Hurling's good old days under microscope

Video is the bane of nostalgia. Over the last few months, TnaG has been re-broadcasting All-Ireland matches from the past 30 years, bringing them to an audience with no recollection of the original showing as well as to quite a number of people whose fond recollections have been rudely disrupted.

Jimmy Barry Murphy recalls having a drink in his local during one of these programmes, only to be bluntly informed "your reputation is in tatters", in response to an All-Ireland final in the early 1980s. He would admit himself that the 1982 and '83 finals were not his most memorable, but revisionism cuts deeper than resurrecting bad memories.

"My father brought me to the 1966 final when I was 12 and I had always remembered it as a classic. I saw it recently and wasn't impressed. A couple of days later I was talking to Charlie McCarthy and he thought the same. One thing you would notice that was changed was that there were no stoppages. If someone got hit, they just got back up."

Anyone watching the finals from the 1960s and 1970s would have to say that even if it's unfair to compare eras and condemn older finals, the standard of play certainly doesn't substantiate claims that hurling in the old days was more accomplished.

Rose-tinted views of the past are coming under scrutiny, according to All-Ireland winning player and manager Eamonn Cregan.

"I'm beginning to have doubts about all that," he says. "I've seen some of the so-called great finals and there's a big question whether some of the matches in the '60s were as good as they're supposed to be. Players nowadays are certainly fitter. When I trained, for a Munster championship match, six laps of the field was standard."

Selective recall applies equally to individual performances. When not dispassionately viewing objective standards, players get an opportunity to view their own contributions.

"I've looked at myself a few times," says Cregan, "and wondered was I that bad? Anne (his wife) always said that I looked as if I wasn't interested in games. I would never have thought of myself as someone with a couldn't care-less attitude, but sometimes you wonder."

Revisionism may not be a matter of refuting only distant memory either. "I was watching the Clare-Offaly (1995) final the other night," says Barry Murphy, "and parts of the second half were dire. I remember it as a great match."

Cregan believes that technique may not be less developed in the present day, but it is less varied. "Certain skills are in decline because of the style of hurling played. Coaches from the 1980s are now seeing their work coming through on to teams. In years gone by, Cork, Tipperary, Kilkenny, Wexford all had their own separate styles, but now they're all playing the same game - except maybe Tipperary.

"Ground hurling has definitely lost out. I'm not a believer in 100 per cent ground hurling, but it is an important skill. In Clare, they have an under-11 competition which allows ground hurling only and it's been an unbelievable success. Players can't catch the ball and can't rise it.

"In my own club, we organised something similar with an all-weather ball. There was a lad of only 10 who whipped on it from 40 yards and scored a goal. The next ball he whipped over the bar. It's great for them when they hit the ball to see it travel."

Such attention to detail shows that different skills can be maintained and kept alive, but is this nurturing of technique having an effect? Yes, according to Jimmy Barry Murphy: "I'd say skills are better nowadays. Why we have such memories of the past, I'm at a loss to explain it."