It seems that a hurling game is set to appear on the Playstation 2 with a game titled “Gaelic Games Hurling” with a November 30th release dateUPDATE: It’s actually Friday November 9th for the release.

This is from the same company that produced Gaelic Games Football, an Australian outfit called IRGurus. That original football games got awful reviews. It had some nice features like well designed stadiums and commentary from Micheál Ó Muirchearthaigh but the gameplay was terrible (I spent ages trying to master it and gave up eventually). It also had a major drawback in that it didn’t have any realistic players (the GPA rightfully made sure it’s members weren’t going to be used for nothing again).

IRGurus had earlier produced an Aussie Rules game so presumably they were able to reuse that engine for the football game and given that and the ties (although strenuous at the moment) between Aussie Rules and GAA it was probably an easy path to produce the game on a low budget.

We can live in hope that the hurling game will be an improvement and show that they’ve learned from the football production but it’s hard to expect too much. Even on the largest of budgets hurling would be an incredibly difficult game to produce a simulation of. In a way I can’t wait for this title just to see how they manage the gameplay and in particular the handling of the hurl.

Earlier this year we had the very well recieved Bainisteoir - Hurling PC game from Irish company Tailteann Games but that was a strategy/management game as opposed to a full gameplay simulation.

At the end of the day top quality sports simulation games are hard to produce. They require a lot of money (with a large target audience), a top class team, and several versions to get right. So while we can’t expect too much from this title at least someone is making the effort and it might be a decent way of passing a few hours at Christmas while the hurling season is in a lull!

It seems the real issue with the new format is the way Galway and Antrim are handled. Apparently they play each other in a first round game every year, then the winners play a losing Leinster quarter-finalist while the losers play a losing Munster quarter-finalist. That seems to be set in stone each year. As a result it most likely means Galway beat Antrim, Galway play Laois/Dublin/Offaly/Wexford and Antrim play a Munster team. Obviously Antrim are upset because they see it as getting hammered twice every year while Galway are probably thinking they’re still not getting any real tough games.

While Galway and Antrim people complain it’s hard to find a real solution to the hurling setup. Realistically both should play in Leinster given that it’s the weaker of the two big provinces but Galway for one voted down that proposal. The qualifier round robin system was a failure as evidenced by the small crowds and general lack of interest in the games. As I’ve said before the only real fair and balanced solution is a full open draw system but that’s highly unlikely to ever happen. However if we want to keep the provincial setup we can only realisitcally have Leinster and Munster and hence Galway and Antrim need to be adopted into one or the other.

At the end of the day Antrim are a weaker team, along with Laois and Dublin at the moment, and you can’t go re-jigging the system just so they can win a game and we can all feel good. And Galway’s lack of tough competition is only a soft excuse for their failure to do well and translate all that underage talent into All-Ireland wins.

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