Hurling’s refereeing dilemma
Every so often, usually after a particularly hectic game, you will hear calls for two referees in hurling, one to cover each half of the field. On a practical level, the argument has some merit. In the days when most deliveries were struck for maximum distance it was easier for referees to predict where the ball was going to land.
It was also a little easier when the positional grid was faithfully observed, and contests for the ball typically only involved two players rather than heaps of players in a ruck.
Physically, it’s tough for referees too. Thomas Walsh went down with cramp in the Munster final on Sunday just as Johnny Murphy did in the All-Ireland final last July.
The other argument is that it works in other stick and ball sports: field hockey has two umpires and ice hockey has two referees. In both of those cases the playing area is smaller than a hurling field.
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But the perils of two referees in hurling was graphically illustrated on Saturday. While Thomas Walsh was in charge he took a minimalist approach to law and order, with obvious fouls going unpunished all over the field; when James Owens took over, however, he was more inclined to see an infringement and blow his whistle. The character of the game changed noticeably.
Hurling, especially in the championship, has become incredibly difficult to referee given the conditioning of intercounty players and their capacity to absorb contact, legal and illegal. Most teams are prepared to roll with the punches which encourages some referees to stay out of the way. In these cases, like with Walsh on Saturday, the rule book becomes more like a guide book.
But how would the game have looked if Walsh was in charge of one half of the field and Owens was in charge of the other half? Could they have synchronised their styles enough for nobody to notice the difference?
On Sunday, Johnny Murphy refereed the Leinster final in a conspicuously different manner to Walsh on Saturday night. As long as there is so much discrepancy between the styles of referees, placing two of them in charge of one game is out of the question. – Denis Walsh
Cork thwart Limerick’s full house
Even for a team that has been to the verge of the historic five-in-a-row All-Ireland hurling titles, Limerick were hoping on Saturday to complete another championship landmark. Had they beaten Cork, it would have meant they had defeated all four of their Munster rivals in provincial finals during a run of what would have been a record seven successive titles.
Those wins were Waterford in 2020, Tipperary in ’21 and Clare for the past three years.
It’s not the first time Cork have intervened in this. During the run of the great Clare team of the 1990s, they had accounted for Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford by the time they faced Cork in the 1999 Munster final. On that occasion, Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s young team sprang a surprise and went on to win that year’s All-Ireland.
Clare haven’t won Munster since.
The benchmark for this exercise in completism is the Cork side of the early 20th century, who in a previous record sequence of five in a row, defeated Clare, Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary in successive years, 1901-04. When Cork emulated that five-in-a-row in the 1970s, Tipperary were missing from their dance card.
History does afford Limerick some consolation. They are only the third team to have come up short trying to win five All-Irelands on the bounce. The other two, Cork in 1945 and Kilkenny in 2010 were both denied by Tipperary, in a Munster semi-final and All-Ireland final, respectively.
Both, however, responded the following year by reclaiming Liam MacCarthy, defeating Kilkenny and Tipperary in the 1946 and 2011 All-Ireland finals. – Seán Moran
Kilkenny still lording over Leinster
The original Bob O’Keeffe Cup, awarded to the Leinster hurling champions and first commissioned in 1950, is one of the most elaborate trophies in the GAA. Three-and-a-half times the size of the Liam MacCarthy Cup, it features of a decorative figure of O’Keeffe – the Kilkenny native, Laois hurler, and former president of the GAA – playing barefoot, as was his preference.
In the first 10 years of it being awarded, it was won by three different counties – five times by Kilkenny, four by Wexford, and once by Dublin. Offaly won the Bob O’Keeffe Cup for the first time in 1980, before Galway added their name to the roll of honour in 2012, after joining the Leinster hurling championship in 2009.
It was replaced by a smaller replica in 2004, and in Croke Park on Sunday, Kilkenny won the new Bob O’Keeffe Cup for the sixth consecutive time. In all, it was their 77th Leinster hurling title, and 20 of those have come since the year 2000.
Kilkenny captain John Donnelly appeared suitably delighted in the accepting on it, yet like the rest of his team-mates, knows well that there is still only one prize that truly counts in Kilkenny hurling. That’s the All-Ireland. Kilkenny still top that all-time winning list with 36 in all, but their last title was back in 2015, losing four finals since (2016, 2019, 2022, and 2023).
Meanwhile their lording of Leinster senior hurling is becoming absolute again. This sort of dominance in the one competition is troubling for any sporting event, and part of the concern after Sunday’s final is that Galway had arrived with genuine hopes of getting their hands on the Bob O’Keeffe Cup for only the fourth time, last winning in it 2018.
