Time is running out for dual players

THE WEEKEND just passed was an interesting one for the GAA. It was the first clash of the restructured National Hurling League and the football championship. As a result, a number of fixtures were switched to Saturday and the first exposure of the public to these summer evening matches was positive.

A more striking implication for the future was, however, to be gleaned from other weekend activity: the likely extinction of the dual player.

On Sunday in New Ross, less than a quarter of the previous day's crowd turned up to see Wexford's footballers make their entrance - and, as was widely but incorrectly assumed, their exit - in the Leinster championship.

By half time in the minor match which raised the curtain on Saturday's double bill, the first parking spaces on the Wexford road were up around Good Counsel college, about a mile from O'Kennedy Park. The following day, half an hour before the throw in, there was plenty of parking space a minute around the corner from the ground.

Inside the ground, Wexford supporters were outnumbered around three to one by the Westmeath visitors. It's hardly unnatural that supporters would come in greater numbers to see the county's All Ireland champions play a vital League match than to observe a largely meaningless championship encounter between two teams neither of whom will be expected to bother the Offaly.

The low turnout did, however, prompt a few questions about Wexford football. Never mind that the side produced an unexpectedly resilient performance and nearly won in dire adversity, why did Wexford go into this preliminary round arousing such low expectations?

Football in the county actually has a robust history and yielded All Irelands before hurling took off. Wexford shares with Kerry the distinction of being one of only two counties to have won four AllIrelands in succession. But it all ran out of steam when the rise of the county's hurlers caught the imagination of the whole country.

Billy Rackard, the youngest of the celebrated brothers who were also footballers, has said that he doesn't know how hurling came to take such a grip on the county's consciousness but that the inclination was always there.

In the intervening years, football has slipped further off the county's agenda and 1960 marks the last appearance in a Leinster football final. This year, Wexford lived a double life recording impressive wins in the surreal world of the O'Byrne Cup but failing to win a match in Division Three and consequently being relegated.

The disparity in the attendances at the hurling and football matches reflected another reality for the football team. When the choice is made between the codes, there's only one way to go.

Most of the county's best footballers are - also their best hurlers. Wexford is unlike other dual counties in that the games are not divided into geographical compartments and players grow up with both games.

Of the All Ireland championship team six hold county football medals, Larry Murphy has played for the footballers at all levels, Rory McCarthy is a former Young Footballer of the Year.

Unfortunately for the footballers once a decision has to be made, there's only one outcome. Even on Sunday it was noted that Leigh O'Brien (whose sending off ultimately prevented Wexford from pulling off a shock), a prominent underage footballer just arriving on the senior scene, is also a good hurler and is expected to be assumed into the champions' panel at some stage in the future.

Making the decision to concentrate on one game and abandon the other is difficult for some players but increasingly it has to be done. Of all the counties with a dual playing profile, only the biggest, Cork, shows any generosity of spirit in the accommodation of players who want to play both hurling and football.

Wexford isn't unique in having a dominant code suck dry the weaker counterpart. A number of Tipperary's best known hurlers are also excellent footballers but the splenetic reaction of the hurling community to the injury suffered by John Leahy in a the football championship against Clare three years ago despite the fact that Leahy started life as a footballer - indicated the perceived place of football within the county.

Last year Waterford's footballers were made to wait an hour for a pitch to play a challenge match the week before their championship started while an underage hurling skills competition took place.

The process works the other way and hurling managements in Derry and Meath, to name two, have been driven to distraction by the unavailability of dual players who are badly needed by the hurlers but exclusively requisitioned by the footballers.

Unfortunately the reluctance concerning dual players is probably justified. Michael O'Grady, architect of Dublin's hurling revival, has banned dual players - such as they exist at inter county level in the capital from his panel.

There is a growing incompatibility between the games. It cuts more against hurling than football in that the relentless physicality of modern football and the heavy training required is inimical to the precise skills of hurling.

Football is also a substantially slower game and players have little realistic chance of switching between one and the other on a week to week basis. Brian Corcoran, 1992 hurler of the year at the age of 19, has struggled to combine the demands of football and hurling since he became a dual senior inter county and his hurling has suffered visibly.

Cork remains the last bastion of the dual player with Corcoran and teammate Sean Og O hAilpin playing on both Cork teams. They are primarily hurlers and believed likely to opt for that game if pushed to a choice but there is sympathy for their position given the footballers' closer proximity to major honours.

If they are to emulate the achievements of the long line of Cork dual medallists from Jack Lynch to Teddy McCarthy, they had probably better get a move on as the evolution of both games means it's not going to be possible to combine the two for very much longer.