By Noel Dundon (Tipperary Media)
Birthday Boy Babs Backs Hurling Break-away.
It’s the start of the championship and even allowing for the fact that he is out of management for many years at this stage, Babs Keating is still box office.
His interview in the Irish Times at the weekend might be regarded as ‘vintage Babs’ – a dinosaur spouting off and trying to make himself relevant in the modern era. That has been the view of many on social media but to agree with those keyboard warriors is to not carefully consider what Babs has been saying – and, generally speaking, there is always a lot of sense in what he says.
“I’m saying it loud and clear, the first thing hurling counties should do is break away from Croke Park and run their own association. Hurling is treated as a second class citizen and it is never going to get enough support in the current arrangement, because football dominates in terms of votes. Hurling counties should go out on their own and do so immediately,” Babs said in an interview with Gordon Manning.
Babs also addressed online ticketing saying that none of his generation – he is almost 80 at this stage – want to get into games for nothing, but the GAA should ensure that somebody is there to take cash from them at the gates. This, and the fact that the All-Ireland Finals are being played in July -an act of lunacy, he says – thereby giving away the summer months to other sports, really exercises him and sees that passion for the games emerging. Remember, Babs was a dual star and while he regrets the demise of the footballers fortunes in recent times, his glass half full attitude suggests that there is always hope – something he is holding out for in relation to the hurlers as well, though he would not put his recently acquired home in Kildare on it. Babs and his wife Nancy moved to Kildare a few years back to be closer to his daughter and her horse trainer husband Johnny Murtagh.
But back to his suggestion about the hurling counties breaking free of Croke Park. Perhaps that might be too radical a move, but surely it is the hurling counties who should be road mapping the direction in which the game should be moving, rather than others who perhaps end up voting en-bloc at Congress without giving the proposals their full at-face-value consideration. That accusation might also be doing delegates a disservice, but Babs has a point when he says that it is hurling people who should be deciding the fate of the game. Donal Óg Cusack has been saying it for years that hurling needs urgent attention and with another committee in Croke Park now examining it, perhaps it will eventually get that attention. One of the problems though, is that it is, generally speaking, successful hurling people who are assembled to put the game to right, whereas it is those who are battling in the trenches of the struggling, weaker counties who really ought to be summoned to give their views.
Hurling is played in all counties in Ireland and the pockets of weaker counties where it is surviving as a minority sport, are as worthy of consideration as are the powerhouses – that’s what real hurling people would want and that’s what Babs has alluded to.
These days, the three-times All-Ireland medal winner spends more time in the swimming pool than on the golf course or even in the hurling field – at the moment he is in the throes of organising a golf classic for the Dillon Quirke Foundation which will see the treble crown All-Ireland winners of 1989 reunite – incidentally, due to inclement weather in recent times, the date of that event has been put back to Friday, May 24th.
Tipp Camogie Team deserve enormous credit.
The Tipp senior camogie ladies deserve enormous credit for their bridging of a 20 year gap by winning the league final on Sunday. Led by superb captain Karen Kennedy, they held on to stave off a strong Galway challenge and defended like their lives depended on it. Spare a thought for Holycross brothers Dinny and Michael Ferncombe – Dinny was the Galway coach, while Michael was the Tipp coach. Bragging rights to the elder Ferncombe then.
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