Hurling V Football

equivariant wrote: »

I didn't say that one was better or worse. I just said that there is no doubt that hurling is more entertaining right now than football.

Also, I dispute the idea that football is more tactically sophisticated than hurling. I think that people often confuse slow and stodgy for tactically sophisticated. As far as I can, football right now has no interesting tactics. Any fool can pack the defence and look to play on the counter - its not clever or innovative - its just the obvious thing to do if you want to keep the game tight because you don't have confidence in your players to win individual battles. And pretending that one particular variation on that theme is somehow fundamentally new is nonsense. The problem with football now is that the rules don't give enough advantage to teams that want to play a more open attacking style.

On the other hand I think that hurling has quite a lot of interesting tactical stuff going on. Anyone who thinks that the 4 semi finalists were just lashing it up and down the field and hoping for the best wasn't watching properly. Look at the way Clare adjusted their tactical set up after the first quarter - it was a subtle enough change but it completely changed the flow of the game.

I think you missed the point and also invented something I didn't say. Ie - That hurling isn't tactical.

Patww79 wrote: »

I'd rather let it stay as it is than ridiculous stuff like shot clocks as some have suggested.

I agree that a shot clock is a bad idea but that doesn't mean that change is not required.

Personally I think 13 a side would be a good step. It would incentivise a different style of play less based on upper body strength without trying artificially enforce a certain mode of play in the way that a shot would.

equivariant wrote: »

Actually I think that one good aspect of 13-a-side would be that it would reduce the number of intercounty players. There are far too many fellas going around with a county jersey who fancy themselves as elite athletes and aren't within an asses roar of that status (obv not
referring to the elite senior intercounty teams there)

I agree that you would need to do something at club level to maintain participation levels, but there are other ways to compensate for that if it becomes an issue (eg have more teams in a club/ bigger panels/more subs).

Making a fundamental change to the game because a couple of cocky lads piss you off is not really good policy. :rolleyes:

I don't think more space is going to make any great change anyway and will play further into the hands of teams that can concentrate on fitness, I.E. you would get athletes rather than footballers coming to the fore.

equivariant wrote: »

seriously, how many times are you going to misrepresent other peoples argument. I quite clearly said that the reason for proposing 13-a-side was to do with incetivising attacking play vs strangth power.

So you didn't say that one of the benefits of making it 13 a side would be to curtail young fellas strutting around like elite athletes?

this makes zero sense. Of course extra space would change the game. Also what do you mean by 'fitness' - there is more than one type of fitness. In fact that is the whole point. The current set up gives an advantage to teams with lots of upper body strength. That's why we have declining skill levels and footballers that look like body builders - they spend too much time in the weights room rather than with the ball. One thing that is quite noticeable with a lot of current intercounty guys (even on the best teams) is how much the performance level drops near the end of the game - you can't look like a body builder and have great endurance.Extra space tips the balance in favour of lighter guys with more endurance. It should also favour more skillful players as higher skill level would tend to make you more efficient with your energy.

A lot of might in all that.
I think you see fall offf's in energy levels towards the end of all physical sports.

I agree on the upper body thing, but I think 13 a side will not necessarily produce more skillful players. You are inviting players to make better use of space and that would be easily done with athletes rather than footballers.

I don't have the answer btw. I would ban the hand pass for a while first and see does it produce a change.

equivariant wrote: »

I did

I did not however suggest



I gave my reason for suggesting the change and said that one of the benefits of it would also be fewer intercounty players. But don't let that get in the way of a good straw man ....

Sorry for paraphrasing this:

There are far too many fellas going around with a county jersey who fancy themselves as elite athletes and aren't within an asses roar of that status

but I thought having to watch young fellas who fancy themselves (cocky?) going around when they arn't within an asses roar of elite athletes was annoying you (pissing you off).

Maybe they were causing a different reaction?

ya but it is much more noticeable in football than in many other field sports (eg hurling).

As for 'athletes vs footballers', space is exploited by being able to kick accurately (both into space and over the bar when you have the ball in space) so it would reward skill rather than endurance.

They could just as easily run and hand pass it into space.
Creating space at the moment by false runs etc can be tactically fascinating. Skilled teamwork too.

Kaden Slow Martini wrote: »

Good article in the Sport section of the RTÉ news app about Hurling..
Fans of ‘the greatest game on earth’ continue to slap themselves on the back despite the fact that 22 of our 32 counties can’t be arsed to field teams at any serious level.
Football people are full of self loathing and are falling over themselves to denigrate the game,lamenting the cynicism they feel is destroying it...Personally,i’d rather watch a dour Ulster Championship game with a total of 10 scores than watch the ‘instant classics’ served up in Croker yesterday.

