The officials are at it again. Last night in the Munster under 21 final they had to be escorted off the pitch after a ridiculous decision handed Tipperary the win. Deep in injury time Clare were awarded a close in free around the 21 which would probably have given them the win, but then the referee spotted one of his umpires at the other end, back he went and the umpire tells him the keeper stepped outside the small box when taking his puck out, referee then calls back the free and instead gives Tipp a 65, Pa Bourke points it for them and they win. Cue chaos as Clare fans go nuts and storm onto the pitch, ref and officials get a garda escort off and some of the fans have a sit down protest!
Unreal - where in the world would you get it except a GAA match in Ireland. The TV replays showed the keeper had put one foot outside the square - come on, ONE FOOT!, what was the umpire on? was he deliberately biased towards Tipperary? Still it is the letter of the law and the law says for that transgression a 65 is awarded so the ref followed the instructions.
Thing is though, watch any game of hurling over the rest of the year and look how many times keepers have a foot outside the square and how often it get’s penalised. Lots and never.
It’s a completely unsatisfactory way to end a game, particularly a final. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon, all round the country every weekend there’s probably a few games that are decided by a point that was or wasn’t or a debatable free. Hard to deal with really, the referees do the best they can in a thankless job and it’s the nature of a high scoring sport to have contentious endings.
This year they have Brendan Cummins the reigning champ and record holder, Davy Fitzgerald, Damien Fitzhenry and others including a guy from Milwaukee in USA, Dan McAuliffe. Great to see an American over to have a try in such a famous old competition.
You imagine that Cummins will be the favourite given that he’s won 3 of the last 4 and that he has the record. Although no doubt Davy will be all out to get one up on Tipp before their All Ireland semi final clash!
The roll of honour for the compeition is:
2007 Brendan Cummins - Tipperary
2006 Brendan Cummins - Tipperary
2005 Albert Shanahan - Limerick
2004 Brendan Cummins - Tipperary
2003 Paul Dunne - Louth
2002 Davy Fitzgerald - Clare
2001 Albert Shanahan - Limerick
2000 Colin Byrne - Wicklow
1999 David Fitzgearld - Clare
1998 Albert Kelly - Offaly
1997 Colin Byrne - Wicklow
1996 Michael Shaughnessy - Galway
1995 Michael Shaughnessy - Galway
1994 Michael Shaughnessy - Galway
1993 Albert Kelly - Offaly
1992 Albert Kelly - Offaly
1991 Tommy Quaid - Limerick
1990 Ger Cunnigham - Cork
1989 Ger Cunningham - Cork
1988 Ger Cunningham - Cork
1987 Ger Cunningham - Cork
1986 Ger Cunningham - Cork
1985 Ger Cunningham - Cork
1984 Ger Cunningham - Cork
1983 Pat Hartigan - Limerick
1982 Gerry Goodwin - Tyrone
1981 Pat Hartigan - Limerick
1970 – 1980 Competition Suspended
1969 Liam Tobin - Waterford
1968 Fionbarr O Neill - Cork
1967 Fionnbar O Neill - Cork
1966 Fionbarr O Neill - Cork
1965 Dennis Murphy - Cork
1964 Oliver Goff - Kilkenny
1963 Ollie Walsh - Kilkenny & Tom Geary - Waterford & Dinny Donnelly - Meath
1962 Ollie Walsh - Kilkenny
1961 Vincent Godfrey - Limerick
The GAA have changed the Christy Ring final from the crazy time of Friday night at 7.30pm to Sunday at 6pm in Tullamore. It’s effectively acknowledging the huge mistake they made but of course they won’t put it that way. At least they had the common sense to change it anyway once the pressure came on - that’s the main thing. Nice to see they listen to the people involved occassionally!
Hopefully now the teams will get back to concentrating on the game and will actually deliver a high quality final.
The winners will battle Laois for the right to contest next year’s Liam McCarthy campaign.
The Christy Ring final between Westmeath and Carlow has been fixed for Friday night at 7.30pm in Corke Park. It’s the dumbest most insulting decision I’ve seen all year from the GAA and they’ve already had a lot of bad ones. They’ve been giving the two fingers to Antrim, Laois and Dublin all year and now the top two teams in the second tier of hurling are getting the same treatment.
Both camps are raging over the decision and rightly so.
How the hell do they expect the people of Westmeath and Carlow to get up to Croke Park on a Friday night. Would they ask Kilkenny or Cork to do it? - Not a chance. The GAA top brass led by Nicky Brennan are constantly bleating on about the state of hurling yet when it boils down to making the calls they just do everything to suit the top teams and kick the rest out the door. I’d consider Nicky Brennan a failure as president and it’s even worse that he comes from a hurling county. He’ll be followed by a Cork man and it’s hard to see things getting any better under him.
