Can we not just appreciate the magic?
Can we not just sit back, shut up and enjoy the show?
Can we not just marvel at the poetic levels of skill that our hurlers are now producing every time they grace a playing field?
It seems some of us can’t. It seems that some of us feel the need to go digging for holes in every single situation, even those that are laid on the soundest foundations.
It seems that some of us feel we just wouldn’t be doing ourselves justice if we didn’t have something to complain about. Because, Jesus, it’d be a crime and it would look really bad on us if it was beyond us to come up with something, anything to give out about.
Sure we wouldn’t have a clue about hurling then. Sure then it would look like we didn’t know any better about it than to accept it. That’d be some disaster.
Kilkenny goalkeeper Eoin Murphy scored a free from so far downtown in Wexford Park on Sunday afternoon that he was nearly back in Redmond Square.
The sight of the best goalkeeper in the country sizing up and absolutely pinging one over the black spot 100 metres away from him was one for the sorest of eyes.
What a free from Kilkenny's keeper Eoin Murphy! pic.twitter.com/qTVN99jFxq
— The GAA (@officialgaa) April 1, 2018
Granted, he wouldn’t have made it but for the gale force wind at his back, but it still took some control and some seriously polished wrist work to put the umpires to work from that distance.
Because, more often than not, and by another Murphy’s Law these kinds of efforts tail off wide or drop short. It’s a long shot in more ways than one and it takes a special talent to land the jackpot.
That’s what Eoin Murphy is.
But instead of hailing his great gifts, his display of the skills he has honed by years of practice, we scour the scene in search of something to give out about.
Oh and we found that fairly quickly.
The sliotars are too light. It’s too easy wrote a commentator on Twitter. The amount of scores in matches, now, he wrote, is daft.
Take a look at the replies under the video of the score and you’ll get the gist of it, the ‘joke’ that it is.
If it was the other way around, like it often is in Gaelic football, and we are not entertained, we are well aware what the narrative would be then.
Are you not entertained?
The weekend just past was a feast of everything good about the most skilful game on earth.
The sliotar was set zipping by the students of St Kieran’s College and Pres Athenry who played out a thriller of a schools’ final.
The eventual champions’ final goal, created by a deft, defence splitting flick by yet another young Kilkenny wizard was worth the journey to Thurles alone.
And it would only get better.
Semple Stadium was home to skills that you wouldn’t even see in the Nou Camp on a cold Saturday night warmed up by the buzz of Limerick and Tipperary’s most artistic and skilled stars in full flight.
Three moments from Semple Stadium proved that hurling is the most skilful game on earth | https://t.co/y0affUzG3Q https://t.co/ZGkuGo11Ih
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 1, 2018
Barry Nash nailed a backward handpass that you should only really see at the ball alley. Cian Lynch flicked a ball up into his hands with all the style and grace of a model on the catwalk. Ronan Maher cut a sideline over the bar that wouldn’t look out of place on Amen corner at Augusta National.
That’s hurling in its purest and most ridiculous form but some people still couldn’t appreciate that.
These lads are the master craftsmen. These lads are at the very top of their game and that’s no fluke.
They make it look easy but it’s far from it.
In hurling games all over the country, lads could try to take on a shot like that and they wouldn’t hit it half the distance.
The umpires would be put to work but their flags wouldn’t be in other instances.
Lads like Ronan Maher, Eoin Murphy and so many others are household names because they’ve dedicated their lives to their hurl and ball.
They go out and create beauty for us to enjoy and we can’t even do that.
The same people giving out about the commitments these players have to make more than the players themselves are now the ones picking faults in it when the spawn of this commitment earns rewards.
These players aren’t in the gym three nights a week and out on the field four to mess around.
Hurling is in a healthy state right now.
The game is being played at 100 miles an hour and it’s undoubtedly one of the greatest visual spectacles on earth.
All we have to do is enjoy it, and that shouldn’t be that hard.
