Galway v Kilkenny

[bottlethrower7]

Cork's success over the last few years wasn't nearly as tough as Kikenny's game style, I mean, that's how Kilkenny beat you, Cork's plan was to pretty much out run you. My point is that you don't need to play like that, the way Kilkenny do to win, but you do need to play like that to beat Kilkenny, and there in lies the problem, no one is as good as playing that type of game like Kilkenny are.

yep, thats fair enough. But then, during those years they probably didn't meet a team as physical as KK. Even KK themselves didn't really adopt the physicality of their game today until the AIF of '06. That they they beat Cork by pretty much outmuscling them. They haven't looked back since.

The game evolves. In the early 90s the fitness levels were taken to new heights for the time. Kilkenny got left behind. As they were catching up Clare introduced huge physicality along with their high fitness and again Kilkenny (and Cork/Tipp no different) were trailing in their wake. Eventually they caught up though. As did Tipp and Cork in the early 90s. Kilkenny have raised the bar yet again. Physicality, fitness, skill, but most of all, hunger.

For Cork and Tipp to get back to the top level they're going to at least have to match this. And to maintain a run at the top they'll have to be the ones to raise the bar again (by adapting their play in such a way that others struggle to cope with). Its an intriguing aspect of the game of hurling and its why I would never subscribe to the notion that its boring seeing the same team win all the time. It would be if the way the game was played didn't change, but it does. It has, and it will continue to do so.

The problem with Cork when it was their turn to adapt the way the game was played was that it was very much based around supreme fitness and speed. Thats not sustainable with the same bunch of players for too long a time period. Still, they got their just desert. It was novel. It wouldn't work for every team, but it did for them.

[GalwayBayBoy]

I certainly don't think Kilkenny are a dirty team but I do think that they play to the very limit of the laws. Which is fair enough you might say as long as you don't cross the line. The last day for example I certainly think they were content to concede frees rather than let Galway get near their goal as for whatever reason Galway always seem to be able to plunder goals against Kilkenny. They still let in 3 goals but it could quite easily have been 4 or 5 only for a willingness to take out the man running at goal. Probably more cynical rather than dirty though. Or "streetwise" you might euphemistically call it.

[awfulynice]

I'm entitled to my opinion bottlethrower- you might consider yourself some sort of a hurling scholar in your own mind.
When I see Kilkenny players repeatedly getting away with offences other counties get penalised for you begin to wonder is there any referee out there with a pair of balls to referee their matches in accordance with the rules. In my opinion there currently isn't as we saw last Saturday again.

INDY, have you gone anti-KK since Dublin won the semi final or something? I can't remember you being so 'down' on the Cats before now. I thought you were more or less of the same opinion as myself, basically hugely respectful of this Kilkenny team, and would love to be the team that beats them. Of course they are teak tough, and not afraid of the price of timber, but all good teams have an element of that. I haven't seen a marked slide towards anarchy in them yet, and as I say, if they are not being penalised, it's not their fault. Joe Canning scored 1-9 from placed balls on Saturday though, so Barry Kelly obviously gave some frees against them..

I'm entitled to my opinion bottlethrower- you might consider yourself some sort of a hurling scholar in your own mind.
When I see Kilkenny players repeatedly getting away with offences other counties get penalised for you begin to wonder is there any referee out there with a pair of balls to referee their matches in accordance with the rules. In my opinion there currently isn't as we saw last Saturday again.

INDY, have you gone anti-KK since Dublin won the semi final or something? I can't remember you being so 'down' on the Cats before now. I thought you were more or less of the same opinion as myself, basically hugely respectful of this Kilkenny team, and would love to be the team that beats them. Of course they are teak tough, and not afraid of the price of timber, but all good teams have an element of that. I haven't seen a marked slide towards anarchy in them yet, and as I say, if they are not being penalised, it's not their fault. Joe Canning scored 1-9 from placed balls on Saturday though, so Barry Kelly obviously gave some frees against them..

I was at the league final and several of their games last year and I've watched that game twice now. In my view they've changed their style of hurling in the last 18mths because they know ultimately they won't get sent off. And they won't either. Initially I thought it was just a few games which can happen to any side, but there is a definite pattern now where they'll lamp a few key players knowing ultimately referees will be reluctant to send them off.
Richie Murray is  a case study- a wild pull nowhere near the ball -didn't connect with anyone though. Tommy Walsh gave Damien Hayes a wild rap and did connect- nowhere near the ball and gets a yellow. Like where is the consistency in that .
Galway people could not possibly be happy with either of those decisions.
Dublin up front physically won't be able to match kilkenny- too many young players that will be horsed out of it unfortunately.