The sensible thing to do would be to have the final before the Kilkenny Cork or Tipperary Waterford games. It would get some decent exposure, the ground wouldn’t be empty and it’s a reasonable hour for the fans.
I don’t know, I just can’t get over the stupidity of it. Seems like the guys in charge only care about their precious Kilkennys, Corks and Tipperarys.
UPDATE JULY 30th: Fair play to the GAA, they responded to the uproar and rearranged the game for Sunday at 6pm in Tullamore.
Two great games in Thurles yesterday. That’s two weeks in a row there’s been good close qualifier action, surely hurling can’t be so badly off! Great come back by Cork led by an incredible display from Ben O’Connor. Question is now will they be able to recover into top shape for a huge battle with Kilkenny. Waterford still don’t look convincing but they’re still there, I suppose in previous years they’ve often peaked too soon. You’d imagine Tipp and Kilkenny will be favourites for both semis but just like yesterday they’re bound to be close games.
I managed to get 9 out of 10 predictions so I feel a bit better after last weeks disaster. The only one I missed was Sligo beating Fingal in the Nicky Rackard semi final. They beat them pretty well too.
After last week’s miserable effort at prediciting the outcomes of all the hurling matches I’m going to put a bit more effort into this one. We have 10 games between Senior, Minor, Christy Ring and Nicky Rackard.
Senior Quarter Finals: Waterford v Wexford: Waterford weren’t exactly all that impressive in their win over Offaly but I suppose with Eoin Kelly and John Mullane you always feel they can put up a good score. Hard to know where Wexford are but the loss of a few players through injury, particularly Keith Rossiter is a bad blow. They usually have one big game in them a year against the Munster sides but the form does point to Waterford so have to go with them. Verdict: Waterford
Cork v Clare: Just like the other one, it’s not as clear cut as I might have thought a few weeks ago. Back then I would have dismissed Clare and Wexford’s chances but there’s nothing frightening about their opposition now. Of course Cork looked good the last day but can they raise their game again? With the wealth of talent they probably can and they don’t need all their stars to fire at once. Interestingly though Clare’s under 21’s hammered Cork’s the other night and Cork were strong favourites for that. Still you have to go with the form and that’s Cork. Verdict: Cork
Christy Ring Semi Finals: Wesmeath v Derry: I had been doubting Westmeath after Wicklow beat them in their last group game but they obviously took it easy then. They have proved over the last few years that they’re the top team at this level and that looks set to continue this year. But…. Down would have been one of the teams fancied to challenge them and Derry beat them last weekend and with a few points to spare. Maybe Derry are suddenly hitting top form? They could be but I’m not going to go against Westmeath anymore. Verdict: Westmeath
Mayo v Carlow: Mayo won one and lost one in a close group so wasn’t expecting them to beat Wicklow last week but they duly did. With Pete Finnerty on the line and the excellent dual star Keith Higgins firing over plenty of scores they seem to be well capable of matching it with anyone. Carlow would have been one of the fancies early in the year, they lost to Down in the group but both had qualified by then so it’s hard to base anything on that. They ground out a solid win in a tricky visit to Kerry last week thanks mainly to their backs. I’d expect them to do something similar this weekend. Verdict: Carlow
Christy Ring Relegation Playoffs: Armagh v London: Should be close, London won by a point in the Ulster Quarter Final but lost their two group games here pretty heavily. Armagh pushed Derry close in one of theirs. Maybe they’ve come on enough to overturn the Ulster result. Verdict: Armagh
Meath v Roscommon: Roscommon were hammered in both their games while Meath were unlucky to lose out in a tough group when Kerry caught them with a goal blitz. On that basis Meath should win well. Verdict: Meath
Nicky Rackard Semi Finals: Monaghan v Louth: Louth were one of the competition favourites but weren’t all that impressive in the group stages when Longford beat them and then they bounced back to get a great win away to South Down last weekend. Monaghan have been having a great little year for themselves with a good run in the Ulster championship. Louth are Division 3 league champions while Monaghan are Division 4. You have to think that Louth are just that step above then. Verdict: Louth
Sligo v Fingal: The North Dublin team seem to be improving with every game and had a big win in their quarter final. Sligo have been going well but I think they’ve had a relatively easy path thus far. Fingal should have the edge. Verdict: Fingal
Minor Quarter Finals Tipperary v Antrim: This is easy, Tipperary, by a lot. Verdict: Tipperary
Galway v Wexford: No form to count from Galway but they’re always good at this level, usually capable of winning every year. Wexford put up a good battle against Kilkenny but were well beaten in the end. Verdict: Galway
There we have it, 10 games, 10 predicitions - how many will I get right? Probably 5 knowing my predictive skills!
