Mirror distorts the game's best features

LockerRoom Sort of a distressing week for public discourse here on the media farm. All sorts of new lows to be contending with and just the hope at the end of it that Cork and Kilkenny might have distracted us with a classic. Not to be, but they gave us enough to be chewing on, writes Tom Humphries.

What a strange hurling season this has been. It ended yesterday with the bizarre circumstance of a group of us standing around DJ Carey in the Kilkenny dressing-room listening to him talk about how large sums of money had spent the week chasing ugly stories around the towns and villages of Kilkenny.

DJ didn't look bitter, he looked shell-shocked. For some reason looking at him I couldn't but remember the first time I met him 13 years or so ago, when he was the coming thing, already freckled with greatness, and we did an interview in the Seven Oaks Hotel in Carlow.

I remember him saying that old women used to stop him in the street in Gowran and tell him to be careful playing hurling, he'd get hurt. That's not such a long time ago, the span of one man's adult hurling career, but the world has changed.

Yesterday we stood outside the Kilkenny dressing-room for an hour waiting for the door to open. We reminisced about the days a few years back when a handful of us hacks would be in the winners' dressing-room before the players got back in and we'd record every whoop and hug.

Yesterday, though, we stood contritely for the hour. Not a good time for media to be complaining about things.

Up the corridor the Cork policy of omerta seemed to be continuing for some reason. Hopefully, Donal O'Grady will lighten up in the coming year or two. He has a team which has caught the imagination of the Cork public at least and to let them grow not just as hurlers but as personalities would be a huge service to the game.

There was something about yesterday's rather odd final which seemed in keeping with the hurling year. All summer there have been portents of great things to come but ultimately, there was only disappointment.

In Dublin, to start locally, we got knocked down early enough but got five championship games in and remain the only team to have beaten Kilkenny in knockout hurling this year. The Walsh Cup matters.

Structures matter too. Laois, smartly managed with potential, fell to a Dublin side with the same attributes early in the summer. It needed a replay but what struck were the constraints of the provincial system. Dublin and Laois will always measure each other against themselves and will keep coming up against each other for years. It's not a recipe for progress.

Managers matter. Brian Cody's passive strength once he has made up his mind about something is an impressive part of Kilkenny's armour. There are men in Kilkenny today who could be trousering All-Ireland winners' medals instead of looking in from the outside. For those on the inside they are a salutary lesson.

For all the talk about Kilkenny's structures and Kilkenny's conveyor belt of talent Cody has seldom been given sufficient credit. He keeps them hungry and insecure. He keeps the pot stirred. He seldom steps into the team photo. He lives in an environment and manages a collection of players not dissimilar to that enjoyed by the basketball coach Phil Jackson when he coached Michael Jordan in Chicago. They used to say that the Chicago Bulls would win all they won with any coach, so great was their talent. Jackson never disputed it but was fond of quoting a little piece of Chinese wisdom: "A good merchant hides his goods and appears to have nothing: a skilled craftsman leaves no traces."

Management matters. They'll confirm that in Limerick this year and in places like Clare and Wexford, where the county sides are just getting over the passionate years with Loughnane and Griffin respectively.

What about Tipp this year? The All-Ireland semi-final broke into many shards. In Tipperary, almost every rumour and story you hear about the team is downbeat. Over in Waterford there's a quiet resignation. The county seem to have a team but not a squad. If all the team go well they have a chance. Otherwise, summer hols, little distraction.

And Galway. Same as it ever was. All that promise lying around like bounced cheques.

If you look down the road it's hard to see much changing. Offaly produced a few fine players this year but the impact that will be made by the little queue of senior players getting ready to depart will hardly be offset by the new arrivals.

Hurling is in an strange limbo state at the moment. Interest among kids is phenomenal. TV coverage is widespread. Yet county teams are going into recession. There are fewer great games and there are fewer great characters, fewer players willing to give a little of themselves in that respect.

What all the bilge flowing through our TVs and newspapers this week reminded us was that we are no better than any other nation, no more saintly or scholarly. We'll watch crap TV and tolerate no end of bad hackery and we'll swallow it all because we are dumbed down to the point of the lowest common denominator. Popularity and sales and profitability have become indices of merit.

Hurling is special, though. It comes as a shock when we stand and look back at the week just passed, a crossroads in our popular culture, and realise the Government makes such little effort to promote the game. The excuse is every sport deserves the same amount of time to roll around in the public wallet. Every sport doesn't. Amateur sports need more than professional sports. A game with the unique cultural baggage that hurling has deserves more attention and more finance.

Kilkenny's win yesterday, and the rude health of the game within that county, does little for anyone else (nor should it). Looking around the country there are many more counties where hurling is dead or ailing than there are replicated examples of the Kilkenny model. If Kilkenny were the only place in Ireland where proper Irish was still spoken we would be in crisis, roped off and funded and loved. If it were the only place where traditional music came out right we would have large-scale programmes in place to teach the music before it died. Only to hurling does the Government show the face of resistance.

Yesterday was good but not great. So was the hurling year. We stumble on.