Anthony Nash

THERE WAS A time some years back when we considered micing me up in the Cork goal. We weren’t sure if it was allowed or not. Though to be honest we were working under the assumption that it probably wasn’t. 

We dropped the idea before it came to any kind of fruition. It was deemed too much hassle for the sake of a reward which wasn’t certain. Though, now that I think of it, people might have cooled on the idea when I asked whether there’d be a facility for me to talk back on this channel! 

I was reminded of this when I saw the reaction to Davy Fitzgerald’s man behind the wire, who was in place behind the goal against Dublin and then Laois, before being moved on by stewards. 

Davy has argued that he’s trying to innovate within the parameters of the rules which don’t allow a Maor Foirne to get messages onto the field like before, even though there has been talk of a return in some form. 

I can appreciate his desire to try something here. Across all county teams, there’s a will to relay messages onto the pitches, and various ways have been tested. 

Sometimes a player will stay down injured when the medical need is not pressing, even if managers deny that a physio would ever be asked to carry in a message. Hurley carriers are miced up too and do get messages in, though they are not allowed to be miced up. 

You can understand the desire to retire the Maor Foirne role a couple of years back. There have been flashpoints, most memorably when a quick TJ Reid free was intercepted by a Dublin selector during the league in 2020. 

And going back through the years you had all manner of pitch encroachments. A correction was necessary, but as always, the tendency can be to over-correct. We’ve gone from being way too loose to being excessively pernickity. 

In professional sports such as Aussie Rules, you are allowed a runner. Even in the Premier League, you will see mini huddles next to the technical area when there is a stoppage. 

Get-togethers like this are valuable. When Robbie O’Flynn got injured in the 2017 Munster final against Clare, it allowed time for myself and the backs to get together and the brief talk we had was key to us pushing on to win the game. 

Messages and chats are like rain to farmers. You need some for the harvest, but too much creates problems. There’s a difference between good information and prescriptive nonsense or somebody getting your ear to state the obvious. 

I can remember a stats guy telling me, for example, that 11 of my 15 first-half puckouts had gone down the left side. That’s valuable to know. Yet if I had someone in real time telling me to hit 12 on his diagonal run towards the centre, then there would be pushback! 

Once in a game against Tipp, the most obvious element of our puckout plan was ‘do not land a high ball on top of Paudie Maher’. I landed a high ball on top of Paudie Maher. The ball had barely left my hurley before I knew it was a mistake. I had finished cursing at myself before Maher pulled the ball out of the sky, and long before a selector came sprinting down the line.

“What are you doing? You just landed the ball on Paudie Maher!” 

“You think I don’t see that!” 

That’s the abridged conversation. Expletives removed in the name of brevity. 

I’d have more sympathy for the selector now. Up until recently I’d only known hurling as a player. Since I’ve been involved with UL and the Cork U20s, I’ve seen the other side. 

There’s a conflict at play here, and it’s often in the mind of the managers and selectors. 

As a player, you have a great deal of control over your own destiny. Your actions, and those around you, dictate how the game turns. If things aren’t going well, you can harness the adrenaline flowing through the blood to change the outcome. If it doesn’t work, there is a certain peace in the fact that you are doing all that you can, physically and mentally. 

Those on the line see everything the players see. Their pulse rate is climbing through the gears too, but they cannot use the adrenaline practically. They can drive on their team, try to transmit their energy to the players, and many managers will feel they can and do set the tone in such a way. 

They can more tangibly affect the outcome by making real-time tactical adjustments, and to do so requires a certain level of access. Yet even if they were allowed to step all over the field like in days of old, it still ultimately comes down to the players.          

Hurling is not gridiron, it’s a fluid game where flair and quick action wins the day. Nobody wants to pay in to see robotic players, and nobody goes out to train or play a match to have somebody tell them what they must do in every instant. 

Managers appreciate this – most of the time anyway. Giving them a little more leeway would not threaten the character of the sport. Indeed, I’d argue it would improve the flow of hurling, because when you outlaw something which has always been fairly intrinsic to the game, then teams will test the boundaries, and at the minute, this mitigates away from the fast-moving spectacle we all want to see.    

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