Hurling Nation: GAA treating hurling like an old dog

It’s Friday morning and after this past week we need to take stock of the shots hurling has taken to the foot.

Remember, just before Christmas, the GAA leadership decided to eliminate five counties from the hurling league, causing an uproar. You’d think then they’d realise how it would out of touch they are with the game. Not a hint of it.

The GAA, which received a €32million gift in the wake of the previous hurling final, decided it would die of self-inflicted wounds on the exact same hill it chose to die on last year.

The Munster Hurling Championship was again used as bait to sell subscriptions for GAAGO. The Taoiseach and would be Taoiseach huffed and puffed, but the GAA didn’t mind.

Meanwhile, a rugby game sold out Croke Park in over an hour, and the FAI moved forward with plans for Irish soccer costing over three quarters of a billion euros.

No worries to the GAA leadership. After all, in 140 years, they have failed to expand the number of serious hurling counties by even one county, why should they start caring now?

The association has tried employing a single person to change that, but now it employs nobody at all as director of hurling.

Here we are at the end of another microwaved season, and if there was ever any doubts that hurling is a secondary dish, they were removed this past week.

Tomorrow, the hurling quarter-finals are played, one at lunchtime and the other slightly later.

Wexford have pointed out that it wasn’t a good time to play when the Feile was also being played. Wexford Park saw its last in the county hurling match until next spring, weeks ago, so Wexford thought it would be nice if the kids and their mentors could see their county team somehow. But last Sunday, the GAA spent hours in a bizarre debate with itself.

It was pointed out by various people playing the hurling quarters on this Saturday wasn’t right. But the GAA promised a few years ago that it would devote Sunday afternoon slots to the semi-finals and finals of the secondary football competition. We hear it’s blasphemy to speak ill of that secondary football competition.

For several years, RTÉ have asked for the hurling quarter finals to be moved to Sunday. The GAA leadership has refused.

So this week, a well-intentioned Jarlath Burns has emerged dazed from a weekend of GAA politics. One of the big tests of Jarlath’s presidency will be how effectively he can clean up the mess that he has inherited.

It was conceded for the record, for once and for all, that Sunday afternoon is the prime slot for major GAA games. With that in mind, think of this. Three of the last five hurling games of the year will be played on Saturdays. Sixteen of the thirty four hurling championship games this year were shunted to Saturdays.

And, as for the Joe McDonough Cup, the secondary hurling competition, there were sixteen games this year. Twelve were played on Saturdays, including the final round robin games and the final.

If the game of hurling was an old dog, the GAA would be telling us that good old hurling was being taken to live on a lovely farm in the country, while texting the local vet about having hurling put to sleep because hurling has become a bit too whiny.

Anyway, quarter-finals tomorrow. They deserve more space and more respect than we can give them here. Hurling Nation is going for Cork and Clare to progress, but not as easily as the odds suggest.

Dónal Óg Cusack was speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland.