The news that the GAA intends to send five counties out of the Allianz Hurling League is only surprising because a lot of people seem to be surprised.
The GAA has long been gaslighting people about hurling. As concerned voices lament the failing crops, the GAA deflects. The GAA says, look here's a picture of two lush ears of corn, Limerick and Clare, in the sunshine. Stop imagining, your worries are mere illusions.
Croke Park has perfected the art of persuading people that motion is action, that intentions signify progress. Review bodies, pats on the back and lip service are tools of the trade.
Telling five counties that are struggling to keep hurling alive that their inter-county season will now be three months long is something we should have seen coming. Another committee had the idea of creating the job of national hurling director. It was a good idea, but it was a half measure. Asking one man, Martin Fogarty, to grow the game when a full task force was needed was the cheap option.
Hurling needed an army, serious funding plus political backing from Croke Park. Fogarty wore himself to a frazzle representing hurling in places where many would prefer to forget about the game. When he finished his five-year contract, he was neither offered a new contract nor replaced.
Maybe that says it all, and while some of us have long made our feelings known, it is worth saying more for the sake of hurling. Hurling people must continue to raise the clarion call.
First, the GAA doesn't own hurling. Nobody does. The GAA undertook to be the guardian of the game, to nurture it. The GAA has failed in what it set out to do. There is so much to love in the GAA, and like countless more and like my father and grandfather, I was born into it, and vowed to give back more than we received. That’s the duty and makes nobody a hero.
I was raised in the arms of GAA people and when I am done and there’s no extra-time I hope to be carried out on the shoulders of the GAA, wrapped in our colours. The GAA is a unique Irish mix of sports association and social movement, but it has its flaws. The failure to fight for hurling is the worst of these.
Hurling isn’t just older than the GAA, the game is older than the recorded history of Ireland. Through all those centuries hurling has been there.
As a child Michael Cusack played the game and noticed that it was declining. In 1882 he joined the Dublin Hurling Club, formed 'for the purpose of taking steps to re-establish the national game of hurling’. In 1883, Cusack founded ‘Cusack’s Academy Hurling Club’. In 1884 the GAA was founded with Cusack one of the main men. He must have given thanks. Hurling was in safe hands at last. You got that one wrong, Michael!
The GAA hasn’t pushed the geography of hurling on one square mile since then - 140 years later the game is just as they found it, thriving only south of the Galway-Dublin line, where it always was strong. Elsewhere, hurling people struggle heroically to keep the game alive.
Can you believe this? Five years ago, UNESCO added hurling to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The GAA has met that responsibility with the dim imagination of career bean counters. Yes, we’re cutting five counties off, but don’t worry it’s "cost neutral".
If you are struggling to keep hurling alive in Cavan, Louth, Leitrim, Longford or Fermanagh, it isn’t "cost neutral".
How that phrase must stick in the craw when the hurling people of those counties watch Croke Park spending €15m on shiny new seats. Nobody from the condemned counties should ever expect to sit in those seats to watch their team hurl on the field below.
Take away all the lip service and phoney genuflecting and the GAA’s view of hurling of late comes down to two things.
1. Photos. A visiting royal, or celebrity is in Dublin and Croke Park, will summon a hurler for a photo opportunity. Hurler watches celeb attempt to strike a ball. Celeb chuckles and goes onto the next photo op, celeb drinking a pint of Guinness probably.
2. Subscriptions. Hurling, in Munster anyway, is a useful tool for luring people over the paywall of GAAGO.
Otherwise hurling exists to be seen and not heard. Keep itself out of the way of football.
It is time to ask if the GAA is up to the job of looking after this treasure. It is time to consider asking the state to intervene to save this threatened part of our living culture.
It is time that hurling was given the autonomy for hurling people to be taking the decisions for hurling. Why must hurling be handcuffed to Gaelic football. Hurling is poorly represented at the top table and all the lower tables.
If you’re not at the table you are on the menu.
Hurling feels that lack of strong voices now. Right now, hurling needs loud voices and strong leaders before it passes through the digestive systems of any more committees and ends up being an Instagram curiosity for tourists in an Irish folk park.
What else does hurling need?
The game needs imagination. A long-term plan and a proper taskforce to implement it. Feet on the ground. Help with coaching the coaches. Hurling specific GDO’s in schools. A twin approach to advancing the game at inter-county and club level. The sport requires the formation of new clubs, but equally important is the advancement of the inter-county game with its presence of star players to serve as inspiration for upcoming generations.
The targeted growing of underage structures and development pathways. Establishment of academies/ centres of excellence/regional hurling centres to serve clusters of developing counties. Clusters of developing counties sharing centres of excellence and expertise and providing games for each other.
The same clusters perhaps forming regional teams until such time as they can stand on their own. Games, games, and more games.
Successful counties should be encouraged to develop mentoring ties with weaker ones. We need tailor-made strategies for counties that show signs of wanting to progress. Every county is different. At a Gaelic Players Association meeting this week, I listened as the idea of competitive balance was raised and discussed – it seems so applicable to the current state of hurling.
We should be exempting the Joe McDonagh Cup winners from relegation for a period after their win. When Carlow won the Joe McDonagh this year, their brilliant forward Martin Kavanagh (who as a boy was brought to see Kilkenny play hurling, not Carlow) looked forward to next year in Leinster. He said that Carlow would take a few hammerings. He was right. Carlow will be back down the hill again soon heroically trying to push the rock back up. Just keep it cost neutral lads.
The game needs finance. When Limerick won their first modern All-Ireland a few years back they proved what leadership and vision can achieve. To celebrate JP McManus gave €100,000 to every county board in Ireland. Maybe JP knows what the money was spent on. Most of us don't.
The FAI launched an €863m plan earlier this year. Often ridiculed, at least they had an ambitious plan. The GAA seems to be making or breaking it up as it goes along.
Is all this too big for the GAA? Probably. Hurling requires substantial, targeted development money. Real money. Not the pitiful amounts that get bandied about by GAA leaders when talking hurling. GAA, government, and private funding.
Proper investment would pay back times over. The game has proven that already. Hurling has been much better to the GAA than the GAA has been to hurling. Why not seek professional assistance, hire experts specialised in strategic development and growth.
It’s hurling. It’s Ireland. It’s possible to love all sports but recognise that in this country hurling is more than just another sport. It needs to be ring-fenced, protected, and nurtured. Hurling needs oxygen.
On Friday we celebrated the All-Stars, the tip of the iceberg, a time when we reward the best and we watched as the GAA leadership took another photo op from hurling.
We wondered if in time the story would be told that 2023 was a watershed, a crossroads for hurling. The mask had slipped for those charged as stewards of the game.
A time when hurling people either stood and said this far and no further, a time they began reclaiming lost ground, when they pushed back against the cost neutral brigade. Or a time they gave up and said we didn't know what we had until it was gone.
As we chatted, we remembered that long ago the GAA took four sports under its wing. Rounders and handball are barely spoken of these days.
This is hurling’s time. PLANING, FINANCE and ENERGY. Grow the game, protect it like our language and our music. Pay it forward and pass it on.
No more genuflecting. No more gaslighting.
