument, which has been cited here and elsewhere, is that the toils of coming through Munster could have long-term negative effects but their managers at least have a clearer picture of where they stand.

PaperTalk GAA Podcast: Flexible Clare reconnect with Banner army, patient Galway overcome jitters

more courts articles

Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother
Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van
Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman

More in this section

Republic of Ireland v Switzerland - International Friendly S Tommy Martin: Better to outsource Ireland heartbreak than suffer with O'Shea
Waterford v Tipperary - Allianz Hurling League Division 1 Group A Round 5 S Eimear Ryan: There is no right way to take a free... or a penalty
Manchester United v Liverpool - Emirates FA Cup Quarter Final S Colin Sheridan: History keeps the red flag flying for Man Utd
ieStyle Live 2021 Logo
ieStyle Live 2021 Logo

IE Logo
Outdoor Trails

Discover the great outdoors on Ireland's best walking trails

IE Logo
Outdoor Trails

Sport
Newsletter

Latest news from the world of sport, along with the best in opinion from our outstanding team of sports writers

Sign up
Cookie Policy Privacy Policy Brand Safety FAQ Help Contact Us Terms and Conditions

© Examiner Echo Group Limited