RTÉ analyst Dónal Óg Cusack has said that while the ever-increasing standard of hurling is pumping oxygen into the lungs of the game, the condensed nature of the season is sucking it right back out.
Speaking on The Sunday Game after Limerick's historic three-in-a-row All-Ireland success after their final win over Kilkenny, the former Cork goalkeeper cut a dispirited figure as he listed a series of issues that he has with the split-season model.
"Looking back, you’ve seen all those great moments and I think today was again an example of how the envelope has been pushed in terms of this game," he said.
"It’s just getting better and better. The players are getting faster. stronger, the skills level...I couldn’t help thinking today that even the performance by Kilkenny, given how the game has advanced over the last number of years, that would have won a lot of the finals that Brian Cody won.
"That’s testament to that team as well and they pushed it on, and now Limerick have taken it on to another level.
"I think hurling, very often, is better to us than we are to hurling, You’re talking to the converted here, we're all hurling fanatics, every one of us.
"I just feel it was a rushed season and finishing the game now, such a distance between the major games, young people seeing all those top players on television, it’s too long."
Cusack pointed to Limerick’s Munster final win over Clare, a game decided in extra-time after Tony Kelly’s dramatic sideline cut had drawn the Banner level in the final seconds of normal time.
"That Munster final there, one of the greatest Munster finals if not the greatest Munster final of all time.
"Why weren’t we able to have a replay there? For the following week all talk would have been about hurling, hurling would have been on the front of all the sports pages.
"Not to mention you would have given the players a break. Why are we putting the players under that stress?
Dónal Óg Cusack makes a passionate plea for more "oxygen" to be pumped into the sport of hurling #RTEgaa pic.twitter.com/zXJYdZsUQE
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 17, 2022
"The financial side of it. We know that the game needs money. How much would that have brought into the game? What would be wrong with giving the players a good cut of it and rest of it go back into the association to build clubhouses and so on?"
Also grating for the pundit was the timing of Galway’s All-Ireland quarter-final win over Cork, a game that threw in at 1.45pm on a Saturday afternoon in Thurles.
"This game needs oxygen, as much oxygen as possible. Whoever allowed that to happen is not watching the back of hurling.
"I’d question was that because there was rugby game on that evening, did hurling suffer because of that? I think it did, I think it came down to someone signed off on a decision to play an All-Ireland quarter-final at half past one on a Saturday."
Cusack also believes that tangible evidence arrived in the media build-up to Sunday’s All-Ireland final.
"I was out in Ballsbridge this morning having a cup of coffee and a person opens up a national newspaper and I look at the front page of the national newspaper and I see the Irish rugby team, and fair play to them, it’s obviously a great achievement [winning their series in New Zealand].
"But then I see him opening up the sports pages. Front of the sport page, the All-Ireland hurling final is on today and there’s not a mention of hurling on the front page.
"I asked him for a look at the supplement and it was page 13 by the time there was a mention of hurling. There were four pages of hurling compared to all the other pages about different sport."
