My brother and I left Croke Park yesterday evening, laughing with joy at the sporting spectacle we'd just witnessed and exhausted from the amount of concentration required to watch an All Ireland Hurling Semi Final between the great Limerick team going for five in a row and Cork who were determined to stop them. I missed 75% of the poc outs because I'm so used to watching football where the keepers generally take an age to restart the game. There is no hanging about in hurling. If you miss the keeper's poc out then it can be difficult to find where the slíotar has ended up on the wide open spaces of Croke Park. The game is so fast, the sequence from keeper at one end to over the bar for a point at the other end might only be a few seconds. This was my first game of hurling and my brothers first Gaelic game at Croke Park full stop. I knew it would be fast but it still takes your breath away. There is no time to talk about what happened in the previous play. More than 80,000 supporters from Cork and Limerick, as well as many other counties of Ireland, are treated to a display of skill, speed, strength, power, blocks, tackles, hits, catches, goals, points, courage and drama. I'm not an expert on hurling, I know a few names now but I wouldn't recognise any of them or even know what numbers they wear. Number 6 for Cork stands out for me, after the game I discover he's Robert Downey, he was being talked about on RTE Radio 1 on the way down to Dublin in the car, the only change in the Lee-siders line-up from the last game. He's tall and athletic and seems to always know where the ball will end up. He puts in a performance Iron Man would be proud of. His team mate, number 4, is the captain Sean O'Donoghue, smaller, a terrier type, hunting down the loose ball and clearing it up field but it's the keeper, Patrick Collins who makes an incredible save when he runs out and flings himself in front of a Limerick forward to stop a certain goal. A slow motion replay on the big screens show him taking a stinger to the arm pit which may not have hurt too much then, on account of the adrenalin but I'd say he has a ball shaped dark purple bruise there today. Later, I discovered when watching the highlights he made another save seconds later to finally thwart that spell of Limerick pressure. Like basketball, this is a game of runs. Cork score freely to begin with but then it's Limerick who quickly score 3 points to make it 4-4. There's a bit of back and forth and then number 15 for Cork (Brian Hayes) coming in from the left, breaking tackles and finds the net. Cork lead by 4. Another goal by the Rebels is quickly ruled out but I don't know the reason. I discover there was deemed to have been a thrown ball in the build up. The only issue with the hand-pass in hurling seems to be the players do it too quickly for refs to see. Cork were 5 clear but then Limerick go on their run of scoring and lead by 2 points 0-16 to 1-11 at the break.
And breathe.
So what has Pep Guardiola got to do with any of this? I was at the All Ireland Football quarter finals last weekend to see if Armagh could finally get beyond that hurdle and progress to the semi finals. I'm not an expert on Gaelic football either. I did enjoy playing when I was young, so much so, in fact, that for a while I played for a team in Down on a Saturday and a team in Armagh on Tuesday night. I was always more of an Orchard County man but I celebrated in Newry, with 30,000 others, the night Down returned with Sam in 1991, I was at the final in 94 when they beat Dublin, having stood in almost exactly the same spot on the Canal End supporting Armagh in the National League Final defeat to Meath a few months earlier. I watched all of the road to glory in 2002 on tv then was there from quarter final onwards in 2003. Since then I'd only been to the International Rules Series clincher at the MCG in 2008, the Ulster Final in 2017 and the All Ireland Quarter Final in 2022 which was decided by the first ever penalty shoot out in the competitions history. The 2010 final was the day after I got married and watched on TV but only after Liverpool had lost to United earlier that afternoon. If Armagh or Down aren't doing well, I mightn't see any Gaelic football in the summer. I watch a lot of American sport. At breakfast time, depending on the time of year, I'll be watching the Knicks, the Steelers, Red Sox or combinations of all while I'm eating my Coco Pops. The Knicks, ravaged with injuries, went out at Eastern Conference Semi Final stage. If they'd got to their first conference final in 24 years they'd have played the Boston Celtics, the best team all year and eventual 2024 champions. During the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, Pep Guardiola, fresh from an unprecedented 4th Premier League title in a row, was seen on the Celtics floor apparently coaching their Head Coach! Crossover of sports is nothing new of course, indeed Pep owes part of his style of play to Handball. Not the GAA game played against the wall but the sport sometimes seen at the Olympics - kind of like netball but you score by throwing the ball into 5 a side goals. Pep was intrigued by the side to side play in handball, moving the ball with the aim to also move the opposition and create gaps for his teams to exploit. Pep took over the Barcelona first team in 2008 and transformed football based on, among other things, this simple tactic. At some point during those Barcelona days, Jimmy McGuinness saw the possibility of transposing this style from football to Gaelic football and transformed the Irish game. As I watched Armagh happily retreat deep into their own 45 and invite Roscommon on to them in a low block, to coin a phrase from football, a term I first heard Brendan Rodgers use when he was manager of Liverpool and dismissed as one of his many Brent-isms, it felt like a bit of Jurgen Klopp gegenpressing wouldn't go amiss at times. I played a game at underage level