Des Cullinane: 'Looking at the football proposals, not many of them are relevant to hurling'
Cork selector Des Cullinane during the Munster GAA Football Senior Championship Semi-Final match between Cork and Kerry at Páirc Ui Rinn. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile.
Seven months after the original Football Review Committee completed its work in December 2013, the hurling equivalent was launched.
Following in the footsteps of Eugene McGee, Liam Sheedy was charged by GAA president Liam O’Neill with finding ways to improve hurling. Its establishment was inevitable.
The FRC’s successful proposals for football were going to have repercussions for hurling – the black card namely and the advantage rule – but it was important that hurling people were seen to make hurling decisions.
If O’Neill had hoped Sheedy’s group would extend the black card to hurling, he was disappointed although it was eventually endorsed in 2021. The Hurling 2020 body did, however, adopt the advantage rule and it was passed by Congress in 2015.
As sure as night follows day, if some of the football rules are passed on Saturday – the likes of the clock/hooter, the effective definition of a melee and engendering more respect on the sidelines for referees – iterations of them will be seen in hurling before too long.
Des Cullinane agrees. He was a member of the Hurling 2020 committee. Glen Rovers as he is St Nicholas’, St Nick’s as he is The Glen, the former Cork senior football selector can see life from both sides and appreciates some of what is on offer by the FRC this weekend will have implications for the smaller ball game.
“Looking at the football proposals, not many of them are relevant to hurling,” he says.
“Things like rewarding shots from outside the 45. I remember on the Hurling 2020 committee and Pat Henderson was suggesting we should be trying to cut down on shots from outside the 65.
“He gave an example of Cathal Barrett with the flick of the wrist sending the ball over the bar from 120 yards. Pat was making the point that when he was playing you were lucky to get one from 60 yards.
“What has to be taken into account is the impact on referees who are very often doing football and hurling. There has to be some sort of compatibility with technical rules. If a melee is defined as one thing in football, it will have to be the same in hurling.”
In 2018, Tipperary attempted to establish a melee as involving a minimum of five persons. They did so after unsuccessfully contesting Jason Forde’s one-match suspension for contributing to one in a Division 1 semi-final against Wexford.
Their motion failed but the current FRC are effectively entitling it as when a third or more player gets involved with two players and does not attempt to break it up. A black card is the punishment for being anything other than peacemaker.
The black card is not the dirty phrase it was in hurling in 2014. “There were the black cards and there was widespread opposition to them coming into hurling,” recalls Cullinane.
“They did come in after, though. Now, the black cards, the hooter, the melee… I don’t think you can have totally separate rules.”
Hurling has its own rule motions to consider at Annual Congress in February when former Tipperary defender Conor O’Donovan’s proposal aimed at curbing illegal handpasses is debated. But Cullinane doesn’t detect the same appetite to review the game as 10 years ago.
“We all agree something has to be done about football. Hurling, if there is an argument about the game, it’s a philosophical one more than anything else. You pick corner-backs now for what they can do going up the field. The days of Denis Mulcahy and Brian Murphy are nearly gone.
“Where are most of the scores from hurling now? Between the halfway line and the 45-metre line, I would imagine. Could you encourage more goals in hurling? I don’t know. It’s all tinkering.
"There was talk of two points for a sideline cut and four points for a goal. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with hurling.”
Technology is something Cullinane is glad to see the GAA embrace over the last 10 or so years. The clock/hooter, if it is backed having twice been passed before only to be late rescinded, would underpin that policy but he is not sure of the practicalities involved.
“The litmus test for every rule change is can it operated in a junior B game down in Ballinlough? Will every grounds have the clock/hooter?
“I believe one of the great recent successes in the GAA has been HawkEye but it’s not there in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, the Gaelic Grounds or Pearse Stadium. What we’re creating there is different games from those in Semple Stadium and Croke Park.
"You have to try and make sure that the same rules apply to all games as much as possible.”