Beef No.1 -Lads belting sliothars over the bar from 70 yards out while their six ’attacking’ teammates watch it sail over.

2. Ger Canning describing a point from a 65 as ‘genius’ despite the fact that it’s done with the same frequency as a golfer tapping in a 2 foot putt.

3 Loughnane , Cusack et al banging on about ‘sweeper systems’ when it’s obvious to anyone outside Munster and Kilkenny that tactics are utterly redundant once the game actually starts.

4. The almost total lack of actual ‘team’ scores- y’know like 4 consecutive passes before a score

5. Cyril Cusak saying something like ‘we’ve seen more drama in twenty minutes at Semple Stadium today than in the whole World Cup so far blah blah blah

Hurling is the new basketball. Some of us prefer field sports where scores don’t come around every 77 seconds.

Ahh, that felt good.

All your points are horsesh*t.

As a Limerickman who grew up playing more hurling I'd have to say 'the best game in the world' talk is tedious in the extreme.

Hurling on the face of it has some advantages but if you look closer at it there's some things to consider.

1. The ball in hurling is far lighter now. In the 1998 A-I semi finals the combined scores of the Clare-Offaly draw and the Kilkenny Wexford games was 53 in total. Limerick and Cork scored 55 times yesterday.

The ball used in Football is still the same size as it was 20 years ago. If Football went the same way there could be a huge increase in scores. It's unfair to judge football against Hurling on this.It's kind of taken from Hurling being so easy to score.

2. Of the 10 counties that competed in this years round robin system 8 of them have populations over 100,000 and Kilkenny not far off this figure. Counties in the top half of the country have much smaller resources. For all the flak say Fermanagh took they have a population of 30,000 to pick from. Despite being the more widely played game I reckon that there is a big underestimating the difficulties for a lot of teams with such limited playing numbers and supporters amongst non-football people.

3. Even with that there are still counties with big numbers like Kildare, Donegal, Kerry, Mayo who dont meet with the same regularity as the top hurling counties due to distance apart. When they do meet you tend to get some serious games.

4. Football could do with a bit more positivity yes but Hurling punditry leaves a lot to be desired due to reluctance to criticise. Perceptions of both sports have clouded peoples judgements. Sky is about the only TV station that shows football in a good light but the bitterness from rte towards it is so strong (same station that slate the game at every turn) that people haven't cottoned on to sky's decent coverage.

I disagree that you cannot compare them.
For me the Mayo-v-Kildare game was fairly comparable to a hurling match. End to end action, great pace to the game, lots of scores, some crackers, physicality, skill, liberal use of the boot to get the ball forward etc.
Some of the Dublin - Mayo All-Irelands likewise. The Kerry Dublin semi-final of 2013 would rank right up there with any hurling match for me in all aspects of the game.

Then other football games, which while intriguing enough in their own right cannot be compared to hurling as they are just completely different e.g. Dublin v Tyrone, interesting, but never really edge of the seat, take your breath away stuff. Kerry v Galway was just too bad to compare to anything.

My own preference for football would be games like the Mayo v Kildare game rather than the defensive death by strangulation games that we see quite a lot of, even though they can be mildly fascinating in their own right.
I think it is premature to be making any major changes to football just yet. A lot of the reasons for why top teams set up as they do in the modern game is to cope with a marvelous Dublin side which might come back to the pack in a few years and we could see teams change how they set up again.

Shane_ef wrote: »

Football folk will say Football has a higher number of counties playing at the top level and it has

Is it though? Anyone of 7/8 teams could win the Hurling AI next year, you would be doing well to make a reasoned case for half that number in football. One of the massive deficiencies in football is the glaringly obvious gap between the top teams and the rest, at least the hurling championship is tiered to offset this.

Bridge93 wrote: »

You couldn't make a similar argument for football no. But that's largely because hurling doesn't have a team nearly as strong as current Dublin. It's the same scenario as we had with Kilkenny a few years back.
Football has more depth beyond trying to win the competition

You are mixing quantity with quality. Its not the same scenario as KK at all, because its not just Dublin who hand out hidings to the lesser counties its all the top counties that are doing it on a regualr basis.

Would you not agree that football needs to introduce a tierd championship? I'm not really a fan of this comapring both codes, apples and oranges etc. but there is very little doubt that the hurling championship model with Christy Ring, Nicky Rackard is far better.

I don't know what all these lads who like apples are talking about, to me you can't beat a good orange. Sure, even the colour is better, never mind the flavour!