John Fogarty: Provincial finals’ silence does nothing for hurling
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Hurling will do the talking next weekend.
For the second year in a row, there will be no pre-match media conference before the provincial finals. Come to think of it, we can’t remember Kilkenny ever doing before a Leinster final and this is their seventh in a row, their 10th in 11 seasons.
It’s not really a gripe. These are crocodile tears – we will get by. Space will still be filled, pieces will still be written but it’s the words of the players and managers the public want to read and hear. No, it’s more of an observation that hurling can be its own worst enemy.
For a game that cries out for promotion, the protagonists sure have a funny way of showing it. In Dublin’s first Leinster final in three years and only their second in 11, the appearance is a gilt-edged opportunity to introduce people to this relatively new team of Micheál Donoghue’s team. But no, the attitude is “they can’t be having that. Sure, won’t beating Kilkenny speak for itself?”
But if the rough edges of the split season have taught us anything it’s that anticipation truly is the greater part of the pleasure. The vacuum-packed inter-county championship hasn’t allowed for much build-up and supporters and in turn the game loses out. When those involved are silent, it only compounds the matter.
This week, a player of the month event was due to take place. Nominees for May included Limerick’s Cathal O’Neill and Dublin’s Chris Crummey. However, word came through on Friday that it had been postponed. By our count, it’s at least the sixth time either this has happened or one player hasn’t been available since the inception of the awards.
We can only presume the reason is game-related. Managers’ fears about players saying the wrong thing when they are the best educated generation is plain paranoia. A chinwag the week of a game has done Gearóid Hegarty no harm in the past or Shane O’Donnell this year. Last month, the Clare star spoke the week of the Waterford game having received the award for April and delivered in Ennis five days later.
The GAA feel no need to implore counties to organise interviews when FBD Semple Stadium will be packed to the rafters and the combination of the Leinster final and a Joe McDonagh Cup decider involving a resurgent Offaly will pump the attendance in Croke Park.
Unless a big game is finding it seriously difficult to shift tickets, they are relaxed about highlighting the product. But when bad news has to be delivered like the increase in the price of All-Ireland final tickets as we flagged to readers last January, they were decidedly sharp to ensure it is coated in the deathly quiet moment of a late Bank Holiday Friday afternoon.
To be fair, the All-Ireland senior hurling championship will be launched in Ennis this coming Monday. That could be a decidedly difficult day for the representatives from the losing Leinster and Munster finalists but if they are requested to come, they will come. The GAA has that pulling power.
If GAA president Jarlath Burns is genuinely serious about granting licences to counties to compete, insisting counties arrange an hour of interviews be it remotely or in person before a championship game should be part of the contract just as abiding by spending guidelines and a closed season.
It wasn’t always this bad, of course. A video of former Cork PRO John Motherway delivering “The Banks…” with the aid of Donegal bagpiper Christy Murray as he stewarded at Saturday’s All-Ireland SFC game in Páirc Uí Rinn evoked memories of just how excellent and genial a county officer he was.
Motherway couldn’t have been more obliging facilitating the media in his role 20 years ago. Both Donal O’Grady and John Allen were keen to put some order in the process and in the latter’s spell selector Joe O’Leary received interview requests. With a text message including a mobile number, O’Leary responded when a player was agreeable for a chat.
It was also part of Martin Fogarty’s brief in Kilkenny with Brian Cody. In both cases, if one hurler wasn’t inclined to talk, another alternative would often be provided. And that happened before their umpteen Leinster finals too.
With his dawn press conferences in Glasnevin from 2009, Dublin manager Pat Gilroy took it to another level but there he was before every game, regularly with a player. The practice loosened as his term went on and his successor Jim Gavin cut the opportunities to bigger games when he was with a few exceptions the only group member available as players did their bit at the clutch of commercial launches.
Once a river, access is barely a trickle now and few if anybody in the GAA seems to mind. On Off The Ball on Sunday, Patrick O’Dea of the 360 communications agency, spoke of Irish sport’s “risk-adverse, conservative culture that underpins how we sell the product”.
In that realm, the GAA are by far and away the market leaders.
john.fogarty@examiner.ie
“When will I see you again?” Apologies but The Three Degrees’ lyric stuck in the head yesterday morning as it was confirmed Colm Lyons will referee Sunday’s Munster SHC final.
Considering the last three men to officiate the provincial decider were effectively stood down from duty for the remainder of the championship, it is where referees’ seasons go to die. We wrote that in this column two days after last year’s Clare-Limerick game when Liam Gordon appeared to panic in the closing stages of the game in TUS Gaelic Grounds.
Two years before, Paud O’Dwyer’s decision not to send off Aaron Gillane contributed to him not taking charge of another Liam MacCarthy Cup game for the remainder of the year.
In 2023, John Keenan played his part in one of the greatest Munster finals but his display was later criticised when he missed incidents involving Rory Hayes and Peter Duggan, for which they received retrospective bans that were later overturned on technicalities.
The only man who suffered was Keenan who like O’Dwyer didn’t get another game that summer. “I woke up the following morning to watch ‘The Sunday Game’ and it was ‘Jesus’,” he recalled in this newspaper last December. “There were a couple of things missed in extra-time and I make no bones about it we didn’t see them on the day and if we had seen them they would have been dealt with.”
Last year, Gordon too didn’t receive a game in the All-Ireland series and sources indicated it was for his handling of the finish and not awarding Tony Kelly a free, which if converted would have put the game into two additional 10-minutes periods for the second June running.
This being his fourth Clare-Limerick senior provincial match in three years and second this season, Lyons’ familiarity with the counties should go a long way to helping him avoid the Munster final curse in Thurles on Sunday. But its familiarity that has made it such a treacherous task. The best of luck to him.
The post mortems are already taking place on Derry but they still have a pulse because of this far too forgiving All-Ireland senior football championship structure.
Beat Westmeath, who have also lost three times in this campaign and yet remain alive, and they will hobble into an All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final that neither they nor Dessie Dolan’s side have any justification to be in other than the laxness of the format.
Both, like Cavan, Clare, Meath and Roscommon, could be among the best 12 having lost a hat-trick of championship games. At least three of them won games in their provinces but in Roscommon’s case they need only draw against Cavan to reach the knock-out stages having like Derry lost three consecutive games.
Let’s be honest, the GAA was fortunate with last year’s inaugural three-qualifying-from-four group stages. Of the 12 teams that went through, Tyrone had the worst record with two defeats and one draw from four fixtures. Now, it’s guaranteed at least two will enter the preliminary quarter-finals having been defeated on three occasions – Derry or Westmeath, Cavan or Roscommon.
How can anybody argue the integrity of the competition is being upheld when such failure is filtering into what should be the business end of the championship? Would two-from-four be so bad? If the reward for finishing top in the Dublin v Mayo, Galway v Armagh and Kerry v Louth games was a favourable quarter-final, they would still be competitive.
But right now mediocrity is being rewarded in spades. Fool me once, shame on nobody. Fool me twice, shame on the team. Fool me thrice, shame on the championship.