Looking back at the weekend’s action. Cork look like the Cork of old again but why is anyone surprised. They played Tipp off the pitch for half their game a few weeks back only losing out because of the hugely inexperienced forward line they had that day. Donal Og Cusack is as mad as Davy Fitz when he gets between the posts. I don’t see how Gerald MacCarthy or anyone could argue over his sending off, he got two obvious yellows, there’s been debate over the first one but sure you can’t go yelling abuse at the ref whenever you feel like it. Then of course his sending off transforms the team thanks to his rousing half time talk. A lot of people don’t seem to like him but he sure is a great leader and by all accounts he does trojan work promoting the game and training youngsters when he’s not under the spell of the rebel number 1 jersey.
Joe Canning is just incredible. Neither Diarmuid O’Sullivan nor John Gardiner could contain him. He’s huge, he has a nice bit of speed off the mark, can strike off either side, can drive the ball a mile, has uncanny radar for the posts and throws in a few sideline cuts for good measure. Sounds a bit like
Cuchulainn! Incredible to think Galway couldn’t find a few more scores from someone else. They are the greatest mystery of a team, one day they all play like superstars the next they’re anonymous.
A lot of that of course is due to managment changes. Ger Loughnane was constantly tinkering with the team. As the great hurling philosopher Confucius almost said “HURLING is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated”. If you can’t find a settled 15 after 2 years there’s no hope. He was lucky in Clare to have one of the greatest 1-8 lineups to ever play the game, unfortunately in Galway he wasn’t able to tie down those positions, maybe his days in Clare with Lohan, McMahon et al had given him a biased view of what to expect from players.
Here’s a clip of Donal Og’s sending off, courtesy of youtube.
Good thing I don’t put too much money behind my predicitions. Of the 11 games I predicted
in my last post I only got 5 right - pretty damn useless.
In fairness I got 2 of the 3 main ones right and realistically it should have been 3 of 3. After
I correctly called Cork to win earlier in the week I for some reason changed my mind in the prediction bit. Then again 17% of the 550 or so voters in the poll on this site had Galway to win the All Ireland.
1 out of 4 Christy Ring predicitions is pretty bad. I should never have doubted Westmeath, they’re clearly the class of the competition and send out a half baked team the last day against Wicklow. Mayo and Derry caused slight surprises though.
One thing’s for sure though - I don’t feel as much of a failure as Ger Loughnane does ha ha. What a useless 2 years he’s had…
“It is a failure, there is no other way of saying it. I went up to Galway and said I’d give myself two years to win an All-Ireland. We didn’t even win a quarter-final. We got nowhere in two years”
The only bigger failure around is the Galway county board who continuously make a bags of their county team and it’s managment.
A whole host of games on Saturday, time to try some predictions. The only games that appear in the betting shops are the two big ones. Waterford are heavy favourites to beat Offaly at 1-5 as opposed to 4-1. Galway are odds on to beat Cork at 8-13 versus 6-4.
Waterford v Offaly > Waterford
Cork v Galway > Galway
Laois v Antrim > Antrim
Wicklow v Mayo > Wicklow
Down v Derry > Down
Kerry v Carlow > Carlow
Kildare v Westmeath > Kildare
Fingal v Leitrim > Fingal
Non-Ards v Louth > Non Ards
Sligo v Tyrone > Tyrone
Monaghan v Cavan > Monaghan
Cork have named their team for Saturday’s qualifier clash with Galway and they’ve gone back to most of the tried and tested reliables. After picking a very inexperienced forward line against Tipperary and being short a few because of injury against Dublin it now looks like they’re sending out their strongest lineup. Ronan Curran and Sean Og return to the half back line, the two McCarthys are in the half forward line and Joe Deane is full forward. I reckon we can expect to see Cork’s strongest perfomance of the season on Saturday and it may be enough to catch a Galway outfit that hasn’t had much of a test yet and is relatively unproven. Either way should be a great game.
Cork:
D Og Cusack;
S O’Neill, D O’Sullivan, B Murphy;
J Gardiner, R Curran, S Og O hAilpin;
T Kenny, J O’Connor;
P Cronin, N McCarthy, T McCarthy;
B O’Connor, J Deane, C Naughton.
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