Instead, Kilkenny slowly and then suddenly pushed them aside, leading by 13 points in the 58th minute, before the late surge by Galway – hitting 1-6 without reply – briefly threatened to make a real game of it.
In the end though it was a mostly muted occasion, the crowd of 37,503 – with some 20,000 tickets distributed free to underage teams – hardly hanging around to soak up any of the atmosphere after the final whistle. The drone pictures from the Gaelic Grounds after the Munster hurling final on Saturday evening, where Cork beat Limerick in a penalty shoot-out, couldn’t have been any more contrasting.
Galway manager Micheál Donoghue admitted afterwards there had been high hopes for his team: “In the build-up to it, people are saying ‘we’re back, we’re back’ and that we have big opportunities.
“The disappointing thing is when you see what they did do for a 10-12 minute period in the game, that’s the positives we’re taking out of, and that’s what we’ll try and build on as we move forward.”
The question is what next for the Leinster hurling championship, when one team is dominating and yet not being properly tested is perhaps impacting on their chances once outside it. If only the Munster hurling championship wasn’t so sacred, that might just provide the answer. – Ian O’Riordan
Wrong side of the tracks
The introduction of extra time and ‘winner on the day’ protocols is a recent phenomenon and Saturday night in the Gaelic Grounds was the first time a provincial hurling final had been decided in such fashion.
There are hardly any defenders of penalties as a means of resolving a match of that importance and the arguments have been well rehearsed in football, especially after Armagh’s serial tribulations, losing Ulster finals and All-Ireland quarter-finals before enjoying a redemptive run to last year’s Sam Maguire.
Everyone agrees that it is a ‘terrible way to decide a match’ but equally allows that ‘there’s no choice with the split season and condensed calendar’.
Ironically for the stereotype of the ‘Grab All Association’ and the supposed jubilation of administrators when draws were triumphantly whistled by referees – although former Croke Park PRO Danny Lynch grumpily observed when an All-Ireland had gone to a second match, ‘you’d think we were on profit share’ – the gradual elimination of replay has been a significant cost.
Irish Times columnist Nicky English reckoned that Cork and Limerick would have filled Croke Park for a replay had Munster GAA so wished but the schedules are unforgiving.
Another practical disadvantage was illustrated by Nicky himself when he had to leave the venue before the penalties had finished in order to catch a train even though it later emerged that Irish Rail were holding the last departure. He wasn’t the only one.
Limerick isn’t as straightforward as Thurles where the station is more or less beside Semple Stadium. Colbert Station from the Gaelic Grounds is a cross-river walk of more than half an hour. – Seán Moran
Kildare rising through the ranks
Just over 12 months ago, the Kildare hurlers travelled to Markievicz Park to play Sligo in the first round of the Christy Ring Cup. Kildare won the game by 11 points and kicked on to win the competition.
Sunday’s historic Joe McDonagh Cup victory over Laois at Croke Park featured 14 players from that win over Sligo. In 2026 Kildare will be playing championship hurling against the likes of Kilkenny, Galway, Wexford and Offaly in the code’s top tier. The Sligo hurlers will be playing in the Nicky Rackard Cup – hurling’s fourth tier.
Kildare’s rise to the Leinster SHC by way of consecutive promotions might just be the story of the hurling summer.
It has been well documented that Kildare had lost their nine previous McDonagh Cup games before picking up a win over Westmeath this season. However, a closer look at their results indicates how far off it they were in the recent past. In their 2023 Joe McDonagh Cup opener, Kildare suffered a 19-point defeat to Carlow. They lost all five games in that campaign and were relegated with a scoring difference of -56.
Their achievements in the two years since is testament to the players, management and largely unheralded work that has gone on in the county for years.
Their immediate reward is a home preliminary quarter-final against Dublin next weekend. It’s a free shot, and having won the McDonagh Cup with such swagger it’s a shot Kildare will relish.
The bigger challenge for the Lilywhites will be to try compete and survive in the Leinster SHC next year. By increasing the number of teams in the competition to six in 2021, the aim was to try bring more balance and avoid a scenario where the same teams constantly yo-yo between promotion and relegation. However, it hasn’t necessarily worked.
Kildare’s emergence is a good news story for hurling. Perhaps now is the time the GAA should examine the possibility of promoted teams gaining a relegation exemption the following season. – Gordon Manning