when we never crossed our own 50 yard line after the first few minutes but that was more to do with being penned in there by Crossmaglen Rangers in a Championship Semi Final and battered 80-0. Even the Cross keeper scored a hat trick that day. The score would have been significantly lower if they'd been happy to hand-pass the ball from one side of the pitch to the other, patiently waiting for the space to open up. This is modern Gaelic football though. Teams sit deep and wait for the opportunity to counter attack while the team with the ball move it around ad nauseum. My son plays U10's in Co. Antrim and it's all hand-passing the ball up the field. In one way, it is good because you don't have that one player in every team getting the ball and trying to run the length of the pitch to score every time he gets it but on the other hand, there's only one identity now and it can be really fucking boring. People raved about Pep's Barcelona team but I couldn't watch too much of it. Similarly with his City side. This is not to say I didn't enjoy last weeks double header. Armagh overcame their quarter final hoodoo with victory over 14 man Roscommon with fantastic performances by Barry McCambridge and Oisin Conaty while half time sub Stefan Campbell showed all his experience in making the most of being the extra man. Dublin and Galway started like a game I recognised from a bygone age but then it quickly descended into the game we know and loathe (at times). In hurling, they can send the ball over from a mile out and I've often mentioned this to GAA friends as a way of beating the low block. There's potentially a rule coming in for 2 points being awarded for kicking the ball over from beyond the 45, a bit like the 3 pointer in basketball. GAA seem to be happy to take elements of basketball, AFL and even rugby but less generous about being seen to take things from football. Even the way they draw the TV from the bottom up for Hawkeye seems like a desperate attempt to not replicate the box drawn by football referees for VAR decisions. Maybe they should just get a clip of Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction drawing one and show that on the big screens in Croke Park any time they don't know if the ball went the scoring side of the post. When Galway started to play with the urgency of a team that needed to score quickly they were able to do it and defeated the mighty Dubs. The question may then be why can't they do that all the time but was it only possible because they'd tired Dublin out with the tactics earlier in the game?
Hurling is a game that has always interested me. I had a hurl around the house so had some basic skills and had dabbled a bit - doing nets once in a game and trained with the University team. The crucial element of every hurler, I feel, is bravery. I never had that. I played rugby which is a tough game but hurling involved sticks. Getting hit on the head, hands or ankles was an occupational hazard. A fella I worked with from the Glens of Antrim told me about the injury that ended his career. He went up for a ball, lost his stick in the tussle with an opponent, came down and landed on the still upright stick, breaking ribs and puncturing a lung. I grew up watching Teddy McCarthy (I just discovered while writing this that Teddy died last year aged just 57!), wearing no helmet and socks rolled down to his ankles. That to me was a hurler. Teddy not only won two All Ireland Hurling Championships, he also won 2 All Ireland Football medals, playing midfield in both codes. The only player to ever win All Ireland Football and Hurling medals in the same year. A phenomenal sportsman. Helmets are mandatory now but even with that when there are 6 or 7 players in this game all trying to get the ball off the ground and into their hand, a suit of armour might be the only way to make sure you don't get whacked with a stick. I eventually played a bit of social hurling which requires you to be less brave or is it mad you have to be. On Sunday, Cork started the second half the way they started the first but this time they got a bit further clear. Six points was the difference then it was seven. It felt like the Rebels needed this sort of a lead if they were to have any chance. The Treaty County started to come back but Hayes takes a high ball and blasts over the bar. 6 points in it with 6 minutes to play. Another run of scores coming. Number 13, Aaron Gilane has been prominent all day and scores to reduce the deficit then number 10 Gearóid Hegarty, a giant of a man with a giant of a point, cuts the lead to two. Now it's tense. 4 minutes to be added and it feels like the momentum has swung to Limerick. Five in a row is still on but their shooting is letting them down and now they need a goal. A Limerick free kick is dropped into the square at the Canal (now Davin) End, the Cork blood in me - a grandfather from Youghal - is willing them to clear the ball while also resigned to seeing the net ripple with a late Limerick sickener but it's Cork and the unbeatable Patrick Collins who emerges, ball in hand. With that, Cork win 1-28 to 0-29 and another five in a row falls short. What a game. What an occasion. After All by The Frank and Walters is belted out by everybody in red ahead of another day out in Dublin in a couple of weeks against the Banner County, Clare. There'll not be many tickets for that. I'll be back here again next week in orange for Armagh v Kerry and I might even catch a bit of Down v Laois before it. Armagh avoided the dreaded penalty shootout that ended their last two quarter final appearances but a semi final or final could still be decided that way, they might need to take a leaf out of England's book so far at Euro 2024 and how they've got over the fear of penalties and if Pep Guardiola manages to win a 5th consecutive Premier League next season maybe he could teach them how to do that in hurling.
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