Hurling Nation: GAA treating hurling like an old dog

It's Friday morning and after this past week we need to take stock of the shots hurling has taken to the foot.

Remember, just before Christmas, the GAA leadership decided to eliminate five counties from the hurling league, causing an uproar. You'd think then they'd realise how it would out of touch they are with the game. Not a hint of it.

The GAA, which received a €32million gift in the wake of the previous hurling final, decided it would die of self-inflicted wounds on the exact same hill it chose to die on last year.

The Munster Hurling Championship was again used as bait to sell subscriptions for GAAGO. The Taoiseach and would be Taoiseach huffed and puffed, but the GAA didn't mind.

Meanwhile, a rugby game sold out Croke Park in over an hour, and the FAI moved forward with plans for Irish soccer costing over three quarters of a billion euros.

No worries to the GAA leadership. After all, in 140 years, they have failed to expand the number of serious hurling counties by even one county, why should they start caring now?

The association has tried employing a single person to change that, but now it employs nobody at all as director of hurling.

Here we are at the end of another microwaved season, and if there was ever any doubts that hurling is a secondary dish, they were removed this past week.

Tomorrow, the hurling quarter-finals are played, one at lunchtime and the other slightly later.

Wexford have pointed out that it wasn't a good time to play when the Feile was also being played. Wexford Park saw its last inter-county hurling match until next spring, weeks ago, so Wexford thought it would be nice if the kids and their mentors could see their county team somehow. But last Sunday, the GAA spent hours in a bizarre debate with