All-Ireland final shows hurling needs to address cynical fouling issue
By Kevin Egan
If it’s possible to feel any more alive than the thousands of Offaly people did last Sunday afternoon, then it’s hard to imagine how. The occasion brought out every emotion in the spectrum, each of them experienced in an intense and almost overwhelming fashion.
The journey began from that first roar when Leo O’Connor’s side took to the field, and from that first possession of Adam Screeney’s, when he was ruthlessly brought to ground, there was a heady cocktail of ‘he’s on form’ and ‘don’t you dare touch a hair on that child’s head’ plainly evident in the crowd.
There was the visceral anger when Cormac Egan was subjected to a hit that should have resulted in a red card. There was burning injustice when Shane Kingston – who should have been on a yellow card already – was only booked instead of dismissed, and then sheer delirium as Dan Ravenhill’s penalty rifled into the top corner.
Of course, there was the heavy, dark feeling of something close to grief as Cork effectively won the game in the space of seven or eight minutes just after half-time - the Munster champions going on to win by 2-22 to 3-13, with Offaly's third goal coming in the dying seconds.
But trumping them all was the 15 seconds after the full-time whistle, when it was officially confirmed that Cork had just won their third U-20 title in four years, and yet the chant of Uíbh Fhailí rang out across Semple Stadium, completely drowning out any noise from the Rebels. If ever a spontaneous outburst immediately turned into something unique and unprecedented, this was it.
That moment, more than anything else, demonstrated the deep bond that exists between this Offaly group and the people of the county. There is something more there than the standard appreciation for athletes who dedicate their lives to representing the county proudly. It is that more than anything, this group seems to embody the very best of what the county is about. Their fearlessness, their resilience, their attitude, their complete disregard for the idea that they were too young, too small, or not ready.
It’s probably not ideal for so much expectation to be placed on one panel of players, and yet at the same time, it’s hard to imagine any group better able to take that weight on their shoulders and carry on sprinting forward.
On the one hand, there is a reluctance to focus too much on Cork’s tactics last Sunday, since it feeds into the idea that Offaly as a county is lapsing into whinging, or feeling sorry for itself. There have been very few public utterances suggesting that Cork were anything other than by far the better team, and that even if the game had been refereed very differently, the Rebels would still almost certainly have found a way to win.
Offaly scored five times from play, and while one could easily make the point that this number would have been higher if they weren’t dragged down so often, could any Offaly forward – other than Adam Screeney – really claim to have put in a big performance on Sunday? Not really.
Moreover, Cork’s scores were of a type that they weren’t created out of any meticulous, collective team play. Instead, it was largely built around the ability of most of their forwards to win their own ball, create space, and finish. Add in the power and dynamism of their half-back line, ensuring an excellent line of supply, and the absence of an extra inside forward wouldn’t have discommoded them too much.
However, there is a wider issue for hurling to address here. The hurling nation at large likes to embrace the idea that there is still a place in the game for the smaller, craftier hurler, but that doesn’t stack up if there is widespread tolerance for repeated cynical fouling, and even aggressive fouling.
How many frontal charges will we have to see go without the sanction of a red card, before teams decide that it’s a fairly obvious and straightforward way to neutralize the threat of a key opposition player?
After all, Cillian Kiely – one of Offaly’s strongest, most physically robust senior hurlers – took a hit of that nature against Kerry, and he still felt the effects weeks later in Croke Park in the Joe McDonagh Cup final. Seen in that light, what chance did Cormac Egan have of seeing out the game on Sunday? What chance would Screeney have, if he took a blow like that?
Furthermore, Ben O’Connor’s comments afterwards that “you do what you have to do to win” are a fairly clear acknowledgement of the view that Cork’s players weren’t acting off their own bat, they were following instructions.
What does it say of our sport that at an elite level, a management team has sat down and calculated that repeated, aggressive fouling will maximise their chances of success, and that they were proved right in that assessment? Pointing this out is not the act of a bitter Offaly supporter, but a worried lover of hurling, who sees the natural competitiveness and physicality of the sport being used as a fig leaf to cover up cowardly, blindside hits, and a refusal to engage in proper defensive play.