Despite Davy’s good work, hurling has lost its thrill
Former Model star Lyng insists thrill is gone from hurling
DOMICILED in the wilds of west Kerry, the rugged beauty of Ballyferriter on the Dingle peninsula his daily vista, Diarmuid ‘Gizzy’ Lyng is far enough from Wexford not to get sucked into the flag-waving ahead of tomorrow’s sell-out Leinster semi-final against Kilkenny at Innovate Wexford Park.
For him, it’s more about the bigger picture.
‘If Wexford beat Kilkenny with the crowd that’s there, it will be undoubtedly one of the great days in Wexford’s hurling history,’ he says. ‘Especially given the lofty position that Kilkenny have occu‘There pied in the last 15 years.
‘I don’t know where that leaves me as a fan of Wexford. I’m not thinking locally as I thought before. It’s like parish-pump politics. The area gets what the area needs, even if it is at the cost of the greater community over the longer term.’
Of course he would love his county to prosper. That’s a given. It’s just that aspects of the modern game leave him cold, particularly the manner in which elements of the systems that he feels have left Gaelic football ‘profoundly sick’, have crept into hurling.
He talked on radio last weekend about the Munster semi-final between Clare and Limerick and warmed to the same theme after watching a blood-and-thunder rivalry reduced to little more than a bloodless Clare coup.
is a kind of a joylessness in the inter-county game at the moment. A strain and a stress and a joylessness that I don’t think should be tolerable. Because these are the youngest, brightest talents in the country, and they’re not playing like young fellas who used to when they were younger.
‘I don’t sense a huge amount of joy on the field at the moment. In the players, in having the ball, wanting the ball. There is great joy in winning, always. But the actual game itself, it doesn’t seem to be as joyful as it used to be. I don’t see as many players spent on the field. Leaning on the hurl because they can’t go any more, after going into the absolute root of themselves to get the good stuff out.
‘It’s more practised, it’s more measured, it’s more clinical.
‘A lot has been added. The skill of the players is 10 times better than it has ever been, the fitness 10 times better I’m sure. But what is being lost?’
And the teacher and Gaeilgeoir is not afraid to ask questions of his native Wexford, and the direction of hurling, a game former Wexford manager Liam Griffin described as the ‘Riverdance’ of sport.
Since taking over this season, the rise and rise of Wexford under Davy Fitzgerald has been built around a sweeper system that underpinned his time in charge of Clare. Promotion from Division 1B and a first Allianz League win over Kilkenny since 1957 at Nowlan Park have contributed to making tomorrow’s tie the hottest ticket in town, not to mention Fitzgerald’s sideline ban after the on-field flashpoint with Tipperary in April.
‘It’s interesting what Davy has achieved. He has brought in a very professional set-up and is obviously a very good motivator. He has a particular way of working with people that seems to work very well, maybe over a short period of time, who is to say?’
It’s just he is worried that hurling will ultimately be devalued by what have become staples of modern Gaelic football and hurling: ‘more structure, more measurability, bigger backroom teams, more rules being made that teams have to abide by.’
A deep thinker on the game, he asks a few pertinent questions. ‘What else are we losing? The more regimented it becomes, the more of a students’ game it becomes, the more measured it becomes, who are we losing? Would Johnny Pilkington make the Offaly team now? He wouldn’t. We’re losing that.
‘Those characters bring the skill, the excitement, great energy — it’s not a 75 per cent energy, it’s a full energy. You know they’re alive with the game and it’s a pleasure to watch them play.
‘Hurling is in good health. Fundamentally, that is down to Brian Cody and the honesty that Kilkenny have brought in his time. He has been a great guardian of hurling the past 10 years.
‘He understands the players’ perspective, of winning justifying everything when you’re inside that bubble.
‘I see what I would have done myself at 25 to have won an AllIreland. That’s very much the way I would have considered things. I would have done everything to have played in an All-Ireland final.
‘Hurling’s good health is down to Brian Cody and the honesty of Kilkenny during his time’
That’s why the culture exists. What fans promote, what players subscribe to, what management teams are aiming towards. Of course it has a value. But it’s not a case of if it’s not capitalism, it’s communism. It’s not about polar opposites.
‘If you win an All-Ireland does it justify the tactics? Does the end justify the means, that what you’ve done is right? If that’s the mentality we’re going to service I think we’re just better going back to the club now, leaving the intercounty game for a while and let it figure itself out. Because I don’t think that is befitting of what the game is.’
Waterford’s emergence as an All-Ireland contender under Derek McGrath has also been underpinned by a counter-attacking set-up and dedicated sweeper.
‘Waterford have majestic, great players. Maybe they need to learn a system, play a certain way, because it caught Waterford in the past. I don’t know. But if the system curbs their natural expression and we’re denied that as a hurling community, of course you’re going to ask some questions. That’s not to say Derek McGrath is wrong. Or Austin Gleeson or any of these guys is wrong for doing it.
‘But you have to ask questions. Do you want to see a player like the Gooch (Colm Cooper) having to go out around the 50 or 60 just to get on the ball? But because there is no football to be played in the inside line, they have to come out the field to just get on the ball.’