Kilkenny legend Eddie Keher has questioned the direction that hurling is being steered in by GAA officials.
A six-time All-Ireland winner in the 60s and 70s, Keher has previously said that yellow and red cards aren’t necessary in the game and is relieved that a push to introduce a black card, as exists in football, failed at GAA Congress recently.
While satisfied that the standard of hurling has never been higher, he fears that hurling is being diluted by the rulebook, with recent Dublin-Wexford and Cork-Limerick League games littered with frees.
“I’m a long-time critic of cards in hurling,” Keher acknowledged. “Hurling is a totally different game from anything - Gaelic football, soccer, rugby - a totally different game that has its own philosophy, its own attitude and all of that.
“If a defender fouls now, anything up to 100 yards or 100 metres, it’s a point against him and to my mind that’s the penalty for fouling.
“They’re never going to drop the cards now. It’s a pity, but I’m delighted that the black card, which would add more to confusion and dilution of the game, (wasn’t introduced).
“I don’t know what’s happening with referees. People say they’re told to do this and told to do that.
“Hurling, to my mind, was always an honest game. It was very easy to identify a tramp on the field if you know a fella is going to pull.
“But if a fella is carded for a technical foul it destroys the whole game and if a fella gets a card early on in the match, he cannot tackle.
“He should be allowed tackle a 50-50 ball or a 40-60 ball but if he does that now he gets a yellow card and there’s no injury to anyone and it’s a shame.”
He accepted, however, that there is cynicism in the game but that it’s bred by team managers with win-at-all-cost attitudes.
“Managers are playing to the system and trying to get fellas carded and learning how to go down injured and physios and doctors running in shoving down fellas to be injured.
“I’m just disappointed that cynicism has come into a wonderful game and despite all that, the hurlers, who are the important people in all of this, are delivering wonderful hurling, from all counties.
“They should be the number one. The hurlers are the number one.
“I know I’ve said this before but coming back to the cards, I think issuing cards and pointing to the sideline and all that is a demeaning exercise on players who have committed so much to the game and who give so much entertainment.
“All I’m saying is, whoever is calling the shots, I don’t know but like they’re obviously not hurling men and if they were hurling men they would recognise that hurling is basically an honest game where skill should prevail and that’s the point I’m trying to make, that the players are producing but the officials have to be questioned.”
