This selflessness is fast becoming a curse on the GAA.
Team spirit, sacrifice, work ethic and primacy of the result is all well and good, but what about flair, arrogance, selfishness and moments of genius?
Gaelic football has long since been lost to the realm of ‘the-ends-justify-the-means’, but we hurling folk always thought there was hope for the boutique code. We believed there were still enough artisans who saw style and substance as one and the same.
Ger Loughnane kicked up a shit storm by describing the Kilkenny hurlers as “functional beyond belief”, yet this past week, two of the brightest stars in the country unapologetically championed their contribution to a larger system for the greater good.
They were basically explaining why it’s great to be a functional hurler.
Remember when Shane O’Donnell burst upon the national consciousness in 2013 with that magnificent hat-trick in the All-Ireland final replay win over Cork?
Here he was, all blond hair and teeth, like an ash-wielding Micky Dolenz, playing without fear on the biggest stage imaginable. Three goals in 20 minutes, one off his right, one off his left and one batted in over his head. Hurling’s perfect hat-trick.
The hysterical reaction of Ireland’s adolescents to the young student was proof that Davy Fitzgerald had struck on a very special talent – the sort of hurler who can capture the imagination of the casual sports fan.
If George Best was the fifth Beatle, O’Donnell was the sixth One Directioner. For a brief, crazy period when his mother became his agent, he was bigger than the sport of hurling (in some quarters).
A free-spirited, goal-scoring hurling pin-up. Along with the likes of Podge Collins, David McInerney and Tony Kelly, O’Donnell was the future of an exciting Clare team that were the future of hurling.
Fast forward to April 2016 and O’Donnell, ground down by two fruitless seasons of senior intercounty hurling spoke this week in greys and browns. Working for the hurling clampdown.
O’Donnell, at the grand old age of 21, was explaining the logic behind his role as a one-man full-forward line. A sacrifice that has seen him score a single point in four league matches.
“If we’re pulling men out, there’s usually a sweeper because they’ll have an excess of backs. It just means that I don’t score – which is fine.
“If the ball comes in then, the sweeper will come to me. A man outside or something is going to be the one scoring. To be honest, I don’t care. If a player scores, it’s all the one.”
In a regime where drinking Mi Wadi in a licensed premises, rather than the manager’s front room, can lead to punishment, it probably doesn’t pay to express dissension through the national media, but even so O’Donnell’s comments are depressing.
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What we are seeing is the product of two deep-thinkers like Fitzgerald and Donal Óg Cusack and it is impossible to argue with the results they have achieved this spring, in their best campaign since O’Donnell’s Croke Park spectacular announced a fallow spell for the Banner County.
Watching Clare fight back to beat their hosts Wexford on a murky February day you got a sense of what O’Donnell was up against.
Regularly collecting the ball facing away from goal near the sideline, he was subject to a barrage of hefty tackles and rarely, if ever, looked like threatening the posts.
No doubt Fitzgerald and Cusack had a plan, just as they will for Kilkenny this Sunday in Thurles, but it seems a strange way to get the best out of your lightning fast, small attacker with an eye for a goal.
Those adolescent girls didn’t fall in love with O’Donell because of his ability to win a free being flattened by Matthew O’Hanlon in the shadow of Wexford Park’s main stand.
You would hope he will rediscover his love of the limelight and the green flag before long, just as you would hope Derek McGrath’s young Waterford team stop talking like hurling’s answer to Jose Mourinho.
Pauric Mahony spent last summer watching from the sidelines as the Déise made light of their star attacker’s broken leg to reach the last four of the All-Ireland Championship.
There is no complaint about the manner of Waterford’s hurling under McGrath from this quarter, but there is something slightly disconcerting about a talented young hurler such as Mahony discussing the game in such a baldly pragmatic fashion.
“We won’t care if we were to win an All-Ireland or a Munster Championship or a National League, once you have that silverware no-one can take it away from you. . . how you get there, who cares like?”
On Friday Loughnane’s Kilkenny adjudications were still making headlines, with his fellow ‘The Sunday Game’ panellist Michael Duignan saying the Clare man’s views were “beyond belief”.
However the Offaly legend then got straight to the nub of the issue – Loughnane’s attack on Kilkenny was really a critique of their rivals. If this is a functional Kilkenny side chasing three Liam MacCarthys in a row, what does that make the rest of ye?
“If it was me, I would have looked more at the opposition, that they couldn’t come through and beat Kilkenny,” said Duignan.
This functional Kilkenny team just keep on functioning, with their defenders defending, their attackers attacking and their midfielders doing a bit of both.
Gotta love TJ Reid’s attitude #thatsmyjob #kilkenny #hurling #ireland #gaa #cats
Crazy but it works.
Yet they’re the ones derided as “Stepford Wives” and “functional beyond belief”.
It’s left to Kilkenny to display a little flair, their customary arrogance, bouts of selfishness and moments of genius. It’s left to Brian Cody to get the best out of his individual hurlers and if that is functional beyond belief then I’ll take plenty more of it.
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