It does not seem that long ago (to me at any rate) since I spent most of my summer evenings training, or just pucking a sliotar in the Glen Field. This is not going to be a piece about how things were in “good oul’ days” – it is about the current skill levels in hurling. That said, those summer days were warmer and there seemed to be more time for playing hurling.
In 1978 I graduated from the Glen Rovers minor team to the senior team in 1978. The only noticeable change was the cajoling chant of Bernie Hackett “pull on the ball” was replaced with the harsher roar of the late Seamus O’Brien. “Dermot (he never said Diarmuid) Donovan will ya pull on the ball!”
Players were spread all over the field for a large chunk of every training session. Half a dozen sliotars would then be “released” and for the next three quarters of an hour we would let the sliotars fly up and down the field. Players were not allowed to stay still. They were expected to move towards the ball as is came towards them; then pull first time; connecting with the ball and keeping it going in the direction it was already travelling.
Whether the ball was travelling along the ground or through the air it made no difference. You were expected to hit it. Woe betide anyone who was seen catching the ball in his hand, or worse still, lifting the ball into his hand and striking it.
When this part of the session was over, we would have a game. There were “conditions” attached the game too. The usual conditions were that you could only take the ball into your hand if you caught it clean off the air. Once it touched the ground, and even if it bounced up in front of you, you were not allowed catch it.
If you are wondering why we put up with this, the answer is simple; it was enjoyable. There are few more satisfying feelings in sport, than making proper contact with a sliotar that is passing over your head. When you connect properly you only feel the lightest tingle through the hurley. Then you hear the ball whizz away down the field. You might only achieve that once in the evening, but like the fisherman that casts his fly across the river 100 times, it’s that one bite, that one perfect stroke, that keeps you coming back.
Not everybody was happy with this training. Once during our run to the county final of 1978, an experienced corner-forward complained that it was not practical for him to “pull on every ball” during a game and training did not prepare him for playing. Christy Ring was a selector and agreed with his assessment, but added, “If you can connect with a ball flying past you, then your eye is in. And if your eye is in, you can do anything you want.”
There was a hint of simplicity about this answer because while life was very straightforward for me (go to school/work, go training, go to sleep). It had become more complicated for many adult players who were paying for a car and trying to get a mortgage. In general, the opportunities to play or practice hurling regularly for working adults were limited to the official training sessions of long evenings between April and September (there were no floodlights).
It is likely that the average club hurler probably hurled for about 100 to 150 hours a year at that time. But it was also likely that the same player had hurled up to 10 times this many hours in his school-going days. I am including going to the shop for your mother with a hurley and ball as “hurling”, because all that practice counted.
The fundamental skills of hurling have not changed since Maurice Davin wrote down the first GAA rules of the game in 1885. The development of these skills depends on two principles; the quantity and quality of training.
As I said, back in the 1970s a boy could spend up to a thousand hours a year playing hurling – that’s the quantity. In the Glen, this was done under strict supervision where hand, eye and foot co-ordination was emphasised (pulling on the ball as it passed by). It must have been the same, or similar, in the other clubs because they were producing the likes of Tom Cashman, Dermot McCurtain, Tony O’Sullivan, Tadhg Murphy, Ger Cunningham, etc. etc. The schools provided whatever hurling tuition the clubs overlooked, or couldn’t do. That was the quality.
It is probably fair to say that no child is able to devote the same amount of time to playing hurling in 2011 as his father would have thirty years ago. It is the same with the current adults; they cannot devote the same amount of hours to hurling as the adult hurlers of the 1970s.
And so, the standard of skill in hurling, especially club hurling, continues to fall.
Around about 1979 or 1980, my late work colleague and former Sars hurler of the 1940s and 50s Jim O’Neill, advised me to expect to struggle against ‘old’ hurlers when I was playing senior for the Glen. “Hurlers are at their prime between the ages of 27 and 32” he told me. “Because by then, they will have enough experience to read the play. You (meaning me) will be running around after the ball and they will know what you are going to do before you even think about it yourself.” This was effect of quantity and quality.
It seems that there are very few “old” hurlers around at present. Those that make it to their late 20s or early 30s are either clapped out, or have not put in the required hours to be able to “read” the play like the crabbed hurlers Jim O’Neill spoke about.
I watched Galway and Waterford on television last Sunday (until it got so bad that I could stomach no more of it) and Joe Canning was the only player on view that could make the ball dance to his tune. He was the only player that would improve the stock of the current Kilkenny or Tipperary sides.
Coaches seem to have compensated for the lack of hurling skills by devising tactics that enable teams to keep possession. Much of these tactics revolve around the use of the hand pass.
The great GAA writer P.D. Mehigan, who wrote under the non-de-plume “Carbery” said in his 1940 book Hurling –Ireland’s National Game, “All young students of the game must become proficient in hitting on the sod, off the left and right hands, before they attempt to raise or handle the ball. ‘Handling’ is the bane of present-day hurling…Instructors in our Schools and Colleges must insist on ground hitting as the basis of proficiency. I know the temptation of a nice lift, catch and soaring drive is great. But it is a mortal sin in educational hurling. Blackrock and Tubberadora hurlers of old would not deign to lift a ball into their hands. ‘Twere the sure proof of want of skill!”
This paragraph from “Carbery” highlights the dilemma for 21st century hurling. The emphasis on the technical skill of hurling has changed dramatically over the years. In an effort to compensate for this deficiency in individual skills, the retention of possession has become sacrosanct to the team, and the role of the individual has been severely curtailed.
The image, as described by Jack Lynch at the graveside of Christy Ring, of ‘young men, matching their hurling skills against each other, (and)… young boys swinging their camáns for the sheer thrill of the feel and the tingle in their fingers of the impact of ash on leather’ is no longer accurate. The coaches of hurling have, for the most part, adopted the lines of Kipling “For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack” as the new mantra of hurling.
With every season that passes the hurling becomes more and more like rugby or Gaelic Football. It is only the fact that they carry hurleys makes it look different.