Declan Bogue

NOBODY IS HAPPY.

Nobody is happy with football. (Too many bodies back. Too much handpassing. Lateral play. No high catching. Too much zonal positioning and proscriptive play.)

And nobody is happy with hurling. (Too many bodies back. Too much handpassing. Lateral play. No high catching. Too much zonal positioning and proscriptive play.)

There’s no room for the Mavericks. The Pizza Munchers and the Pintmen. Stylists may not apply. The Down footballers may be back winning matches, but it doesn’t come with a side of swagger. There’s still those who are happy to charter a plane to call for the sacking of a county board official. However weird that is.

And you won’t see a pile of swash and buckle from Kerry this year. In the Kingdom, it will be all plus-ones and backdoor cuts and 85% return on their own kickouts instead.

Rory Gallagher’s not happy in Derry. Yes, he might cheer the winning of a breaking ball to the heavens, but he will still do his best to suggest the hairdryer is going to make an appearance in the dressing room because of a couple of nothing goals of zero consequence in an opening-round cakewalk.

Waterford’s hurlers might have clipped too many fences against Limerick, but you’ll recall Davy Fitz phased Paul Flynn out once he took over the first time; any shirkers not willing to strap a telegraph pole across their shoulder blades and run through a dense forest won’t be around by the time the first cut of silage is home.

But more than anything, people aren’t happy with hurling.

“I think we have the greatest game ever in hurling, and the level of skill has never been higher,” said Jackie Tyrrell on The Saturday Game, with the pregnant pause of the world’s biggest-ever ‘but’ hanging over it.

“But,” he duly delivered, “I would have slight concerns around the game; the restart of the puckout and the continuous use of the handpass.”

At this point, host Damian Lawlor interjected to put the viewer in the frame: an “average of 99 per game, a 40% increase over four years”.

Tyrrell continued: “I believe we need to limit the handpass and it should be two handpasses, and a strike.

“I believe the puckout has to travel beyond the ’45 before it can be contested… We are losing the flow of the game, we are losing the high catch, and they are skills that need to be contested.”

At this point Colm Cooper started asking questions such as if the handpass in hurling was being used as a means to retain possession, and I went looking for the controller in search of something more intellectually challenging, some old re-runs of Geordie Shore or similar.

Maybe there is a point to all this. If feigning head injuries is the new means of killing the clock in Gaelic football, hurling has its issues too.

Limerick manager John Kiely opened up his stats laptop to panting reporters on Sunday when he revealed, “I think the ball was only in play for something like 14 minutes in the first half, which is an extraordinarily small amount of time.

“That’s quite simply down to the amount of stoppages in the game. Listen, we can’t control that. I suppose it was the nature of the way the two teams engaged with each other as well at times.”

Kiely’s not all that happy too, by the way. After the weekend, any pundit or journalist who finds themselves paying this Limerick team a compliment would want to watch themselves.

“Listen, let’s be honest about it, there was some amount of bullshit spoke about our team and the season ahead this week and the week before,” said Kiely.

John Kiely and Gearoid Hegarty. Ken Sutton / INPHO Ken Sutton / INPHO / INPHO

Some around him did a quick scan back through the general mood of the newspapers, websites and podcasts. Nope, nobody was lambasting Limerick or criticising them for playing on the edge, breaking the rules, or naming dummy teams.

Instead, the overall consensus was that they had been singing Limerick’s praises like a choir of angels. The absolute cheek!

“It’s a softening-up exercise mentally from those outside of our camp,” said Kiely, like a man determined to expose the clandestine meet-up every Gaelic games pundit had in the car-park of the Horse and Jockey a fortnight ago where they decided upon an agreed course of action to stop Limerick once and for all.

“But we’re around a long time. We know that’s all folly and nonsense. Every day you go out you’re there to be beaten. We saw that again today. Couple of chances go left, right, on you, and you’re in that situation where you lose your game.

“Every day we go out we know that we can possibly be beaten. That’s just the way it is. So I think that was a lot of nonsense. I think people might hopefully have a bit more reality about their perspective and their analysis about where things are going.

“You just have to acknowledge the fact that this is nonsense, this is not true. This is lies. This is a softening-up exercise. You can accept that and allow it to interfere with how you prepare, how you play. Or you can get on with your job and accept that every single time you’re on the ball you’re going to be hit like a train. Be ready for that.”

The metaphors are heavy. The mood is dark. There’s nothing won in April and all that, but so few of these players and management seem to be enjoying these moments.

For over 20,000 in Thurles in the stands, they had a great old time.

We understand the need to be watchdogs on the games, and to bring something thoughtful to the analysis. But would it be so wrong to just enjoy it for what it is, the odd time?

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