The Day Hurling died

The humiliating scoreline of the 2009 All Ireland hurling semi final between two great hurling traditionalists. Limerick are out of the championship and Liam Mc Carthy-less for the 36th year in a row. It’s time to face the facts. Limerick is no longer a hurling county.

There may have been shame and humiliation on the pitch of Croke Park last Sunday, but the margin of defeat is not all the players fault. Nor is it the fault entirely of the management team.

Nor the County board for that matter. The main blame on this occasion lies with the GAA as a whole. Too long the GAA blazers have sat back, munched on the free triangle shaped sandwiches and supped tea. The organistation is crumbling beneath them. The values of what the GAA has been built on have been cast aside. Forgotten. The gap in excellence on the field last weekend was down to the GAA giving too much to the bigger fish and forgetting the smaller fries.

It would be easy for me this week to run a piece about how this fella was poor and that fella should have been taken off. What’s done is done. Limerick’s loss last weekend was as bad as it gets for Limerick fans. There is no point in me pouring salt in the wounds. We all know that the level of effort put in was not good enough. The skills one display were not there. The passion and pride, which Limerick hurling is so famous for, deserted the team and we had nothing. We have to look at the bigger picture to really see where the problems lie.

The fact that Tipperary are going for their 26th All Ireland title and Kilkenny are going for their 32nd, with a potential four in a row, just goes to show how hurling is becoming extinct. Cork have 30 titles and the nearest to them is Limerick with seven. The game has become top heavy. The superpowers are murdering the life of the game.

What benefit is it to players in Galway, Limerick, Wexford, Clare, Waterford and Antrim, to name a few, to have these sides winning every year. The real issue is this. When counties like Longford, Leitrim and Wicklow stopped hurling, the GAA did nothing. Now, Offaly, Limerick and Wexford are joining those sides in the barren lands that is championship defeats. I know people can argue that Kilkenny cannot support a football team nor can Longford make up 15 for a hurling team, but that is just the point. The GAA has not put the structures in place to promote the games which are essentially dead in some counties. Kerry no longer has a hurling team in the Munster championship, yet the GAA are okay with them having a dominant football side.

There are so many factors at work against the smaller counties. Take Limerick for example. Granted the under age structures are now being amended with the lifting of the treaty plan, but the fact that the hurlers are not coming through in the numbers needed goes down to bad planning on the county board level. There was a month this summer where not one county championship game was played. The inter county hurler got rusty and the club hurler got bored and disinterested. The rule of one win and you are safe allows teams to train for one big match and then forget about it. The same old teams are winning the county titles too. Am I repeating myself?

There is more competition for the GAA now than ever. When Munster are winning all the time and Torres and Rooney are on the screens all the time, why would a child pick up a hurley? Years ago fathers, mothers and primary school teachers were the ones that the GAA lived off of. Those men and women are now not as interested, even if they are at all, in the GAA. The time has come for radical change.

A 24 point loss in a semi final. In a tournament that has only eight teams that can win it each year. Three of whom are dominant. Seems to me that if hurling isn’t dead, last weekend was the last rights.

A long, long time ago…

I can’t remember if I cried
When Corbett jumped,
three times with pride,
But something touched me
deep inside
The day Hurling died.