AN OUTGOING All-Star hurling selector has revealed that Limerick’s Nickie Quaid could easily have won three awards on the trot.
Quaid was recognised as top goalkeeper in 2020 and 2022 but lost out to Kilkenny’s Eoin Murphy in 2021.
“In 2021 the debate over the goalkeeping position went on for fully 45 minutes. There wasn’t the width of a cigarette paper between two positively brilliant candidates in Eoin Murphy and Nickey Quaid,” revealed Enda McEvoy, one of an all-media selection committee, in his recent Irish Examiner column.
“The arguments back and forth were not just knowledgeable and granular, at times they veered into the realm of the existential. In the end, it went to a vote and a short head separated the pair.”
He added: “Was Quaid unlucky? Clearly. Was he robbed? No.”
“A player can have a fine season and still lose out to another player who’s had a fine season. Not every candidate of substance can make it every year, and when they don’t it isn’t ‘a disgrace’ or some flagrant indictment of the selectors – they simply lose out to another candidate of substance, that’s all. As basic as that.”
McEvoy concluded: “I’ve long maintained that if the selectors get 12 of the players right, with no complaints from the public, they’ve done their job. The merits and demerits of the other three winners will always be in the eye of the beholder. And if you believe that So and So shouldn’t have made the team then fair enough, but you must say who should have replaced him and why. Asserting blithely that the National League winners or the beaten All Ireland finalists “should have got more All Stars” does not constitute a valid argument.”
Kilkenny man McEvoy served 25 years on the All-Star Selection Committee and has now stepped down as “the time has come for new blood.”