Indiana...there is consistency in that

Tommy Walsh slapped Damien Hayes hand, he was just after collecting the ball in his hand and walsh made a slap...he had a fair idea he wasnt going to get the ball but went for it anyway...imo its a harsh yellow...i wouldnt have bothered me if there was a black book and a warning for this.

What Richie Murray did was outrageous...he pulled across a mans head...the fact that you are actually trying to make the two incidents comparable is ridiculous. It was reckless, miles away from the ball and ultimately extremely dangerous.

People have died from belts to the head from hurling yknow...its not ok to condone this and id love if the gaa gave a three month ban to stop that crap happening again.

[INDIANA]

They were both wild pulls- I'm simply asking whats the difference. I've no problem with Murray being sent off- but so should Walsh. I agree with the galway posters that anyone who thinks Walsh didn't deserve a red really has the blinkers on .

I'm not bothered really what people think of views on Kilkenny- I'm entitled to them- same as anybody else. Can't wait to see what the Cats get away with on the 5th.

[Reillers]

Cork's success over the last few years wasn't nearly as tough as Kikenny's game style, I mean, that's how Kilkenny beat you, Cork's plan was to pretty much out run you. My point is that you don't need to play like that, the way Kilkenny do to win, but you do need to play like that to beat Kilkenny, and there in lies the problem, no one is as good as playing that type of game like Kilkenny are.

yep, thats fair enough. But then, during those years they probably didn't meet a team as physical as KK. Even KK themselves didn't really adopt the physicality of their game today until the AIF of '06. That they they beat Cork by pretty much outmuscling them. They haven't looked back since.

The game evolves. In the early 90s the fitness levels were taken to new heights for the time. Kilkenny got left behind. As they were catching up Clare introduced huge physicality along with their high fitness and again Kilkenny (and Cork/Tipp no different) were trailing in their wake. Eventually they caught up though. As did Tipp and Cork in the early 90s. Kilkenny have raised the bar yet again. Physicality, fitness, skill, but most of all, hunger.

For Cork and Tipp to get back to the top level they're going to at least have to match this. And to maintain a run at the top they'll have to be the ones to raise the bar again (by adapting their play in such a way that others struggle to cope with). Its an intriguing aspect of the game of hurling and its why I would never subscribe to the notion that its boring seeing the same team win all the time. It would be if the way the game was played didn't change, but it does. It has, and it will continue to do so.

The problem with Cork when it was their turn to adapt the way the game was played was that it was very much based around supreme fitness and speed. Thats not sustainable with the same bunch of players for too long a time period. Still, they got their just desert. It was novel. It wouldn't work for every team, but it did for them.

I can't speak for Tipp, but I know that when it comes to changing game style, Cork are pretty stuborn, always have been. Even now, we've this big monster up front, but we're not 100% sure how to use him. Aisake is there and he could be devastating, Cork just need to learn how to use him. The long ball route doesn't come naturally.
We're still trying to out run teams, which 3 years ago worked, but once you know how to stop it, like KK figured out, it's pretty easy to do so if you're a top class team. We've players with sensational speed, could out run anyone, the twins, Tom Kenny, Naughton..etc. Especially Naughton, 3 years ago when this Cork team was top he would have been devastating. He is now, but back then it would have been to another extent all together.

Naughton can leave anyone behind him with ball in hand, but the problem for him has been getting the ball because he's muscled out if it nearly every time.
This team, need to learn how to adapt, we're not going to get anywhere unless they do. We can beat the weaker teams by playing the way we are used to but we'll hit a brick wall everytime if we go and try and play that game against the likes of KK.

As for Tipp, we saw what happened in the League whne they tried to play Kk's game and it got very, very messy. It really is just a matter of sink or swim at the minute I'm afraid.

[GalwayBayBoy]

Here's An Moltóir's analysis of the game on An Fear Rua

Galway beaten by their own errors

Kilkenny showed once again that matching them for intensity only goes half way to beating them – you also have to be able to use the ball well while playing at that level of intensity. While Kilkenny's ruthless finishing in the second half was sublime, the key difference between the teams was Galway's high error count which repeatedly allowed Kilkenny to get into positions where they could exert maximum punishment.

