I
IT IS ON the busiest sporting weekends where hurling casually flexes its superiority.
Saturday’s National Hurling League final between Clare and Kilkenny was one of many matches across numerous sports available to watch, but anyone who knows understood that it was unmissable.
The two teams closest in quality to the all-conquering Limerick, though neither county would have regarded a win as something worth celebrating from the outset, they could not help themselves but work desperately to triumph all the same.
This is the sweet spot elite inter-county hurling finds itself in. No game is allowed to appear so important that it might detract from the ultimate goal of winning the All-Ireland. But every match is treated as a potential marker to be traced back from the steps of the Hogan Stand to when their fate was decided.
Hurling has an equality problem on a national scale, but the possibility for entertainment is so great in the pockets where it thrives that it often overrides any concern.
All of which made it so dispiriting that as a televised spectacle on Saturday evening this game looked and felt so shoddy and small-time. If not for the hurling itself, nobody watching would have mistaken this for an event of meaning and importance.
II
I’m always suspicious of those who feel compelled to reiterate the amateur status of our inter-county footballers and hurlers. For there are only ever two scenarios in which it is highlighted; to make allowance for a player’s perceived error in judgement, or to elevate their successes onto a higher plane.
To stick with hurling, the game has never been played with the efficiency of effort and skill that we now witness on a regular basis. The players, coaches and staff associated with this rise are still amateur in theory, but there’s nothing amateurish about what they are doing.
It has brought us to a point as viewers of the game that when these top counties meet we are more commonly surprised by a poor match than a good one – the inverse of a problem that plagues Gaelic football.
Clare’s defeat of Kilkenny on Saturday evening was no classic and it lacked some of the bigger names that will hopefully appear as the Championship gets underway. Yet, as is so often the case, it was decided in the most dramatic of circumstances.
Trailing a confident Clare team by six points with around 10 minutes left to play, Kilkenny couldn’t have had too many complaints about their impending defeat. And yet, if a misplaced pass goes to hand in the last passage of play, Kilkenny would likely have engineered a match-winning shot at goal to complete an improbable comeback.
This is hurling of a golden era.
III
So, why did the televised coverage of Saturday’s game fail to meet the moment?
It is important firstly to stress that it had nothing to do with the game’s broadcaster, TG4. They provide an incredible service rooted in its dedication to Irish tradition, culture and language. Covering any number of matches from the annual calendar of Gaelic games that would otherwise go unaired, they are a force for good in all this.
Yet, we should not ignore their limits. Use of the Irish language is an immediate barrier to most viewers; an issue that is only exacerbated during the more anticipated matches like a national final. Where those who watch multiple sports have witnessed the remarkable improvements in coverage provided by the likes of Sky Sports, it is understandable that TG4 do not possess the capabilities of showing us sport in the same polished manner.
To this end, there is often very little difference in how a game of real magnitude is presented in comparison to a club game of far smaller appeal.
That’s one question for the GAA to answer, anyway. Why are they content to let this be the case? The second is more closely associated with the scheduling of the inter-county season, but even the consequences of that are increasingly aligned with what’s offered on television.
A little over 12,000 spectators turned up to Semple Stadium on Saturday evening and there was no hiding from it.
Behind both goals the stands stood empty; this emptiness stretching to the outer reaches of the main stand before it was filled. In such a fast-paced game with the action going from end-to-end, there was no escaping the sense that supporters were timing their own runs throughout the season for when to travel and when to stay at home. It felt more half-empty than half-full.
The weather conditions were not conducive to effective hurling either, both goalmouths becoming quickly torn up and muddied. Do you expect the GAA to change the weather now, is it? Perhaps if a national league is to regarded as something worth winning it should not be scheduled when the chances of there being such conditions are heightened.
Even something as peripheral as the lighting felt changeable. Before the stadium’s floodlights took full effect, the game took place against a greyish backdrop that felt decidedly wintery.
Given the celebrations of those Clare supporters who did travel on Saturday evening, descending on the pitch in tremendous numbers after the final whistle, the factors which inhibit the televised experience do not necessarily stretch to those experiencing events first-hand.
Yet, while none of the above rendered the match unwatchable, it contributed to the sense that the hurling had been left to take care of itself, and there was no great urgency of thought about how it may be harnessed to engage a broader number of people than those who were always going to watch anyway.
IV
For those bigger provincial games and the All-Ireland final, hurling as a spectacle will inevitably look after itself. Supporters will travel in great numbers and colour, stands will be filled to capacity and the action, as is so often the case, will reach the moment required of it.
Maybe the problem ultimately lies with the game’s own unwillingness to embrace what are its clear hierarchical issues. Disrupt the flow of things too much and there might be questions about why there are only two provincial championships on a four-province island, or why only a handful of counties ever have a realistic chance of winning the All-Ireland championship.
And perhaps the GAA are only responding to what they are getting back from the counties themselves in terms of treating the league. It was a generous stretch on Brian Tyers’ behalf to suggest that Conor Cleary looked “an-sásta” as he lifted the trophy on Clare’s behalf.
With all due respect to those counties leading the charge, however, they cannot be expected to cater for hurling’s well-being beyond their own interests.
Television coverage is not the sole determining factor that can turn this golden era into a full blown revolution righting all the game’s wrongs, but it cannot go unaddressed either. The greatest chance any sport has of presenting its appeal to an impressionable audience, there is an onus on the GAA to treat seriously what it purports to regard as a serious competition.