It’s fair to say Ben O’Connor has a couple of issues with the way hurling is refereed and administered. His “biggest bugbear” right now is the difficulty communicating instructions to his players during matches.
One challenge created by Cork’s fanatical following – the Rebels have sold out nine consecutive championship games and back-to-back league finals - is that no one can be heard from the sideline.
O’Connor has revealed he was warned for stepping onto the field during their league final loss to Limerick.
“I ran in the last day. I went in twice. I went three feet into the field at one stage. And then I ran into the field below at the 21 and I was told the next time you do that, it’s a yellow card,” he says.
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“I said, ‘That’s grand, I’ll take the yellow. Will a red follow that?’. They said it would. I said I’d take that as well.
“That’s the only way you can get information in. There’s nothing at the moment. We don’t tell the fellas to throw themselves down and look for the physio or the doctor to go in. We don’t do that. I’m sure it is being done, but we don’t do that.
“We want to play, to keep going, keep going, and get a bit of momentum. It’s very awkward. I don’t see it as an issue for some fella to run in with a message, out the other side of the field, job done.”
Management teams have been precluded from having a maor fóirne enter the field to relay instructions since 2021.
“There must be some middle ground,” O’Connor says. “A fella who can run across the field, pass on the information, keep going to the other side and come back around again. It’s just very hard to get information into the field.”
Watching on from the Mackey Stand sideline at the Gaelic Grounds, O’Connor felt the Limerick game was interrupted by a free every time it threatened to get going. With the league packed away for another year, he hopes the championship will be refereed differently.
“You’re expecting that it’s going to be let flow a little bit more. But that remains to be seen.
“Shane Hynes said before [the league final], ‘I’m going to be very strong on the handpass’. Then do you see frees given for handpasses? Should you not be going in and saying that you’re going to ref it as you see it?
“You know yourself, the Munster Championship is reffed differently. The ball is thrown in and fellas get at it. I think that’s what people are there to see as well.”
On the handpass, O’Connor adds: “You’ve even gone to the stage now where fellas are nearly tapping it with the hurley. It’s horrible to see a fella tapping it like that. He’s afraid to do a handpass just in case he’ll be blown for it.”
Pat Ryan used to say he’d “bite your hand off” for third place before the Munster Championship. Would O’Connor take the same offer?
“No. I want to win it. I want to win Munster,” he replies. “I want to finish top, but it is about getting out. If we can’t win it, third place will do.
“There’s no point in saying I don’t want to win it. All the other fellas, Limerick, Tipp, they all want to win it. There’s no point in saying we don’t. We want to win it. But the main thing is getting out.”
O’Connor doesn’t buy into the narrative that Tipperary are coming in under the radar ahead of their Munster opener in Thurles on Sunday.
“I haven’t heard it. They’re the All-Ireland champions. In our group in Munster, we have the last three All-Ireland final winners.
“Ourselves and Waterford are at the bottom of the picking order, with the three of them above us.
“I suppose they’re going in the way they want to be if people are putting them under the radar. But our boys won’t be looking at it that way, because the last time they were in the championship, it was against Tipperary. And it was a hiding we got.
“That’s going to keep us focused on the job at hand.”
