JOHNNY McINTOSH: Players deserve better

IT was a phenomenal All-Ireland hurling final and hats off to both sets of players – amateurs after all – who played the shirt off their backs for more than 90 minutes.

It was a brilliant achievement for Clare but to be honest I thought it’s a total nonsense that a replay wasn’t called for at the end of full time.

There was no need whatsoever for an extra 20 minutes and even from a financial perspective, I am sure that the GAA feel they missed a trick as they could’ve lifted another 10 million Euro from supporters.

I know there’s a big rush to get the season over but there would’ve been plenty of time in the coming weeks to fit in a replay, even on a Saturday evening.

It’s all happening so fast these days and a replay would’ve allowed for the hype to build up, something that has been sorely lacking in the lead up to All-Ireland finals in the last few years.

Speaking on behalf of my own club, there was a real rush getting tickets allocated and from the perspective of the players, the whole thing is really unfair as well.

It’s been such an amazing season and the standard has been so high, particularly in Munster, and I know it’s an ‘amateur’ sport but what these lads are doing is professional in all but nameonly.

I’d love to know what goes on in the likes of Glentoran or Linfield – these sort of semi-final or pro soccer teams – because I guarantee you what goes on in these top intercounty set-ups is two or three levels above it in terms of what goes on in training.

We would’ve had a replay regardless if the referee had given Cork a deserved free in the dying seconds of extra-time. In the photograph that’s gone around, you can see quite clearly that he pulls the jersey, but I wouldn’t blame the referee atall.

The game is played at a frenzied pace, you have one man calling the shots in the middle of the field, he got his head split open and you could see he was cramping up with five minutes to go.

It’s a massive responsibility and he has to make every call.

You have two umpires at both ends of the pitch and they have a get out of jail card with the Hawkeye system. In other words, there is a referral system for umpires and I think there were eight Hawkeye calls in total in the match.

The referee did miss a couple of bad calls that benefitted Clare but I wouldn’t blame him in a million years. We don’t want a VAR system like in soccer as it doesn’t suit hurling, it would break the game up, but I think one possible solution is extending the advantage rule from five to ten seconds. It would allow someone, especially in these massive games, to get a quick review of an incident to say ‘right, that’s a foul.’ But as I say, hurling is so dynamic and fast-paced that it’s always going to be difficult.

While I thought Cork deserved a draw, particularly in light of a few dodgy decisions, Clare deserve an awful lot of credit for their performance. I thought it was an exceptional all-round team performance, they didn’t give Cork a second on the sliotar, and I know it might sound negative but I think Tony Kelly’s display has been over-hyped a little.

Yes he scored 1-4 from play but there were others who scored similar.

Then there’s Shane O’Donnell – everything seemed to go through him and he really led by example when the chips were down in the first half.

I suppose the thing about Tony Kelly is that he’s capable of the magical.

He brings that sense of the spectacular and his goal was unbelievable.

He has that Roy of the Rovers thing about him but as I say, he was only one of the reasons why Clare edged the argument.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the news that Darren Gleeson has stepped down as Antrim manager.

I was concerned it might happen, but it’s no massive surprise either.

On the whole it had been a very successful tenure and he has brought the Antrim team tonew heights and achieved massively over expectations in my view.

Whoever his replacement is will face a building job over the next three or four years, and I will talk more about that in my next column.