In the second half alone, An Moltóir counted eleven Galway fumbles to Kilkenny's two, and ten poor plays by Galway to just one for Kilkenny. Between the 48th and 67th minutes there were no less than eight episodes where Galway conceded possession due to such errors and a Kilkenny score followed. It was Clare in the 1990s who patented the concept of high-performance intensity but the current Kilkenny outfit have brought it to a new level which other counties are going to have to match if they are to have any chance of bringing the Cats down.

Another major problem for Galway was the lack of scoring edge among their half forwards who could only manage two points from play compared with eight for their Kilkenny counterparts. The Tribesmen did give a good account of themselves but the only way they could have won this game would have been through a couple of more goals from frees by Joe Canning (and even then who knows how Kilkenny would have responded). When one considers that the Cats were without Noel Hickey, Brian Hogan and Cha Fitzpatrick and were still able to bring on Derek Lyng, Richie Hogan and TJ Reid (not to mention newcomer Seán Cummins who gave a good account of himself), one can clearly see the mammoth task facing potential pretenders to their All-Ireland crown.

For all their hard work, Galway were still shaded it by Kilkenny in both halves in terms of number of individual plays (76:71, 78:69). This 11 per cent gap in number of plays expanded to 18% in terms of quality of plays – exactly the same gap as the scoring difference between the teams. Michael Rice was far and away the most effective player on the field, his 22 plays garnering him 53 quality points (note the similarity with Brick Walsh in Thurles). The other key Kilkenny players were Eoin Larkin (42 points from 15 plays, John Dalton (36/15) and Aidan Fogarty (31/12); four other players exceeded the 20-point mark.

Galway had no one in the same league as Rice or Larkin. Their top player was Damien Hayes (35/14) followed by Cyril Donnellan (32/12) and Eoin Lynch (32/15); three other players managed in excess of 20 points.

Key post-match talking points here were the sending off of Richie Murray and the non-sending-off of Tommy Walsh. Side-by-side with the game in Thurles, this game again highlighted both the inconsistency of the rules of hurling and the inconsistency of their application. Murray got a red card for a wild swing under a high ball; Séamus Prendergast did something similar in Thurles and got a yellow. Murray's pull was not targetted and did not hit anyone. Tommy Walsh's slap across Damien Hayes's hand was nasty and could hardly be regarded as careless – he pulled exactly the same stroke on Eoin Kelly in the league match against Waterford. Then he follows this with a rugby tackle on a Galway player through on goal and still survives. Furthermore, in an incident in the third minute which the referee did not seem to notice, Walsh hit Damien Hayes in the back of the neck with his hurley after the Galway man had gone to ground following a foul.

A key problem here is the fact that hurling referees only appear to be prepared to give out cards for violent offences or repeated non-violent offences. Bringing down a player without applying violence, even where the player would otherwise be through on goal, rarely attracts a booking. Walsh's tackle on Adrian Smyth would have merited a red card in soccer. And when Eddie Brennan – already on a yellow card – took out Ollie Canning with a high tackle which verged on the dangerous in the 57th minute, Barry Kelly just awarded a routine free.

The GAA needs to make all deliberate personal fouls yellow-card offences and all violent fouls red-card offences. They also need to impose suspensions for players receiving yellow cards in successive games. But then they also need to introduce an advantage rule and to allow linesmen to flag for fouls, not to mention...oh, forget it.

Number of plays – open play only (quality points in brackets):

Kilkenny: Ryan PJ 4 (9); Kavanagh M 2 (4); Delaney JJ 7 (16); Tyrrell J 5 (10); Walsh T 10 (22); Tennyson J 10 (25); Dalton J 17 (36); Fennelly M 7 (15); Rice M 22 (53); Sheflin H 9 (26); Comerford M 13 (27); Larkin E 12 (30); Brennan E 4 (9); Power R 6 (15); Fogarty A 12 (31); Lyng D 7 (18); Cummins S 4 (10); Hogan R 1 (2) ; Reid TJ 1 (3). Note: Kilkenny players can be difficult to identify at times on screen. Ger Canning's tendency to misidentify players is no help.

Galway: Callanan C 2 (5); Joyce D 11 (26); Kavanagh S 6 (14); Canning O 12 (29); Moore F 7 (16); Lee J 9 (17); Cullinane A 9 (18); Lynch E 15 (32); Hynes K 4 (; Callanan A 12 (27); Donnellan C 12 (32); Smyth A 5 (9); Hayes D 14 (35); Canning J 7 (17); Healy N 5 (13); Tierney D 8 (15); Kerins A 2 (4); Murray R no plays.

[slow corner back]

What sort of half ased scoring system gives Joe Canning less points than Damian Hayes FFS

[theskull1]

SCB....Joe Canning didn't see that much open play as talented as he is. Has all the eulogising blinkered people to facts?

