On the raised television gantry at the Gaelic Grounds on Saturday night, Alan Connolly leant on the barrier, while on the pitch behind him Cork fans belted out a chorus of ‘After All’.
When he turned around to take in the scene below, the decibel levels rose. Liam Sheedy, Donal Óg Cusack and Henry Shefflin were all standing beside him. Hurling royalty. But for those draped in red and white below it was clear that Connolly was the star attraction.
Such was the level of the noise, Shefflin had to lean over at one stage to repeat his question to the Cork forward. During the entire interview Connolly – still in full gear and boots – carried the chilled-out disposition of a man who had just perched himself at a poolside bar in their flip-flops.
There were the usual questions about the game and then host Joanne Cantwell interjected: “Can I ask, when there was a change in referee – because Thomas Walsh referees a very particular way, and James Owens referees a very different way – what was it like?”
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Connolly smiled apologetically, seemingly recalling the sight of Walsh requiring treatment on the pitch for cramp.
“It was funny, I hope he’s all right,” he said before wondering if it had ever happened before where a referee had to leave the field.
Informed that it had indeed, he continued: “It was interesting, they reffed the game the same enough I thought, to be honest. There wasn’t too much of a change, I don’t know.”
Plenty of others seemed to know. A quick scroll through social media on Saturday night would have demonstrated one of the main talking points from a gripping Munster final was the performance of the referee.
Walsh was lauded by many for letting the game flow, his approach credited with contributing to the match, but for others the officiating facilitated a level of lawlessness that went too far. It quickly became a Marmite debate.
A couple of days on and still many conversations about the game eventually arrive at the referee.
Strip it all back and it leaves one very straightforward yet complex question about hurling: What game do we actually want?
For those of us currently in a space where we spend many Saturday mornings ferrying kids to Go Games, hurling can seem a very different sport at either end of the chain.
But children learn the game not only because of their coaches, they also learn from the referees they encounter.
The referees at Go Games are predominately teenagers who have been persuaded to take up the whistle. Many of them spend a lot of their time during matches patiently instructing seven- and eight-year-olds on what to do next.
They’ll give the goalkeeper a second chance at puck-outs, or on spotting repeated fresh air shots the referee might encourage the young player to hit the ball along the ground instead.
When it comes to juvenile sport, both the coaches and referees are heroes. But retaining referees is an ongoing problem for the GAA.
Earlier this year Dublin GAA arranged a training course to try attract new referees to deal with a “chronic shortage” of officials.
Gaelic football and hurling are different sports but they share a common indistinctness in terms of some playing rules. Hurling, in particular, can exist in different forms depending on whether the referee wants to swallow their whistle or blow it.
So, what game do we want?
At the start of each half last Saturday, Walsh held the sliotar in his hand while a pair of opposing midfielders locked horns in that perpetual dance of bouncing off each other and snarling like a pair of bucking bulls released from their pen for the first time in months.
As their shoulder-fest found its rhythm, the intensity spread across the pitch and several little replica dances sparked off. The roars from the stands increased, the Gaelic Grounds becoming a sporting tinderbox. The atmosphere, electric.
In those few seconds at the start of each half, the terms of engagement were being set. If the referee was allowing those battles to fester, the players had a fair idea that a decent level of aggression would go unpunished.
And so it played out. There were fouls not blown, flaking ignored, players got away with stuff. Both management teams then surrounded the referee at half-time – presumably to check if perhaps he could arrange it that only their lads would be allowed do the flaking.
One of the positive outcomes of the FRC’s new rules in football has been a greater level of respect towards match officials. Gaelic football referees at club and county level have seen a significant decrease in verbal abuse.
And yet another of the FRC’s rules has been to have a one v one throw-in at the start of each half. Instead, you now have two players standing on opposite sidelines and then dashing in when the ball is tossed in the air.
For all the progressive FRC changes, the start of Gaelic football matches has lost something. It’s lost that edge of physicality and aggression.
But perhaps that is the game we are trying to manufacture now in football? Are we saying we don’t want those displays of hostility at the outset of matches? Are we saying we want a game where players hand the ball back to their opponent?
That, of course, is football’s journey of discovery right now. But those are the kind of questions hurling might eventually have to answer too.
As a sporting contest, what the Cork and Limerick players served up on Saturday was captivating. It was a game full of endeavour and desire, two tribes going full-blooded to represent their people. You couldn’t take your eyes off it.
They deserve great credit for producing such entertainment and drama, but at the same time those matches are also almost impossible to referee. If we can at least agree on that, perhaps we’re not far away from having the game we want.