[bottlethrower7]

SCB....Joe Canning didn't see that much open play as talented as he is. Has all the eulogising blinkered people to facts?

its not just the eulogising thats having this affect

[GalwayBayBoy]

What sort of half ased scoring system gives Joe Canning less points than Damian Hayes FFS

Presumably the scoring system doesn't include actual scores by players themselves strange as it may sound. More possession gained, successful passes, etc.

[slow corner back]

Joe Canning scored 2-9 how much did hayes score. Was it hype than ran by JJ leaving him for dead or that drove in a 21 yd free to set the game alight. Anyone who does not think that Canning is by some distance the most influential player on the Galway team is delusional.

[GalwayBayBoy]

Joe Canning scored 2-9 how much did hayes score. Was it hype than ran by JJ leaving him for dead or that drove in a 21 yd free to set the game alight. Anyone who does not think that Canning is by some distance the most influential player on the Galway team is delusional.

I think he is getting some grief in some quarters because he "only" scored 1-0 from play.  Of course the other goal he scored from the free was hardly a gimme either. I think he's had better games but he did alright given the attention he was receiving and the dubious quality of the ball he was getting especially in the last 20 minutes or so of the game.

[Galwaybhoy]

Pity, really thought they'd go on and win. But Galway's legs went in the end and Kilkenny's experience held out.

Maybe Galway need to go on strike for about five months and do a bit of personal training.


A few breaks either way and either team could have won this one, the short puck out being a mistake but that is ok for all us to say now, the lad was not the sole cause of the defeat.  There was another short puck out that resulted directly in a point.  The ref had a great game as far as I was concerned, again, he can't get everything right and was brave enough to flash the red card when others would have not taken the responsibility.  As for giving Tommy Wals a red card??  He gave him a yellow one that he just about deserved and the shennanigans around the end line with Joe Canning is part and parcel of the game and credit to Canning for giving as good as he got.  Hurling at its best, no moaning, no whining.  Galway deserve great credit for a gutsy performance and firing up the championship. They will have another day and it could well be in Croker in September - against Waterford !!

Only thing I was not happy about with Canning was his gesture to the crowd/cameras after he scored the goal aka premiership player antics and while it was not that much OTT the problem is you could have other counties replicating it and pointing to adverts on their helmets and the next thing a strike and the whole championship is frigged.

What?  Isn't that a bit of an overreaction.  What was wrong with the celebration, it wasn't a soccer celebration and I don't know where your comming from with the advert on the helmets.

As for the match, it was very good though sloppy in bits.  The ref was poor through out, the neutrals thought so, the Galway fans thought so, and so did the Kilkenny fans.  Walsh should have gone for the first incident, he knew what he was at, he was never going to get the ball and could have broken Hayes hand.  But he certainly should have gotten a second yellow for the next foul.

Murry deservedly went, I was annoyed with him and wouldn't be sorry if he was dropped, stupidity at its worst in such an important part of the game.

Kilkenny showed why they are the champions, they just always seem to be able to up gear when they want.  At one stage of the first half within minutes they went from five points down to two up.  In the last 20 minutes they also out scored Galway by 12 points to three.

Tipp and now Galway have shown that Kilkenny are not unbeatable, though it will take a massive effort to beat them.

Clare are up next for us, that will be a tough game, lets hope we don't drop our performance, if we perform like we did against the Cats we should do enough to win, but if history has shown us anything its how unpredictable Galway can be.

[Bord na Mona man]

On another note.
I think the non performance of Damian Hayes and Andy Smith puts to bed the notion that Portumna would be as good as any county team bar Kilkenny.
Unless Hayes gets the ball in hand and can flail his way towards goal, he looks to me like he lack the hurling to take scores from distances and angles .
Galway would be better off trying the likes of Ger Farragher or Alan Kerins to tap over points.

[Croí na hÉireann]

On another note.
I think the non performance of Damian Hayes and Andy Smith puts to bed the notion that Portumna would be as good as any county team bar Kilkenny.
Unless Hayes gets the ball in hand and can flail his way towards goal, he looks to me like he lack the hurling to take scores from distances and angles .
Galway would be better off trying the likes of Ger Farragher or Alan Kerins to tap over points.

Whatever about Andy Smith but Damien Hayes is a proven inter county player, I'd be looking at trying to source a better corner forward than Healy first. Kerins is a half forward and Farragher has never cut the mustard for me, except from placed balls and they have Canning for that now...